By Raeda Taha (Palestine)
Translated from Arabic by Fayez Kanafani and Ismail Khalidi
Stage Manager: Jessi Cotter
Featuring: Raeda Taha
This monologue is the narrative of a Palestinian family that was left behind, a journey that deals with grief and loss from various perspectives. The crux of the story is portrayed in the heroic acts of Suheila, who’s illiterate and labeled as Antigone of Palestine. Suheila makes an oath not to sleep covered—in sun or rain—until she brings back the body of her brother Ali from the coldness of an Israeli morgue.
Raeda Taha
Raeda Taha was born in Jerusalem in 1965 and raised in Beirut. Between 1987–94, she was the Press Secretary of Chairman Yasser Arafat. Currently, she is the Chairperson of the Sakakini Cultural Center in Ramallah, Palestine, and a member of Administrative Committee of the Ghassan Kanafani Cultural Foundation in Beirut. Her book Ali chronicles the life of her father, a Palestinian freedom fighter. She has played the leading role in three of her plays: Petra Rocks; Return to Haifa; and 80 Steps; and written, produced, and performed her 2015 one-woman show Where Can I Find Someone Like You, Ali? Taha holds a BA in Speech Communication and Journalism from George Mason University.
Photos by Michael DiVito
About the International Play Reading Festival
Organized by Dean Carol Becker and David Henry Hwang, the Inaugural Columbia University School of the Arts International Play Reading Festival will present readings of three plays by living international playwrights that were not originally written in English:
Time Bomb, N. Riantiarno (Indonesia)
Shaitan Lake, Rinat Tashminov (Russia)
Where Can I Find Someone Like You, Ali?, Raeda Taha (Palestine)
The goal of the festival is to expand contemporary American understanding of theatre beyond that of English-speaking countries, and to present new theatrical voices to US audiences.