Latest news with #AhmedMasoud
The Guardian
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- The Guardian
Application 39 (for the 2048 Gaza Summer Olympics) / Return to Palestine review – witness more than theatre
When all the outraged warnings and urgent alarm calls over the atrocities taking place in Gaza have been voiced, and to seemingly little effect for those enduring the suffering, what remains? In the case of these two plays, which distil the experience of being a modern-day Palestinian under fire, it would seem to be humour, albeit pitch black and acid sharp. Staged as part of PalArt festival and Shubbak festival, they deploy absurdism, satire and radical joy, swerving between the horrors to capture immense human resilience in the face of unspeakable suffering. Ahmed Masoud's futuristic play Application 39 (for the 2048 Gaza Summer Olympics) imagines Gaza in the year 2040. An online prank by two siblings (Joe Haddad and Sara Masry) has resulted in Gaza winning the Olympic bid. A political crisis ensues in a land which is now entirely controlled by Israel – they can turn the food 'on and off' we hear, which contains clear echoes of the current blockage of aid by Israel, resulting in the starvation of civilians. This future world is still only in the first phase of a ceasefire and rubble from the 2025 conflict is still lying untouched. Adapted by the Palestinian playwright from a short story he wrote in 2018, and directed by Cressida Brown, it blends satire with discussions on how to live under occupation, to resist or submit, and the possibility of peace. Alongside this are dramatic accounts of the horrors on the ground in Gaza which chime loudly with the present day; the siblings enact their memories of 2025 – lying under rubble as petrified children whose family is dead, homes razed, and the land turned into a godforsaken place. There is little need to suspend disbelief as they recount what they see and experience: hospitals and ambulances destroyed, mothers scrambling in panic down flattened streets with their children, hospital directors arrested and detained without charge. Given Israel's ban on allowing journalists into Gaza, these seem like the closest thing to witness testimonies, all the more so because Masoud, whose own family members have been killed in Gaza by Israeli forces, has collected real-life accounts and threaded his play through with those words. There are deeply poetic and reflective moments but also a prevailing sense of a play performed in real time, its suffering contemporaneous, its story real and raw. The Freedom Theatre's Return to Palestine has had a far longer gestation period – it was devised almost a decade ago, although this is its UK premiere. The company's general manager, Mustafa Sheta, was until recently held without charge by Israeli authorities and the theatre in Jenin, in the West Bank, is no longer accessible to its artists. Still they have produced a finessed and exquisitely tragicomic piece of physical theatre, with magnificent clowning. Directed by Micaela Miranda and based on real stories collected from across Palestine, it follows Jad, a Palestinian-American, on his first visit to the homeland. He is naive, excited to see his family, and wants a tour of the territory. Together, the superb six-strong cast (Motaz Malhees, Amir Abu Alrob, Ameena Adileh, Sofia Asir, Alaa Shehadeh and Osama Alazzeh) twist or stretch to become hooting cars, beds, tables, chairs, and the Statue of Liberty. It is visually poetic in the shapes and shadows they create, and both deadly serious and gloriously silly in tone. Just as in Masoud's play, there is minimal staging, constrained this time to a narrow white rectangle on a black stage – a metaphor for the confined yet still contested land left for Palestinians in the region? Everyone is satirised, from Israeli officials at the airport who are horrified by Jad's Muslim surname to Americans boasting freedom (while aiding occupation) and comically garrulous Arabs. Sudden moments of pain inject a drama that moves through trauma and into a joy that feels deeply radical, heartwarming and filled with love. As Jad travels across the West Bank, he witnesses the dead-eyed administrative implacability of the checkpoint guards, the stark contrast between cramped Palestinian camps and the world of the settlers, as well as violence and death. An oud player and percussionist are sensational, heightening the comedy and tension. Both shows give the current state of conflict its historical context: they speak of the Nakba, violent occupation, illegal settlements, daily injustices and casual daily killings of Palestinian civilians. This is more than just theatre. It is art, activism, political resistance and storytelling – painful, joyous, elemental and essential. At Theatro Technis, London, until 1 June
Middle East Eye
21-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Middle East Eye
Palestinian writer Ahmed Masoud loses more family in Israeli assault on Gaza
Palestinian playwright and author Ahmed Masoud has told Middle East Eye that he lost his sister-in-law and nephew in Israel's latest assault on Gaza. Speaking to Middle East Eye late last week, Masoud, who is based in the UK, said: "My sister-in-law Ibtisam was volunteering with a local organisation to teach kids maths. Her son was in high school too and was going to be at the lesson.' A friend of the late Palestinian writer Refaat Alareer, Masoud also lost his brother in an Israeli drone strike in January 2024. In total, he has lost 25 relatives, including cousins, during Israel's military campaign in Gaza, which began in October 2023. Masoud's latest work, Application 39, is a satire that imagines the Olympic Games being held in the besieged Palestinian territory a century after the Nakba ("catastrophe" in English) when around 750,000 Palestinians were forcibly expelled from their homes by Zionist militias to make way for the creation of Israel in 1948.
CairoScene
02-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CairoScene
London's Shubbak Festival Announce 2025 Line-Up May 23rd-June 15th
London's Shubbak Festival Announce 2025 Line-Up May 23rd-June 15th With its second wave of programming, Shubbak Festival 2025 reaffirms its commitment to art as an act of defiance, survival, and dreaming. As the UK's largest festival of contemporary Arab cultures, Shubbak continues to be a space where artistic expression is not just celebrated but serves as a means of resisting erasure, reinterpreting histories, and envisioning new futures. This year's edition brings together artists working across music, theatre, visual arts, and literature to explore themes of memory, colonial legacies, and cultural resistance. Palestinian company Khashabi Theatre presents Milk مِلْك, a time-warping reflection on catastrophe, while Ahmed Masoud's Application 39 imagines Gaza as the unexpected host of the 2048 Olympics in a biting black comedy. Selim Djaferi's Koulounisation and Marah Haj Hussein's Language: No Broblem take language and colonization as sites of both grief and humor, while Sarah Al Sarraj's Limbs of the Lunar Disc questions how ontological systems could be rooted in land, spirit, and ancestry. Art-making as a revolutionary act threads through the festival. An Artist's Manual Against Apartheid by chamæleon compiles resistance strategies, while Art of the Palestinian Poster, curated by Malu Halassa, draws from a history of cultural steadfastness. In an invitation to reclaim the body and its knowledge, The People's Catwalk launches the festival, with 3EIB and Nafs Space staging a reclamation of public space and bodily autonomy. Beyond the theatre and gallery, Shubbak embeds itself in community spaces. Young Shubbak works with Kilburn residents to archive songs of revolution and stories of resistance. In workshops, artist Issam Kourbaj explores craft-making as a means of creative well-being with the SWANA community of Grenfell. Contemporary and traditional music are honored in Syrian Rhythms, while For Sudan foregrounds the cultural production of Sudan as a means of imagining liberation. Shubbak Festival 2025 insists that in times of crisis, imagination is both refuge and weapon. Across rehearsal rooms, kitchens, public spaces, and the very cells of our bodies, artistic expression holds the power to affirm presence, resist erasure, and insist on a different future.
