Latest news with #ShubbakFestival
The National
26-05-2025
- Entertainment
- The National
The UK's largest Palestinian theatre production appears on stage
The UK's largest celebration of performing arts and culture from the Arab world has returned to London, with a focus on art from Palestine. The festival staged the UK's largest Palestinian theatre production to date at the Southbank Centre at the weekend. Part dance, part theatre, MILK is a play focused on disaster, telling the story of women who have lost their children, focusing on the moments before and after the tragic events. It is directed by Bashar Murkus and Khulood Basel of the Haifa-based Khashabi Ensemble. And as with every edition of Shubbak festival – which takes place once every two years – uncertainty about whether the artists will make it to the UK is fuelled by growing visa restrictions. This year, the Khashabi Ensemble was held up due to closures at Ben Gurion Sirport after Houthi air strikes. Members ended up taking an alternative route through Jordan. Artistic director Alia Al Zoghbi said the weight of the wars in Gaza and Sudan is hanging over this year's festival, which runs until mid-June. 'This year was a particularly difficult one for us because we really have to ask ourselves what are festivals for, when a group of people is being erased, their heritage and culture is being erased,' she told The National. She hopes to bridge the uncertainty by presenting a line of up of 'artists as archivists, as dreamers who hold mirrors to the world as it is, and are so crucial to society. They can help us imagine how different the world would be. This festival stands squarely before our grief and rage and at the same time reflects on our hopes and dreams,' she said. The festival opened on Friday with a fashion show showcasing clothing brands from Palestine, Lebanon and Syria at the Southbank Centre. Designers selected by the fashion platform 3EIB include the Ramallah-based Nol Collective, Trashy Clothing and Nafs Space, and their collections were available in a pop-up at the centre's foyer at the weekend. The festival is no stranger to war and adversity, having launched in 2011, capturing the optimism generated by the Arab Spring, and subsequently serving as a platform for Syrian artists exiled by the ensuing civil war. Al Zoghbi hopes to continue this legacy, and has incorporated three plays put on by the London-based PalArts Collective into its programme this year. Ahmed Masoud's black comedy Application 39 imagines Gaza hosting the Olympics in the year 2048 and runs all of this week at Teatro Technis. Other theatre productions include Koulounisation, by Franco-Algerian director and artist Salim Djaferi, which explores the language of colonisation that lingers in discussions of the Algerian war of Independence. The one-man performance at the Battersea Arts Centre is played by Djaferi and will bring together storytelling, theatre and visual arts. The British-Lebanese DJ Saliah will present her first original live show, The Scene Between, at Village Underground as part of the festival's collaboration with SXSW. The artist made her debut appearance at Glastonbury in 2022, and is known for blending old Arabic pop songs with contemporary dance music and hip-hop. Beauty and identity will be explored through Talking Textures, a photography exhibition curated by Yasemin Hamdan at Coal Drops Yard from June 4 to 7. This will be followed by an Eid Souq organised by the festival, where skincare products such as traditional soaps, henna and kohl, as well as textiles and food, will be sold during the Eid weekend. Two generations of artists will be presented through the works of Syrian-born painter and sculptor Issam Kourbaj, and Leicester-based painter Sarah Al Sarraj, whose recent collection explores Islamic astronomy and indigenous knowledge systems.
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.
