Scenes from 68* Years

Description

What are we doing then? Come on, lets go - all of us, lets tell everyone in the street, its too late we've lost, all the years of hardship, being murdered, imprisoned, having your homes taken, your jobs, your fields, your olives, your ability to move from one place to another - everything you have endured has been for nothing. They've won. So let's just leave it to them, disappear. It's what they want. You are doing what they want. You are an educated young Palestinian man. We need you here. Stay. Scenes from 68 Years is a selection of intertwined vignettes telling the story of ordinary Palestinians at a very human level with mischievous humour. It offers snapshots of the routine of life in the shadow of occupation: we look into an Israeli household with a rebellious pro-Palestinian teenager, join a tediously long queue at an Israeli check point, and get swept into an absurd act of civil disobedience by Palestinian civilians in a desperate attempt to get worldwide media attention. Scenes from 68 Years was selected from 100 scripts by the Arcola Theatre and the play received its world premiere at the Arcola Theatre on 5 April 2016 in a production by Sandpit Arts.

Hannah Khalil is an award-wining writer who had her first short play, Ring, selected for the Soho Theatre's Westminster Prize and her first full- length piece, Leaving Home, staged at the King's Head, London. Other work includes Plan D (published by TCG in their volume Inside/Outside: Six plays from Palestine and the Diaspora), which was nominated for the Meyer Whitworth Award; Bitterenders, which won Sandpit Arts' Bulbul 2013 competition and was produced at Z Space, San Francisco, as part of Golden Thread's ReOrient Festival; The Worst Cook in the West Bank and The Scar Test. Hannah Khalil also writes for Radio 4.

As a Palestinian-Irish dramatist, Khalil writes with feeling about homelessness, migration and a culture in which masculinity is equated with ownership. -- Michael Billington * Guardian * Khalil's Scenes From 68 Years is fresh, funny and always engaging. Khalil's talent is big and intelligent, and it's still growing. Watch out * Naomi Wallace, multi-award winning American playwright *