Return to Palestine centres around Jad, a Palestinian born in America, who goes to Palestine for the first time in his life. Wanting to know more about his people and identity, he finds out that reality is very different from what he has seen in the news.
Return to Palestine is directed by Micaela Miranda and devised together with the ensemble of the third-year students of The Freedom Theatre School. It was created after extensive story-gathering through playback theatre with the communities engaged in The Freedom Theatre’s annual Freedom Ride. The play includes stories from Jenin refugee camp and city, Fasayel, Dheisheh refugee camp, Mufaqara and Gaza.
In a sarcastic, comic and tragic style, the actors create the space, characters and even the emotional spaces they live in, in a virtuoso play with their bodies in a very small stage – “as small as Palestine”.
Return to Palestine is performed in Palestine and in Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan during the spring. When performed outside of Palestine, the play is accompanied by a small workshop, ‘101 Palestine’, in which the actors gather information from the audience and break them down into myths and facts and share their personal stories, or stories heard during their research, to share more information about life under occupation in Palestine.
Read more about upcoming performances of Return to Palestine.