Return to Palestine Returns to the Stage
The Freedom Theatre’s acclaimed production returns to the festival following an extraordinary audience response and a five-star review from The Guardian.
From 30 September to 3 October, Return to Palestine will take to the stage at Pleasance Theatre, marking the production’s second appearance at the festival.
Directed by Micaela Miranda and devised at The Freedom Theatre in Jenin Refugee Camp, the play follows Jad, an American-born Palestinian, as he travels to Palestine for the first time. Searching for a connection to his roots, he encounters a place, and a people, far removed from the images and narratives through which Palestine is so often represented.
The production emerged from an extensive process of story-gathering with Palestinian communities encountered during The Freedom Theatre’s annual Freedom Ride. Drawing on testimonies and lived experiences from Jenin, Fasayel, Dheisheh, Mufaqara and Jabalia Refugee Camp in Gaza, the work brings together personal memory, collective history and the realities of life under occupation.
Through physical theatre, live music, sharp comedy and testimony, a dynamic ensemble of Palestinian performers transforms a stage “as small as Palestine” into an expansive theatrical world. Bodies become borders, checkpoints, streets, homes and landscapes; humour collides with violence; and intimate stories reveal the resilience, contradictions and humanity of everyday Palestinian life.
Both deeply local and unmistakably universal, Return to Palestine refuses the distance of headlines. Instead, it invites audiences to enter a living landscape shaped by displacement, belonging, resistance and the enduring desire to return.
Founded in Jenin Refugee Camp, The Freedom Theatre is internationally recognised for its work at the intersection of artistic creation, youth empowerment and cultural resistance. Through theatre, education and community engagement, the organisation creates spaces in which Palestinians can tell their own stories, imagine alternative realities and affirm their right to culture, freedom and self-determination.
Performance Information
Venue: Pleasance Theatre
Dates: 30 September–3 October
Tickets: Now on sale
Director: Micaela Miranda
Devised and produced by: The Freedom Theatre
Visual Identity and Design: Samar El Hinawi and Holly May Parker