La MaMa Experimental Theater Club, NYC

Playwright and socially-engaged theater artist Jessica Litwak hired me to direct her play, based on her work peacebuilding through the arts in the middle east. It is drawn from her challenging experiences in Baghdad, Beirut, and Israel/West Bank. She describes it as "a socially engaged duet performed by two actors and ten puppets," with the actors playing multiple roles. In the second act, the protagonist Miri conjures 12th century Andalusia in Spain, a time when she imagines Muslims and Jews lived together in peace. In this fictional but historically-plausible world, a Jewish woman and an Arab man forge a connection through their common passion: poetry. The play brings wit and whimsy to circumstances of impossible paradox and invites the audience to imagine art as a vehicle for change.