Born in Beirut to Palestinian parents and raised in Chicago, Ismail Khalidi is a playwright, poet and activist, as well as an actor, educator and journalist. To us, he is a friend and artist that we have been able to work with since his days as a college intern with Pangea about a decade ago.

 

During this upcoming residency, cosponsored by New Arab American Theater Works and Mizna, Ismail, Dipankar Mukherjee and local actors will be further honing the script for Sabra Falling.

 

In his play Sabra Falling, Khalidi takes us to the city of his birth at one of its darkest moments. It is August 1982, and war-torn Beirut is under siege from air, land and sea. Set in the Sabra refugee camp, the specter of a massacre looms as the Akawi family receives an unexpected visitor that brings the past rushing back and alters the course of events to come.

 

Ismail Khalidi’s parents lived through the brunt of the civil war in Beirut in the 1970s and early '80s and gave birth to three children amidst the unspeakable bloodshed of that conflict and the Israeli invasion of 1982. Khalidi and his family fled to the United States in 1983, never to return. His play, Sabra Falling, is an ode to his parents and to the politics, the humor, the tragedy and the importance of that historical moment.

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Stay tuned for details about the full production and global premier of Sabra Falling in Fall 2017.