Afra or Another Passes

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Afra is a teacher from a working class family with a retired mother that used to serve in the house of a Qajar princess, while her father, an official clerk has passed away , Afra tries to makes ends meet by tutoring old Qajar princess’s son but the princess treated her badly scheming his dim wit son marrying Afra but her offer is rejected by Afra that claims she has a suitor as a pretext.
The conflict with the bourgeoisie and working class rises when the princess accuses Afra of stealing so she would marry her son to avoid her reputation destroyed but again she refuses, the other characters in working class join the opposing voices against Afra and drag her to police station for persecution since she is no longer belongs to her own class either.
Meanwhile a police officer and a real estate audit investigate the events and proves Afra’s innocence by the end the story is being read in a newspaper by a story teller that decides to change it and claim he is the imaginary suitor to create a happy ending.

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Writing in the Dark

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A group of friends who are journalists are plan a holiday to the north of the country, but each one starts to debate whether it’s good to travel, that eventually leads to a vote and signifies the lack of a common goal among these friends. Nima is a photo journalist who has been arrested for documenting a protest, and being questioned by an interrogator.

In another timeline, Nima and his journalist friends are again on holiday in Germany, discussing the possible call for asylum, but only one decides to become a refugee. It appears that Nima is no longer in the interrogation room suggesting he is dead, while his friends seated separately on chairs watch the blindfolded being investigated by a young interrogator.

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Born in 1361

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Born in 1361 portrays the life of a girl born in 1982 (the Iranian year 1361) through ages of 6, 13, 22, and 28 until her death. The play is a monologue in several episodes describing the sociopolitical challenges in Iran that affected the life of Nava and her generation. The play starts from the viewpoint of a fetus in her mother’s womb, describing how it has conceived to her still born twin sister and being born under the air raids during the Iran-Iraq war. Nava continues to grow to a young girl, discovering social contrasts in her life, and then witnessing limitations of the society and the sociopolitical changes of the 90s, adulthood and marriage, facing the post-election events in the 2009 that eventually leads her to illegal immigrate by boat and being drowned. The first production of Born in 1361 was performed with an all-female cast. Each actress portrayed a different episode from the life of the female character.

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Autopsy

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‘Autopsy’ begins with a disturbing scene in which actors emerge one by one from their shrouds (white cloths covering their bodies), improvise dialogues, and submerge back into their dark and isolated space. Actors randomly involve the audience in their improvisations by using symbolic props that include white cloth and shroud, a belt and a red lipstick. The play displays the challenges of the transgender community that resonate in an episode about a trans person’s marriage to a cis woman due to pressure from society. 

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The Right Move

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The Right Move deals with the issues of Palestinian women in the Labor market, and work places. It tackles the women’s concerns, problems, and unfairness in dealing with their abilities. It sheds light on the issues of the gap between the wages of women and men in the labor market; the unemployment and the lower professional development opportunities for women than men.

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I Am Jerusalem

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Thousands of great stories that formed humanity’s imagination up until now, has been erased, forged or appropriated. The continuous occupation of Jerusalem turned it into a battered spirit. I Am Jerusalem gives the city a voice to talk about the atrocities it lived throughout history, embodied in a form of a woman presenting all her stories. This play has sparked a large debate over the issues dealing with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The play in itself, however, is not political in nature. It is a love story and the intention of it is to highlight the plight of the Palestinians, both under occupation & those who are refugees and have lives abroad. The protagonists, Joumana and Rami have to decide between living their romantic Western fantasy or staying in their homes and country. On the other hand, we have Lama and Ali, a Palestinian couple who settle for the life they live. They find love in each other, which is not ideal, but realistic and heart-warming. It shows the difference between sticking to one’s roots and finding a safer and romantic way of living as reflected in both Jomana & Rami’s relationship and Lama & Ali’s relationships as well. Samah once mentioned also that Joumana’s romantic dilemma represents the metaphor of Palestinians who dream of being reunited with their homes and lands that they were forced to leave.

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The Final Month of the Fifth Year

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The Final Month of the Fifth Year tells the story of Jaber, a Palestinian-Syrian playwright who escaped Syria and lives as a refugee in Gaziantep, Turkey. Jaber is a journalist, and works with a radio station that supports the Syrian revolution. Jaber meets Fadl, a 20-year-old young man who escaped from Aleppo, and begins writing a play based on Fadl’s life, following his difficult journey from Aleppo to Idlib and eventually Turkey. Two additional characters are introduced: Tuba, a half-Turkish, half-Syrian girl who was born and raised in Turkey and who works as translator in the same radio that Jaber works for; and Younes, a Kurdish-Turkish young man, who once had a short-lived relationship with Fadl. Jaber finds himself losing faith in himself and his ability to tell stories, as the complexities of Fadl’s history multiply and embroil everyone around him. Ultimately, Jaber’s attempts wear away at his relationship with Wash, his girlfriend, a character we only meet over video calls. Jaber begins, too, to question his sexuality, and most characters question their understanding of the concept of identity.

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Before Dinner

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Before Dinner follows a single brutal night of conversation between a mother and a son. The mother is a schoolteacher, and the wife of a martyred Palestinian fedayi. The son is a theater student. Before Dinner is a play about generational struggle, and about the inheritance of a generation of young people who came of age during the Arab Spring. It is about what can be said and what can’t, and about the silences and absences that become deafening when parents and children can no longer hear each other. It is about the way successive disasters have forced specific cultural climates on each generation, and the different ways in which each generation finds itself haunted by defeat.

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Layalina

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In 2003, newly wed Layal plans a future with her family as they make plans to immigrate to the U.S. from Baghdad. 18 years later, just outside of Chicago, Layal’s life and responsibilities look unimaginably different from what she had envisioned two decades before. Layalina examines how families maintain their love in the midst of turbulent global and social change.

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Hamlet Machine

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Hamlet Machine, written by Heiner Müller in 1977, was adapted by Ayham Majid Agha in 2018. The Exile Ensemble, of which Ayham serves as Artistic Director, has been part of the Maxim Gorki Theatre in Berlin since the 2016/17 season. The ensemble’s seven actors are investigating the original texts alongside Ayham’s adaptation, as well as researching their own positions in an open ended project. With Hamlet Machine, they’re pursuing the dramatist who radically questions the intellectual’s position in a world that is out of joint, dissecting Shakespeare, among others, and then putting the remaining fragments together again.

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