Name: PERFORMANCE | KEY TO RETURN by Norma Cohen
Start: 2022-02-03T18:30:00Z
End: 2022-02-03T20:30:00Z
Location: P21 Gallery

PERFORMANCE | KEY TO RETURN by Norma Cohen

The P21 Gallery is an independent London-based charitable trust established to promote contemporary Middle Eastern and Arab art and culture. The two-story venue in central London is a place where contemporary artistic statements are experienced and appreciated by a artistic community. The facilities at P21 are planned to maximise the potential of contemporary art as a discourse, through multimedia exhibition spaces on two levels with supporting facilities for public functions in addition to workshops for training and education.

P21 Gallery

Directed by Steve Tiller (OperaMachine), there will be a 75 min. staged reading + Q&A on Thursday 3rd Feb.

An Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) trip throughout the West Bank in Nov 2019 prompted actor/writer Norma Cohen to write her play KEY TO RETURN. 
Directed by Steve Tiller (OperaMachine), there will be a 75 min. staged reading + Q&amp;A on Thursday 3rd Feb. at 6pm for 6:30 PM at P21 Gallery, 21 Chalton Street, NW1 1JD. 
KEY TO RETURN: Longsuffering tour guide Ahmad steers illicit sightseers through Israel and the West Bank foiled by checkpoints and settler confrontations, when his simmering patience finally snaps. The play highlights the turbulence of daily Palestinian life under occupation. Told through a clamouring chorus of voices alive and dead, stories of suffering, displacement and revolt are revealed during an erratic, day long road trip through Israel and the Occupied Territories led by a genial driver waylaid into confrontation at every roadblock and military incursion.
Taslima, a young mother from a refugee camp stitches an elaborately embroidered dress through which emerge voices recounting tales of anguish &amp; joy: from a female Bedouin elder harassed by settlers, a checkpoint coffee seller &amp; Jordan Valley farmer defending his land to disembodied children’s voices emerging from the Bethlehem Wall `shadow villages’ bulldozed to rubble in `48 - apart from the intervention of an eighty-year-old Jewish peace activist. Themes of resilience, hope &amp; a capacity to celebrate the simplest grains of life counter an underlying sense of frustration endured during an unresolved, 70-year occupation.
This performance will be dedicated to the memory of Haj Suleiman, a Bedouin activist elder killed by an Israeli truck on Jan. 17th, 2022. https://www.972mag.com/haj-suleiman-masafer-yatta-police/ 
Norma met Haj Suleiman on her visit to the village of Umm al-khair &amp; took this defiant photo of him. His brave stance over incursions from nearby settlers &amp; the military inspired a major, culminating scene in her play.

PERFORMANCE | KEY TO RETURN by Norma Cohen

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PERFORMANCE | KEY TO RETURN by Norma Cohen

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