TENNIS IN NABLUS Will Receive Industry Reading in New York

Uncharted Territory, a production company founded and run by Sarah Himadeh, is developing a New York run of Ismail Khalidi's Tennis in Nablus. This industry reading serves as a launch point as the play seeks out collaborators and backers.

Sharp, funny, and utterly human - Tennis in Nablus draws you in with charm and wit before revealing the full weight of what it carries. Set in 1939 British Mandate Palestine, it follows a diverse ensemble of Palestinian Muslims, Christians, and Jews whose lives, loves, and friendships are bound together even as colonial rule threatens to pull them apart. It illuminates how the seeds were planted that would later grow into the Middle Eastern reality we are living inside today - offering context almost entirely absent from contemporary discourse, through the most disarming of entry points: genuine wit and warmth.

Tennis in Nablus received the Mark Twain Comedy Playwriting Award and the Quest for Peace Playwriting Award at the Kennedy Honors. The play premiered in 2010 at the Alliance Theater in Atlanta, Georgia. It has yet to receive a full staging in New York City.

On developing this project, founder Sarah Himadeh said: "I couldn't be more excited to begin this journey with Tennis in Nablus - a play that sees Arabs and Jews as kin, pulled apart by the forces that be. Around it, our goal is to build a community of different perspectives, inspiring one another to grow."

The cast includes John Austin, Raffi Barsoumian, Ramsey Faraghallah, Dennis Flanagan, Amir Malaklou, Ben Natan, and Keshav Moodliar. The reading will be directed by Ghina Fawaz.

Ismail Khalidi is a Palestinian-American playwright and poet, born in Beirut, Lebanon, who moved to the United States following the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in 1982. The son of Palestinian scholars Rashid and Mona Khalidi, his work spans many genres, but consistently engages the history and contemporary challenges of imperialism. He has recently written a series of plays on Gaza with Naomi Wallace.

This reading is invite only and will feature a talkback with special guests.