REORIENT Festival to Mark Golden Thread's 30th Anniversary Season

Golden Thread Productions, the first American theatre company devoted to the Middle East, will present ReOrient 2026 Festival of Short Plays, featuring five fully-produced short works by celebrated MENA playwrights as part of an exceptional evening of theater. 

This year's ReOrient makes the political personal, presenting intimate and genre-pushing works. Nowhere else you will see such a global mix of stories and styles on one stage in one evening. Featuring an ensemble of actors taking multiple roles across different plays, and a directing and creative team that collaborates across the whole Festival, ReOrient is one of the most unique experiences that the Bay Area theater scene has to offer and has become Golden Thread's most recognized and celebrated program. Continuing Golden Thread's ongoing commitment to justice, ReOrient 2026 is dedicated to Iran and Palestine.

The Festival runs October 9–November 1, 2026 at Potrero Stage (1695 18th Street, San Francisco) with opening night on Monday, October 12 at 7:30pm. Tickets start at $30 (previews are $20, and no one turned away for lack of funds) and can be purchased at goldenthread.org.

In conjunction with the ReOrient 2026 Festival, Golden Thread hosts The MENA Theater Makers Alliance 2026 Fall Convening on October 23-25, 2026. This convening of artists, academics, and activists is co-produced by MENATMA, Art2Action, and Golden Thread Productions, as part of a multiyear partnership “Protecting Dissent.” Please visit menatheater.org for more information. 

"The ReOrient Festival is the only of its kind in the nation, and is an incredibly important contribution to the field of MENA theater in the U.S.,” says Nabra Nelson, Golden Thread Productions Artistic Director. “I attended the past two Festivals as an audience member, and the plays still have a ripple effect on me in the way only the best theatre experiences do. Short and mighty, these pieces will stick with you. This year is especially meaningful because of its focus on Iranian and Palestinian voices, at a time when we need varied and nuanced representations beyond the news cycle. But isn't that always true for our community? That is why the ReOrient Festival has been a staple of Golden Thread's programming for 30 years.”

The five plays included in ReOrient 2026 are diverse in content and style and were selected from 83 submissions from 14 countries: Dare Not Speak, a hard-hitting play by Iraqi-British playwright and Golden Thread affiliated artist Hassan Abdulrazzak (Love, Bombs and Apples), is about a young child, murdered in a genocide, pitching her story to a theater artistic director who is reluctant to put it on stage. Blood Fruit by Palestinian-Irish playwright and Golden Thread affiliated artist Hannah Khalil (Scenes From 71* Years) tells the true story of Mary Manning who refused to handle South African grapefruits in her shop in 1980s Dublin and convinced her co-workers to strike to protest the Apartheid regime. Also included is Camouflage by award-winning and celebrated Palestinian writer Ahmed Masoud (recently commissioned by The National Theatre in London), which is a series of surprisingly funny and heart-wrenching monologues featuring young Palestinian people making sense of their existence under occupation. The line-up is rounded out by two newcomers: Regarding Antigone by Montreal-based Iranian writer Banafsheh Hassani, a playfully theatrical solo show inspired by the classic Greek tragedy of Antigone; and Homing Pigeons & Co by Bay Area-based Iranian writer Sepehr Jafari, which follows two Iranian friends, one stuck in a police van in Tehran and the other in her bed in San Francisco.

Along with the selected plays, Golden Thread uplifts three plays as Honorary Mentions: Sanctuary by Alyssa Haddad-Chin, In Line of Fire by Motasem Abu Hasan, The Eye of the Needle by Jacob Kader. 

ReOrient Festival of Short Plays, Golden Thread's most recognized and celebrated program, was inaugurated in 1999 to present alternative perspectives of the Middle East and to showcase the multiplicity of stories, voices, and styles from the region. This ambitious festival, now presented every two to three years, turns San Francisco into a mecca for innovative, spirited, and thought-provoking theatre from and about the MENA region. ReOrient serves as a showcase for the work of leading Middle Eastern-American writers like Yussef El Guindi, Mona Mansour, and Betty Shamieh, while helping launch careers of emerging talent from MENA communities. The festival has also introduced Bay Area audiences to significant and rarely-produced dramatic works by authors such as Sadegh Hedayat, Fatma Gallaire, and Tawfiq Al-Hakim. Alongside Middle Eastern voices, ReOrient also features the work of non-Middle Eastern playwrights exploring the region, and has included premieres by such distinguished American Playwrights such as Naomi Wallace, Eric Ehn, and Israel Horovitz. 

Directors for the 2026 Festival include artists with longtime association with Golden Thread, including Artistic Director Nabra Nelson (in her production debut at Golden Thread) and Founder Torange Yeghiazarian, as well as Wynne Chan, Nick McDow Musleh, and Salim Razawi.

ReOrient 2026 Festival marks the fourth collaboration between the Literary Managers and Dramaturgs of the Americas (LMDA) and Golden Thread. Led by LMDA Treasurer and Golden Thread Affiliated Artist Nakissa Etemad, the partnership brings together two organizations that value launching new plays and challenging cultural preconceptions through provocative programming and dialogue. The dramaturgy team includes Nakissa Etemad, Marina Johnson, Emily DeDakis, and Oona Hatton, who will support script development and provide contextual information to ReOrient artists, and write feature articles for audiences that explore the plays, artists, and themes of this year's Festival. 

The cast for the 2026 Festival includes Bay Area actors Hind Jadallah-Karra, Charisse Loriaux, Thamen Mansour, Fatemeh Mehraban, Leda Rasooli, Ameen Safi, Ramtin Vaziri, and Dina Zarif. The creative team, who work on all five plays, includes Golden Thread favorites: River Bermudez-Sanders (Production Manager), Max Bowman (Lighting and Video Designer), Kate Boyd (Scenic Designer), Buffy (Costume Designer), Jenna Lauren Carroll (Props Designer), Oliver Kampman (Assistant Stage Manager), Tyler Miller (Technical Director), Elliott Orr (Sound Designer), and Lauren Quan* (Stage Manager).

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