Worldtown Hearsay :: Finding Voice - Najla Said’s “Palestine”
Najla Said, daughter of the late Edward Said, is on the last stretch of her 13-week off-Broadway, one-woman show “Palestine”. First - the name, second - an unrecognized nation, and third - the “one-woman” performance surely add a lot of baggage to a single story. I have not seen the play (it’s in New York; I am not), but have kept on top of much of the positive and the inevitable negative press surrounding the production. The fact that the upper echelons of Manhattan’s cultural elite have allowed a play simply called Palestine - even if the content is not hotly “Political” as Najla attests - without protest says something for Liberal America (as low an expectation that may be). This story is invariably personal, of “finding the voice” to relay, or at least paint a portrait for an audience, as this author rightly states, “the best political analysis will miss”. And it helps when that voice has a ready and available platform for performance.
Read more via P U L S E:
“Najla Said, daughter of the late great Edward said, is not known for her father’s analytical acumen. She is all American sensibility and speech, and not as politically inclined as some of the rest of her family. But as an actress and playwright she gives a very human and compelling portrait of being an Arab-American, and specifically a Palestinian-American visiting Gaza as a teenager in this excerpt from her play. It was a trip that changed her, and coincided with highly personal events such as her father learning he had leukemia and her anorexia. And in this human portrait, Najla may well reach an audience which the best political analysis will miss.”
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