‘Your hobbies are limited to Arab Idol and cooking lentils and having sex in fields late at night.’
The year is 2043, and Reem and her husband Sayeed are going to share a ‘Serious Play about Palestine’. Things are tense. People are on the edge. The Fifth Intifada is right around the corner. But on a contested piece of land near their village of Beit al-Qadir, Reem and Sayeed are about to go dogging. Don’t worry, you’re allowed to laugh.
Sami Ibrahim’s play two Palestinians go dogging uses the lens of humour to explore how the everyday becomes political and the political becomes everyday in a conflict zone.
The play won the Theatre Uncut Political Playwriting Award in 2019 and was premiered in May 2022 at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, London, directed by Omar Elerian.
‘A devastatingly human portrait of conflict that sears itself on the mind. Sami Ibrahim’s play is a startlingly bold tragicomedy and a furious call to action… as devastatingly epic as Greek tragedy… a show that comes with an enormous gut-punch, and is all that theatre should strive to be’
— Guardian
‘A darkly comic political drama, shot through with absurdism and bleak humour’
— The Stage
‘A dose of harsh reality… This play matters and is truly memorable’
— Broadway Baby
‘Entertaining and timely… a comedy that skilfully holds humour in uneasy tension with its characters’ pain’
— Telegraph
‘Occasionally bleak, utterly brilliant… hilarious and harrowing… a stunningly insightful and entertaining play, one of the cultural high points of this year’
— Broadway World
Theatre Uncut Political Playwriting Award