An Evening of "Break the Wall" Plays at Columbia, November 18th!

We are thrilled that the Center for Palestine Studies is hosting an evening of new plays to commemorate the hundredth anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, where “one nation solemnly promised to a second nation the country of a third,”

Saturday, November 18, 2017, 6:30 PM  9:00 PM, Lenfest Center for Arts 615 West 129th Street, New York, NY, 10027 (map). RSVP HERE

It will be an evening of brand new and existing BTW plays, presented by an amazing set of actors and directors. We'll be posting the full team soon! 

Meanwhile, if you'd like to learn more about the Balfour Declaration and its affect on the indigenous population of Palestine, please read Rashid Khalidi's recent excellent piece in Jacobin. 

Hope to see you there!

Photos from the June 5th Launch!

So grateful to all the actors, directors, writers, audience members and donors who made this such a spectacular launch! Let's break some walls!  - Ismail + David

"So what can I do?" ...a Heartfelt Post from West-Park Press

Another lovely report of our launch. Thank you for being there, West-Park Church, and for writing about the work we've begun!

"So what can I do? is a question artists often ask themselves related to the difficult social issues of our time. Especially with a seemingly intractable issue like the Israel-Palestine conflict, or more appropriately, the struggle of the Palestinian people for justice. Last night at the Lark Theatre Center in New York, the Break the Wall Theatre Project provided one valuable answer to that question. Inspired by the controversy around Caryl Churchill’s Seven Jewish Children and Churchill’s making the play available for free for performance by anyone, Ismail Khalidi and David Zellnik have conceived and produced their own project, Break the Wall. Conceptually, BTW refers both to the wall of separation built by Israel but also the fourth wall between stage and audience. BTW  intends to break through with these walls."  

For more read here!

The First Write-Up About Break The Wall's Launch!

A beautiful write-up by Phil Weiss appeared today on the ever smart Mondoweiss about last night's launch of Break the Wall!

We were overwhelmed by the love, dedication, and fierce smarts in that one room. Thank you Lark for letting us set the ball rolling at your theatre! And thank you to our wonderful writers,  directors, and actors for making a night of readings and performances that proved electrifying.

And yes, theatre alone can't change the world, but it can foster a new discourse, break through the endless lies and censorship and obfuscations that surround this issue, and demand radical empathy. So let's break some walls!

Come to the June 5th Launch!

We are incredibly excited that June 5th we will officially launch this site! To celebrate, we will be hosting an evening of food, drink and selected plays, for friends and allies to learn more about this groundbreaking international theatre initiative. 

WHERE: The Lark, 311 W. 43rd street (btwn 8th and 9th Aves) in the 5th floor theatre.
WHEN: June 5th, 2017, 6pm
* 6PM Reception
* 7PM Performance
* 8PM Celebration! (Wine and Hors d'Oeuvres)

This June marks 50 years of Israel's occupation of The West Bank and Gaza Strip; five decades which have seen the destruction of lives and property and the daily humiliation of millions of Palestinians as prisons, checkpoints and walls multiply around their ever-shrinking homeland. It is our hope that Break the Wall will serve as a resource to educate the public about the costs of occupation and disrimination, and to mobilize our respective communities in a collective project of cultural resistance to injustice.