‘ReOrient 2015’: Attend the Conference on Middle Eastern Theatre Online

ReOrient 2015, “an artistic celebration and political exploration of this transforming region for curious and engaged theatre lovers,” will host both a forum (which begins October 3) and a festival of short plays (opening September 10):

While you need to be in San Francisco to see the theatre works — an eight-show rundown that includes short plays by much-laureled Egyptian playwright Youssef El Guindi, celebrated British-Iraqi playwright Hassan Abdulrazzak,  and six others — you can participate in the forum online. According to organizers, the two-day event will be livestreamed on Howlround.com.

Forum presentations include “Project Alo?” an international mobile video play, which has theatre artists collaborating across borders via one-minute video clips captured on their cell phones; “Divided Stages: 50 Years of Performing Iran in the U.S.”; a panel on queering intersections in Middle Eastern diasporic communities; and a panel on “Theatre Between Home and Exile: New Palestinian Voices.”

The forum on Palestinian voices will be co-chaired by playwright-scholars Mas’ud Hamdan and Rebekah Maggor, and features up-and-coming playwrights Ismail Khalidi (“Truth Serum Blues,” “Tennis in Nablus“) and Dalia Taha (“Fireworks,” “Land/Fill,” “Keffiyeh/Made in China,”), Yasser Abu Sharqa, Rama Haydar, and Hanna Khalil.

If you can block out time to watch part of the forum on October 3 and 4, the detailed schedule is online. And well, it’s still online, even if you can’t.