Poetry for Palestine
Palestinian actor Amir Abualrob and Dutch-American poet Shira Wolfe will do a collaborative poetry reading in solidarity with the people of Palestine. Their performance interweaves poems they wrote about Palestine, drawing from their experiences in Palestine. Furthermore, their performance and subsequent conversation will explore their relationship — that of a queer Palestinian actor who came to Ireland as a refugee, and a poet with Jewish heritage, whose practice brought her to Palestine. The two met while working together at The Freedom Theatre in Jenin, which was just recently nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.
They will perform together at Perdu Bookstore on 29 February 2024, and on 25 February 2024 at 20voor20, a poetry event hosted in Utrecht by writer and journalist Gidi Pols. They will also participate with their poetry performance in the Soro-sorO pavilion at The Wrong Biennale, the world’s largest online art biennial. Additionally, Amir and Shira will present their poetry performance to the workshop participants at the asylum seekers centre where Shira conducts poetry workshops. Through their performances, they seek to raise funds to support Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank.
This collaboration was supported by the Lutfia Rabbani Foundation, which made Amir’s travel to the Netherlands possible by means of a travel grant.
About the performers
Amir Abualrob (they/them) is a Palestinian theatre maker, trainer and facilitator based in Dublin. In 2017, they successfully completed a four-year programme at The Freedom Theatre (TFT) in Jenin, Palestine, focusing on theatre studies and cultural resistance. They continued working with TFT as a freelance actor on several national and international tours. In 2019, they took on roles as a trainer and administrator for the TFT School. Their artistic practice focuses on working within communities using physical theatre, storytelling and cultural resistance to confront oppression. Amir has been awarded the AIC bursary award for Collaborative Arts and Cultural Diversity in October 2020. In July 2021, they were awarded a one-week residency at the Hawk’s Well Theatre Sligo and the Cairde Sligo Arts Festival as part of the Time At The Well. They were awarded the Arts Council of Ireland’s Theatre Project Award in July 2021, and were awarded the Arts Council of Ireland Arts Participation Project Award in 2023.
Shira Wolfe (she/her) is an Amsterdam-based Dutch-American writer and poet with a background in theatre. In 2015, she acted in a play in Jenin during a collaboration between Transversal Theater Company and The Freedom Theatre. One year later, she returned to Palestine to shoot a movie inspired by the poet Mahmoud Darwish—her graduation project for the MA in International Performance Research, which was supported by the Lutfia Rabbani Foundation. Shira has worked with refugee communities in Belgrade and is currently working with asylum seekers in the Netherlands through art foundation De Vrolijkheid. She leads art and poetry workshops which are centred around the power of multilingualism. Since 2023, Shira has also been working with The Mystifiers, a socially engaged music collective in Amsterdam. Her debut collection of poetry and short stories will be published in January 2025.
