How do we speak candidly to our friends in a landscape of censorship?

Winter Solstice is a play about five friends, either very distant or completely new to one another, inauthentically celebrating the [redacted] holiday of Shab-e Yalda in the [redacted] desert. Marking the longest night of the year, the disjointed group attempts to bond, occasionally distracted by the Ursid meteor shower. A [redacted] between Ameera and Diana unravels, marked by [redacted], undesired return, an identity crisis, and interrupted with bad poetry. Shooting stars become the vehicle to start, stop, and censor the trajectory of their stories, and the shimmering sky above carries them through reckonings and answers — or maybe their lack thereof.

Written and directed by Maitha Ali, an Arab-Persian (Ajami) writer and theatre practitioner who views her practice to be a vehicle for political education toward global solidarity and liberation. She explores themes of more-than-human conviviality, migration and (dis)belonging in public and domestic spaces, de/anticolonial movements, and the age of post-capitalist individualism and lovelessness.

Join us for one night only at this rehearsed reading!