Golden Thread Productions Presents: ReOrient 2026 Festival
ReOrient 2026 Festival
Think you know the Middle East? Think again!
Featuring five short plays by award-winning MENA playwrights, Golden Thread’s beloved festival returns with a 30th Anniversary line-up dedicated to Iran and Palestine. This year’s Festival makes the political personal, presenting intimate and genre-pushing works. Nowhere else you will see such a global mix of stories and styles on one stage in one evening.
October 9, 2026 – November 1, 2026
Potrero Stage, 1695 18th Street, San Francisco, CA 94107
Tickets start at $30, or $20 for previews. No one is turned away for lack of funds.
Written by Hassan Abdulrazzak, Banafsheh Hassani, Sepehr Jafari, Hannah Khalil, and Ahmed Masoud
Directed by Wynne Chan, Nick McDow Musleh, Nabra Nelson, Salim Razawi, and Torange Yeghiazarian
Show runs 2 hrs 30 mins, including a 10 min intermission
The five plays selected from 83 submissions, are diverse in content and style – highlighting a multiplicity of Middle Eastern perspectives and identities.
ReORIENT 2026 FESTIVAL LINE-UP
Dare Not Speak
by Hassan Abdulrazzak (London-based, Iraq)
directed by Salim Razawi
dramaturgy by Nakissa Etemad
A hard-hitting play by artistic affiliate Hassan Abdulrazzak (Love Bombs and Apples), Dare Not Speak focuses on a young child, murdered in a genocide, as she pitches her story to a theater artistic director who is reluctant to put it on stage.
Content Advisory: Discussion of genocide and child murder
Regarding Antigone
by Banafsheh Hassani (Montreal-based, Iran)
directed by Nabra Nelson
A new solo show Inspired by a true story, the classic Greek tragedy of Antigone, war photography, fleeting memories, a revolution, state propaganda, a song she sang, and cringe diaspora poetry where “every line is a call to action.
Content Advisory: Suicide, murder, assault. Blood onstage.
Homing Pigeons & Co
by Sepehr Jafari (Bay Area-based, Iran)
directed by Torange Yeghiazarian
dramaturgy by Nakissa Etemad
Homing Pigeons & Co follows two Iranian friends, one stuck in a police van in Tehran and the other in her bed in San Francisco, as they juggle overthrowing a dictatorship and shared custody of a pet fish.
Content Advisory: Mention of hangings and beatings.
Blood Fruit
by Hannah Khalil (London-based, Palestine/Ireland)
directed by Wynne Chan
dramaturgy by Nakissa Etemad
Blood Fruit tells the true story of Mary Manning, a young shop worker in 1980s Dublin who refused to handle South African grapefruits and convinced her co-workers to strike to protest the Apartheid regime. Affiliated artist Hannah Khalil (Scenes From 71 Years*) weaves a moving story about the power of protest and the difference individuals can make against systems of oppression.
Content Advisory: Blood onstage.
Camouflage
by Ahmed Masoud (London-based, Gaza, Palestine)
directed by Nick McDow Musleh
dramaturgy by Marina Johnson
Award-winning writer and director Ahmed Masoud brings to life surprisingly funny and boldly human stories about four young people in Palestine and Israel. Thirteen-year-old Thaer is on a boat in the waters between Turkey and Greece. He is troubled, but not because he might drown any minute. Nibal is finishing her SAT exams in an American style school in Ramallah while well-meaning suitors pester her father with marriage proposals. Gaza taxi driver Zeid uses Tinder obsessively to try to find a date. Sami dreams of becoming a famous actor, but as an Arab actor, is he willing to take on the roles he’s offered to get known by established Israeli directors?
Content Advisory: Examines occupation and genocide. Sexual themes.