Gifted New York-based Palestinian-American writer, playwright and actress Najla Said will be performing her entire 95-minute one-woman play, Palestine at the museum. She will also conduct a special Q&A after the performance.

With compassion, humor and honesty Najla Said’s Palestine shines a dialogic light on Palestinian and Arab points of view. Raised in privilege on New York City's Upper West Side (where many of her best friends were Jewish), Said was forced as a teenager to take a family trip to the Middle East to visit her father's homeland. Anorexic and depressed, obsessed with boys and the beach, her experiences nevertheless kindled a life-long exploration of what it means to be both Arab and American. Najla Said takes audiences on a whirlwind tour from kissing Jewish boys to "the stench of Gaza," through two wars, the horrors of 9/11, encounters with world figures including Yasser Arafat, and life with her beloved father. Edward Said was a professor at Columbia University and, until his death in 2003, a worldwide spokesman for Palestine and the Middle East.

Palestine was originally produced in 2010 by Twilight Theatre Company in association with New York Theatre Workshop. The eight-week Off-Broadway run at the Fourth Street Theater was sold-out. In 2012 Palestine was subsequently produced by InterAct Theatre as part of their Outside the Frame Festival in Philadelphia.

$35/adv $40/door