The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict’s Human Toll Explored In ‘Semitic Commonwealth’

Silk Road Rising
Silk Road Rising

The Palestinian-Israeli Conflict’s Human Toll Explored In ‘Semitic Commonwealth’

WBEZ brings you fact-based news and information. Sign up for our newsletters to stay up to date on the stories that matter.

Theater company Silk Road Rising’s new production, Semitic Commonwealth, is a staged reading series exploring the human toll of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Consisting of six plays by Arab and Jewish playwrights, Silk Road Rising says Semitic Commonwealth is not an attempt “to achieve balance and moral equivalency between ‘competing’ narratives, [rather] these works investigate themes of identity, justice, occupation, exile, history, and homeland with remarkable honesty and integrity.” 

We talk about the ambitious play series with Jamil Khoury, Silk Road Rising’s founding artistic director, and Michael Najjar, a playwright, director and scholar of Arab American drama. Najjar is also assistant professor of theatre arts at the University of Oregon and Semitic Commonwealth’s co-curator and lead director.