Co-Creators of Al Raheel | Departure Reem Almenhali and Joanna Settle [afikra Conversations]
Reem Almenhali and Joanna Settle spoke to us in this special collaboration episode with NYUAD about their play, Al Raheel | Departure, which is about the depth and diversity of life as a woman in the UAE.
Reem Almenhali is an Emirati performance artist and a playwright. Her body of work includes two performances Deliberately and in Cash and Al Raheel | Departure. Reem received a B.A in theater with a minor in psychology from New York University Abu Dhabi. Reem also wrote Al Raheel | Departure, and co-created the performance in collaboration with the director Joanna Settle. Al Raheel is a bilingual contemporary theater piece that uses poetry to explore how the rapidly evolving lifestyle in the UAE and its bilingual reality affected notions of womanhood and redefined belonging for women in different stages of life. Reem won the 2020 Gulf Capital ADMAF Creativity Award for writing the script of Al Raheel.
Joanna Settle came of age as an artist working in the downtown New York experimental scene. She directs and collaborates on the development of world premiere plays, musicals, operas and interdisciplinary work. After completing her graduate studies at The Juilliard School, she served as the Artistic Director of Chicago’s Division 13 Productions from 1998 to 2004 and directed and adapted 15 of D13’s 17 projects, including BLOOD LINE: The Oedipus/Antigone Story, two plays by Sophocles, Macbett by Ionesco, and several Samuel Beckett shorts including Cascando and Play. She served as Artistic Director of Shakespeare on the Sound 2009 to 2012, where she directed free outdoor Shakespeare productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream, Othello, Much Ado About Nothing, and Romeo and Juliet for audiences of up to 2,000 people per night. She has taught and guest directed at Brown University, Bard College, Williams College, Juilliard, Cornell, Stanford University’s PhD Program, and served as Director of the Ira Brind School of Theater Arts at the University of the Arts from 2014 to 2016.
About Conversations
afikra Conversations is our flagship program featuring long-form interviews with experts from academia, art, and media who are helping document and/or shape the histories and cultures of the Arab world through their work. Our hope is that by having the guest share their expertise and story, the community still walks away with new found curiosity - and maybe some good recommendations about new nerdy rabbit holes to dive into head first. Following the interview there is a moderated town-hall style Q&A with questions coming from the live virtual audience on Zoom. Join the live audience: https://www.afikra.com/rsvp
