A Knock On the Roof, written and performed by Khawla Ibraheem and directed by Obie award winner Oliver Butler, is a solo play centered on the difficulty of maintaining resilience in Palestine.
The piece began as a 10-minute monologue, which Ibraheem expanded into an 80-minute evening of theater. It was developed during a writing retreat in Brooklyn and presented in Ramallah, Palestine, in 2023, after which a full production in Haifa, Israel, was planned but canceled after the October 7 invasion. A Knock On the Roof was further developed with the support of New York Theater Workshop and piece by piece productions. The play was then brought to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, where it won the Scotsman's Fringe First Award.
The play centers on a mother planning her family's escape from their apartment as they expect the building to be bombed by the Israeli army using the 'knock on the roof' technique, in which the army sends a small bomb minutes before a missile lands. Ibraheem's character, Mariam, sets alarms, packs a bag, and runs the escape drill repeatedly, each time considering more and more factors- she does not want to miss anything. Her witty first-person narrative occasionally breaks into a more lyrical, poetic rhythm when contemplating the bigger picture- the sociocultural state of being in a land eternally at war.
It initially struck this reviewer as odd that Mariam's attitude toward the potential bombing is sometimes immature and catty. She is resentful of her neighbor Yasmin for being a faster runner than herself, she refuses to part with her expensive skincare products in the face of doom, and she packs a pillowcase full of 'her favorite books'- a few of which she bought but never got around to reading. Audiences are familiar with the dry, witty, at times selfish, hero trope, but juxtaposed against the grim reality of genocide here, it at times feels absurd. Mariam is the kind of person one might meet anywhere- which may be precisely why she is written this way.
As Mariam, Ibraheem asks the audience, "How fast can you run a mile? What would you pack in your bag?" she aims to get at the heart of the idea that this could happen to you. The audience participation would be more powerful if the piece's overall tone were more intimate, with the focus on storytelling over theatrical performance. There is something profound in the narrative, how our lives are upset by disaster, the things we cling to, the memories that flood our minds, that could resonate much more than the play's final twist if the play leaned more into that personal quality.
A Knock On the Roof bridges the gap between the idea and the experience of living in a land under siege, highlighting both the anxiety and the absurdism that comes with any attempt to '"be prepared."
“A Knock On the Roof ”
Written & performed by Khawla Ibraheem
Directed & developed by Oliver Butler
A co-production with piece by piece productions
Presented in partnership with Under the Radar
January 10, 2025—February 16, 2025
79 East 4th Street (Bowery and 2nd Ave)
Rita Frances Welch is… Wait, who’s asking? There are a few answers depending on the context. Rita is A) A New York playwright, actor, and director, B) The owner of 5 discrete copies of Shakespeare’s The Tempest, C) A force of nature, controlled by the tides and called to by the wind, disappearing and returning like the seasons. More material than their author, Rita’s plays have been produced by The Tank, Theatre X, Playwrights Performance, and Rogue Theatre Festival. They hold a B.F.A. in Acting from Shenandoah Conservatory, during which they studied under LAByrinth Theater’s Martha Wollner and Padraic Lillis. Rita’s writing functions as an experiment- a combination of characters in the petri dish of their world, their personal challenges and delusions in a vacuum, isolating for every variable but one: Human nature, which reveals itself every time. ritafranceswelch.com
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