Paul Ellertson, online publishing coordinator
Recently, I had the chance to see “Rosette,” written by William Nour and directed by Taous Khazem. The play was produced by New Arab American Theater Works and performed at Mixed Blood Theatre. This amazing play is about a young woman growing up in Haifa, Palestine in the late 1960s. For much of the production, she struggles to understand what she wants in life because her dream is to be a surgeon while her mother tries to hold her back and turn her into a housewife.
The play brings up the themes of religious identity and gender equality under a brutal occupation. A young highschool girl named Rosette is struggling with her identity and while her friends try to help her, her mother is trying to hold her back. Her mother is very traditional in terms of religion and gender roles. As the play goes on, Rosette’s relationship with her mother gets worse as Rosette wants to pursue her dreams, but is struggling in school leading her mother to question why they even bother paying heavy tuition fees when they could just marry her off to someone and hope it all works out. This gets progressively worse until the very end, which makes watching as an audience member a bit stressful. There’s also a lot of yelling which I wasn’t prepared for.
We also see Rosette’s mother trying to teach Rosette about the plants she grew in her old garden before it was destroyed under the occupation. Rosette’s mother was working hard to reinforce the idea of memory and keeping memory alive, almost as a form of resistance because the Israelis were taking everything away from them so memory was ultimately all they had left. I think one of the lessons there is that while our oppressors can take things away from us physically, it’s a lot harder for them to deprive us emotionally.
Rosette’s mother was working hard to reinforce the idea of memory and keeping memory alive, almost as a form of resistance because the Israelis were taking everything away from them so memory was ultimately all they had left.
paul Ellertson
Laila Sahir, who plays Rosette, and Claudia Garcia, who plays Rosette’s mother, were both masterclasses in the amount of care it takes to tell a story like this one. Their acting was top tier, with the struggles of their relationship being intricately intertwined with the struggles of their identities perfectly.
Towards the end of the play, Rosette, her mother and their family friend start wearing pants instead of dresses and tell their male relatives they are going to wear pants from now on whether the men liked it or not. Rosette’s friend Omar, his father and Rosette’s father are actively supportive. I thought this was really awesome because it shows that during difficult times there can still be progression.
Overall, “Rosette” helps show us that we can reach past religious and gender differences in order to come closer together, even in the most difficult of circumstances.
Article Correction 10/21:
In the original version of this article it was implied that the play was produced by Mixed Blood Theatre. This was inaccurate, as the production was produced by New Arab American Theater Works and just performed at Mixed Blood Theatre. It has been edited to reflect this.