This episode explores Arab experimentalism and futurism with artist Leyya Mona Tawil, also known as Lime Rickey International. Leyya discusses her dynamic body of work and the power of art as a tool for exploring diasporic experiences and envisioning complex futures.

Hosts Marina Johnson and Nabra Nelson are joined by poets Fargo Tbakhi and George Abraham to explore the intersection of poetry and performance art. They discuss live expression, their collaborative process, and how performance can challenge norms and spark conversations about identity, diaspora, and revolution.

Hosts Marina Johnson and Nabra Nelson interview Palestinian African trans drag artist Mama Ganuush. They discuss the vibrant drag scene in San Francisco, Mama Ganuush's journey into drag, and the intersection of activism, identity, and performance.

This episode dives into the performance art of Lebanese artist Rima Najdi. From Hollywood's portrayal of Arab women to navigating complex personal and political landscapes, this thought-provoking discussion highlights the power of performance art in creating social change.

Lebanese multidisciplinary artist Khansa shares his artistic journey, blending traditional Middle Eastern music with modern avant-pop, and offers a behind-the-scenes look at his creative process. This episode delves deep into the power of art as a medium for cultural fusion and storytelling.

Live artist Tania El Khoury discusses her creative process, the ways audience participation cultivates solidarity and awareness of social justice issues, her role as the director of the Center for Human Rights and the Arts at Bard College, and the intersection of art and activism in her work.

In the last episode of the fourth season of Kunafa and Shay—which was a historical and classical Middle Wastern and North African (MENA) and Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) theatre season—Marina Johnson and Nabra Nelson reflect on the season, give some additional insight, and provide a broader overview of their framework for historical and classical theatre.

Dr. Samer Al-Saber joins hosts Marina Johnson and Nabra Nelson for a conversation around resistant ventriloquism and postcolonial courtesy. Dr. Al-Saber also shares stories from his upcoming book about the Palestinian theatre movement in the 1970s and 1980s.

Hosts Marina Johnson and Nabra Nelson learn from Dr. Amir Al-Azraki about Iraqi theatrical traditions, the birth of modern Iraqi theatre springing from church drama in Mosul in the late nineteenth century, Iraqi plays in translation, and Afro-Iraqi theatre. 


Hosts Marina Johnson and Nabra Nelson are joined by Fidaa Ataya, a Palestinian storyteller who talks with us about the tradition of the hakawati and how she and her work are looking at different forms of storytelling from ancient traditions to new ways of storytelling in Palestine.

Nubia has a long history of theatre, both before and after the displacement of the 1960s. In this episode, hosts Marina Johnson and Nabra Nelson highlight Nubian theatre, including the only Nubian opera, Opera El Aml by Mohy El Din Sherif. With special guest Mazen Alaa from Nubian Geographic, this episode focus on Nubian theatre in Abu Simbel and the effect that the displacement had and continues to have on theatre in Nubia and the Nubian diaspora today.

Hosts Marina Johnson and Nabra Nelson look at MENA and SWANA puppetry traditions with guest artivist Dr. Sarah Fahmy. They talk about her production of the first recorded full play in English of Ibn Daniyal, The Shadow Spirit; the Aragoz Puppet; and, coming more into current puppetry practice by MENA folks, Fahmy's own ecofeminist puppetry practice.

Hosts Marina Johnson and Nabra Nelson discuss Ottoman theatre, emphasizing its significance in global theatre history. They highlight the Ottoman Empire as a pivotal point of cultural exchange comparable to the Greek and Roman empires. They focus on three major forms of traditional theatre—Ortaoyunu, Karagöz, and Meddah—and dive into these forms of “plays performed in the open,” shadow theatre, and storytelling.

Hosts Marina Johnson and Nabra Nelson talk about Egyptian playwright Tawfiq al-Hakim and his “unstageable” classic play People of the Cave. They provide historical context of the play, al-Hakim’s career, and the Christian and Islamic stories that served as al-Hakim’s inspiration.

Audiences pack houses to see stories about forbidden love. Romeo and Juliet is a famous Western example of this phenomenon, but the trope goes back much further, to a poem that likely inspired even inadvertently Shakespeare's famous play. In this episode, we look at the timeless tale of Layla and Majnun made famous by Nizami Ganjavi as a poem and later adopted for the stage and the screen countless times.

In episode, hosts Nabra Nelson and Marina Johnson discuss the oldest surviving play, The Triumph of Horus. The play is an Ancient Egyptian script from the thirteenth century BCE that tells the story of the triumph of the god Horus over Set. Nabra and Marina go through the plot of the play, its history and significance, and give an overview of other forms of Ancient Egyptian theatre.

How can theatre make an impact in moments of crisis? During a time of ongoing genocide and brutal occupation in Palestine, this special episode focuses on Palestinian theatre and political action across borders. We discuss The Gaza Monologues and To The Good People of Gaza. Then Palestinian actor, writer, and scenographer Jeries AbuJaber joins us in conversation about what is currently happening in the West Bank and Gaza and his experience as a theatre artist in Palestine.

How can we think of queerness as a form of political intervention? In this episode, we talk with Erdem Avşar about Turkish theatre, queer utopias, and ghosts. We examine queer dramaturgies in Turkish and international theatre, discuss translation into and from Turkish, re-think temporality in playwriting, and question what queer utopias look like onstage.

This season, we have talked about what it means to create characters who break out of boxes and create new queer representations. Once these characters are created, then comes the challenge of having your work produced. In this episode, we talk with Kareem Fahmy who has dealt with the considerations of producibility and what it means to have his work produced on stages in the United States.

This season, we further complicate notions of MENA womanhood by exploring the additional intersection of queerness in femme MENA theatremaking. Two queer Lebanese femme theatremakers based in the United States, Lama El Homaïssi and Sarah Bitar, join us to discuss how intersectional identities show up in their work and life, and the social atmosphere for femme MENA theatre artists in Lebanon and the United States.

Affinity spaces have been an undercurrent of discussion across the three seasons of Kunafa and Shay. In this live session at the 2023 MENATMA Convening at Golden Thread Productions in San Francisco, in partnership with Mizna+RAWIfest, Marina and Nabra sit down with artists to discuss the nuances of MENA and SWANA affinity spaces and MENATMA, Mizna, and RAWI’s roles in facilitating national cultural affinity among artists of intersectional identities.

MENA cultures are deeply familial with a strong connection to home, defined geographically and through close family bonds. With fraught political and religious opinions about queerness throughout the region, making queer art can threaten those deep connections. How do queer MENA artists consider those complications when making theatre? How do individuals change culture in the face of possible exile? Multi-hyphenate artists Zeyn Joukhadar and Raphaël Aimé Khouri interrogate these questions.

Film reaches a larger public than theatre due to the way it is produced and disseminated. In this way, it has a large and lasting cultural impact. In this episode with Mike Mosallam and Amin El Gamal, we discuss the ways the film and theatre fields influence each other as they both contribute to culture change and performance methodologies.

Activism and storytelling often go hand in hand. What does it mean for queer art and activism to take center stage? How can we look to the future while honoring the places and people from where we all came? In this episode, Sivan Battat talks about their ancestral storytelling workshops within queer and Middle Eastern communities and how they see the relationship between art and activism. Note: This conversation was recorded in June 2023.