The day of the Nakba commemorates May 15, 1948, when the State of Israel declared its independence over nearly eighty percent of what had historically been Palestine. In the process, over 800,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes and land, while 531 Palestinian villages were wiped off the map. The trauma which it caused is known as the Nakba, the Arabic word for "catastrophe." However, Palestinians also talk about al-nakba al-mustamirra, the "ongoing Nakba," understood to be a still continuing process of dispossession and ethnic cleansing. The last nineteen months of military campaigns and bombardment in Gaza, coupled with new threats of its population's expulsion and unprecedented levels of human rights violations, have already led to talk of a new Nakba right in the middle of the twenty-first century.

The plays authored by Ismail Khalidi, born in Beirut to Palestinian parents and raised in Chicago, trace the legacy of the Nakba in Palestine throughout the last century through works such as Tennis in Nablus (2010) and Sabra Falling (2017). They also echoes many other disasters around the world, though. In a conversation with actor Samy Khalil and actress Beatriz Mbula, who are also taking part in a dramatized reading, the playwright will be taking advantage of this round table discussion to reflect on the process of writing plays and the staging of cultural resistance in contexts of occupation, invasion and exile.

The event forms part of the program Culture for Peace: Spain-Palestine, organized by Spain's Ministry of Culture and the Embassy of Palestine in Spain, with the cooperation of Casa Árabe.

Ismail Khalidi.
Born in Beirut to Palestinian parents and raised in Chicago, Ismail Khalidi is a playwright and director who has written, directed, performed and taught internationally. Khalidi's works include Tennis in Nablus(Alliance Theatre, 2010), Truth Serum Blues (Pangea World Theatre, 2005), Foot (Teatro Amal, 2016-17), Sabra Falling (Pangea World Theatre, 2017), Returning to Haifa (Finborough Theatre), 2018) and Dead Are My People (Noor Theatre, 2019). Khalidi's plays have been published in numerous anthologies. His writings about politics and culture have been published in The Nation, Guernica, the American Theatre Magazine and Remezcla. He holds an Master's degree in playwriting from New York University's Tisch School of the Arts.

Samy Khalil.
Born and raised in Madrid to a Palestinian father and a mother from the region of Asturias, Samy Khalil is a theater and television actor who has participated in various audiovisual and theatrical productions both in Spain and abroad. He began his career with a company known as La Joven Compañía, directed by José Luis Arellano, in which he acted in over 500 plays both in Madrid and on national tour. His most notable works include Fuenteovejuna (Lope de Vega, 2012 and 2015), The Lord of the Flies (William Golding, 2013/2014), and The Aeneid (Virgil, 2021 and 2022), the last of these leading to his nomination as Best Theatrical Actor at the MAX Theater Awards (2022). He has also played roles in works put on by Spain's Centro Dramático Nacional (CDN), including Dentro de la tierra (Luis Luque, 2017) and Los últimos Gondra (Josep María Mestres, 2022). On television, he has worked on series that include El Príncipe (Mediaset, 2014), Los Nuestros 2 (Mediaset, 2014), El Cid (Amazon Prime, 2019) and Eva y Nicole(Atresplayer, 2024). His involvement not only with the Palestinian cause, but also with our country's theater world and culture, make Foot his first formal and official challenge within the field of artistic direction.

Beatriz Mbula.
At the age of twenty, Mbula moved from Valencia to Madrid with the dream of becoming an actress. After spending the first few years as a member of the Theater Group at the UC3M, she then came to form part of the RESAD, where she studies gestural theater. After finishing her degree at ESTIC in Lisbon, she returned to Madrid. In 2020, she premiered a web series titled Asunto Casting, an idea which arose on the basis of her real-life experiences going to casting calls in Spain. She forms part of a group of screenwriters who adapted the novel Hija del Camino, by Lucía Mbomío after it was acquired by Netflix. In 2023, she completed her Master's degree in Series Scriptwriting at ECAM, with the support of a scholarship obtained from the Fund for Inclusive Creativity, as well as Netflix, and she also forms part of the International Jury at the African Film Festival in Tarifa. She is currently collaborating with several community and industry associations while combining her work as a screenwriter and actress with a new step in her career: production.