'We're in a room together, we laugh together, we cry together, we feel hopeful together'
British actor, activist and playwright Khalid Abdalla is bringing his new one man-play Nowhere to New Zealand in which he explores his experiences in Egypt during the Arab Spring.
When British born actor Khalid Abdalla returned from eight years living in Egypt in 2016, the then UK prime minister Theresa May made a famous speech.
“She said; ‘If you believe you're a citizen of the world, you're a citizen of nowhere.’
“And it was a very painful statement from her, for many of us, who are of multiple cultures, really, for reasons that are often to do with the British Empire, frankly,” Abdalla told RNZ’s Nine to Noon.
Still from Khalid Abdalla's play Nowhere.
Manuel Vason
It was one of the catalysts for his one-man play Nowhere which he brings to New Zealand this year.
“That word nowhere kind of followed me around,” he says.
Abdalla is known for his roles in movies including The Kite Runner, Green Zone and United 93 - as well as playing Dodi Fayed in Netflix series The Crown.
He was born in Glasgow to Egyptian parents, who fled repression in that country and then raised their son in London.
Abdalla was in Egypt during the Arab Spring, he spent time in Cairo's Tahrir Square at the height of the major protests and says, Nowhere is a piece of work through which he processed his experiences there.
“Of the Egyptian revolution of which I was part and really is a deeply formative experience, but not just because of my participation. I am the son and grandson of political prisoners.
“And so, through the prism of that moment, I expand out not just into personal histories, but also to colonial histories and relating it to the intersecting crises of the moment that we are living in, particularly Palestine.”
He only ever envisaged Nowhere as a play, he says.
“I'm someone who works a lot in film and I love film. But it is absolutely essential to me that this is a play because it takes place in a space in which bodies gather and in which I am present, but above all, in which bodies gather.”
Just as bodies gathered in Cairo, he says, when there was a sense of change coming before the counter revolutionary reaction to the uprisings.
“Because revolutions are a sign of dysfunctionality there is often a moment where the counter revolution happens.
“And that possibility is suddenly pushed away. And you live following that rupture going, wait, hang on, that was real? I experienced that?”
The play is about, among other things, holding on to hope, he says.
“There's a line in the play in which I say in relation to the revolution; ‘And in the morning, came the future, to which I swear allegiance for the rest of my life.’”
In a world of crisis, the play looks to create a “space in which all of us, whatever our backgrounds, wherever we're from, can realign in some way together,” he says.
“And that's so important, not online, not in ways where we are atomised and fractured, and we kind of like something, but don't know what anybody else who's liked it looks like.
“No, we're in a room together, we laugh together, we cry together, we feel hopeful together.”
Khalid Abdalla will be performing Nowhere at Wellington's Tāwhiri Warehouse from 4-7 March. He'll also be in conversation with Tainui Stephens at Māoriland Film Hub on 7 March.
