I sat down with writer and performer Marena Riyad and director Hassan Al Rawas to find out more about Majenin coming to Theatre503 this November.

Can you tell me a little about your show and what audiences can expect?

Majenin is a love story between two Palestinians in the diaspora, a stand-up comedian and an artist, who meet in New York and fall hard and fast. Marena Riyad wrote it, and it had its first life at Edinburgh this summer. This is its second iteration with a new creative team and a revamped script. Audiences can expect to laugh a lot as it’s a very funny and human story with a great soundtrack to boot.

The play moves between a stand-up mic and the intimate space of a shared flat, and the woman at its centre moves between them too. She tells us the story as a comic and lives it as a lover. Majenin means “crazy people” in Arabic, which is what you’d call two people who fall in love when neither of them is free.

What drew you to this specific story?

I grew up between Kuwait City and Beirut, and I recognised these people immediately: the tea, the late-night food, the songs your parents played, the jokes you make so you don’t have to say the other thing.

What held me, though, was that Marena refuses to let trauma run the play. Palestine is in every room, but the play is about two people trying to love each other, and it treats that as a serious question. It asks what it means to have the right to love, and not only the right to survive. I wanted to direct a Palestinian story that insists on joy and desire, not only grief or loss.

What has been the biggest challenge in bringing this production to life?

Time, and the rewriting it demands. Art isn’t easy, and we are all passionate about telling this story, especially because there has been nothing like it on London stages. In Edinburgh, the female character was played by two performers, a narrator and the girlfriend.

For this version, she’s one person, which meant rethinking how she speaks to us and how the third act works. Some of the work has been small and precise. Doing deep script work with Marena and building a production at the same pace is a lot, but it has made the play sharper, and it has made us even more invested in this piece.

How does the design of your show (set, sound, or lighting) impact the presentation of your story?

The design is built around several worlds, sometimes simultaneously: the stand-up mic downstage, the London flat they share behind it, “His Girl’s” space in New York City, not to mention scenes where the two characters are in different cities altogether.

Lighting does much of that work, with a single special on the mic that pulls “His Girl” out of the relationship and into direct address, and warmer, looser states for the time “My Guy” and “His Girl” spend together, which go harder and whiter as things fall apart. Sound is almost continuous.

The music is how these two court each other, so the soundtrack carries their history. The set is spare: a bed, a kitchen corner, and luggage, because they’re always arriving or leaving, and the suitcases are with us from the first entrance to the last exit.

If you could sum up the show in one word or phrase, what would it be and why?

“Human”. Palestinians are so often presented as a headline, a statistic or a symbol. Majenin gives us two people who flirt badly, argue about what kind of kunafe is better, and treat each other in ways only lovers can. They are funny, petty, generous and sometimes unfair.

That ordinariness is the point. Letting them be complicated, and letting an audience fall for them, is the most political thing the play does.

Majenin runs at Theatre503, London, on 23 – 28 November. Tickets available at https://theatre503.com/whats-on/majenin-a-palestinian-love-story/