Characters: Wolf / Laila / Grandma / Mother (Grandma and Mother could be played by the same actor if necessary). Note: In Arabic culture the story of Little Red Riding Hood is known as Laila and the Wolf (Laila wa al theeb). / indicates an interruption. …

The first play I wrote was a love story set in Iraq and I was lucky, it came out at a time when Iraq was in the headlines, just after the Iraq war, it caught the zeitgeist. I won a lot of awards, did the kitchen up, bought a Nespresso…

Last night I went to see a play called ‘We Are The Reason’ performed in Arabic at the Chelsea Theatre by a mix of professional and amateur actors. The play was directed by Ahlam Arab, one of two amazing ladies who put on plays for the Iraqi community in London…

You go down an alleyway adjacent to the Arcola Theatre in Dalston and there you are greeted by one of the Shubbak festival volunteers, you are guided towards a set of stairs which take you inside a dark bunker. For a while you are engulfed by darkness. …

The title of my play ‘And Here I Am’ — about the life of Ahmed Tobasi, a Palestinian fighter turned actor — is derived from a poem by Mahmoud Darwish. Below is an extract of the poem. The English translation is mainly by Fady Joudah with some amendments made by me. Joudah’s translation is published in a volume titled ‘If I Were Another’ (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2011).

The reviews for Salome currently showing at the National Theatre have been unanimously negative. Most critics have zeroed in on the script as being the source of the problem. It’s hard to argue with this judgment. The script is entirely humourless, always a dangerous thing to do in theatre. Shakespeare…

Late on Friday night I went to the Grenfell Tower area which is very close to where I live. I found myself in a human chain helping to pass water bottles to the packing area in the courtyard of a church. …

Jonathan Freedland has written an article in the Guardian titled ‘It’s a delusion to think that the terror attacks are just about foreign policy’. Freedland argues that the motivation for jihadists carrying out atrocities such as the Manchester bombing often has little to do with our foreign policy. Here are…

The Manchester bombing is the most serious and devastating attack on British soil since 7/7. The targeting of children marks a shocking new low in the conduct of Islamic State (IS) sympathisers. It has emerged that the suicide bomber, Salman Abedi, was of Libyan heritage and had returned from Libya…