In the Press — The Return Project

Sydney Dramaturgical. ALA'A AL QAISI ON THE RETURN, MAGICAL REALISM, AND MAKING ART IN THE MIDDLE OF A LIVESTREAMED GENOCIDE.
“I created another reality through imagination”... Can theatre bring back those we have lost? The Return transforms Gaza’s wounds into memory and healing.
Melbourne Stage Review by Ellen M. Scott
SBS Radio
We Need to Talk About This. Analogue Reformation hosts Ala’a Al- Qaisi, writer and director of The Return.
Iraqi TV in Australia Interview
Voices Alive 90.5FM Conversando con Luisa - Sergio Silva
Brunswick Voice- Father’s grief provides catalyst for a meditation on the tragedy of Gaza
The City of Sydney What’s On
Voices Alive 90.5FM Conversando con Luisa - Ala’a Al Qaisi
El Telegraph Australia
Radio 2Moro Australia
The Return play: A Journey through Grief
Oz Arab Media’s Chay Gittany hosts Ala’a Al Qaisi, writer and director of The Return
The Return in Melbourne and regional Victoria
Green Left welcomes The Return in Melbourne
3CR hosts Ala’a Al- Qaisi, writer and director of The Return
Jan Bartlett hosts Ala'a Al Qaisi on 3CR
Families for Palestine’s reviews The Return
"Storytelling Is Resistance" – Ala’a Al Qaisi on her play The Return.
On Episode 75 of Bogan Intelligentsia, Australian-Palestinian writer, director and filmmaker Ala’a Al Qaisi joins us for a deep and moving conversation on storytelling as memory, resistance and healing. Drawing on her upbringing with her grandmother’s stories of a Palestine she has never seen, Ala’a examines diaspora identity and the homeland, the shift from screen to theatre as soft power, the genesis of a work born from one family’s grief, the creation of a “second reality through imagination,” the responsibility of embodying real loss on stage, art that humanises against dehumanising narratives, and healing as a communal and spiritual act. Under the theme Storytelling as Resistance: Memory, Healing and the Return, Ala’a reflects on the roots of her practice, the essence she most wants audiences to carry, and what it means to refuse erasure through the power of story.
Palestine Justice Movement in Conversation with Ala'a Al Qaisi and Marwan Abu Samra - The story behind "The Return"
Palestine Justice Movement in Conversation with award-winning Palestinian filmmaker Ala'a Al Qaisi about the "Nagham of Gaza" play