“Moses Lives in Ramallah”

Performance (15:00)

Motto Books, Berlin DE
September 10, 2022

Radio Kootwijk, The Netherlands
October 1, 2020

*READ TEXT HERE*

Moses lives in Ramallah is a performance in the tradition of oral story telling. The teller, in a cotton grey sweat with burn holes, sits on a banquet table surrounded by challah and loaves of bread acting as candle holders, and begins to tell the story of an ordinary maybe-prophet. In the story, the narrator accidentally triggers the coming of the Messiah (or second coming of Christ) by stepping too close to the Jordan River and into Jawaal’s* cellular service network  (*Jawaal is the Palestian cellular service provider). The narrator confronts their relationship with Lot but after ignoring the advice of Christ, texts Lot and becomes a pillar of salt. G-d the mother gives, takes, and screams at Moses on the mountain of Nebo. Moses fakes his own death so the Jews can enter Canaan but yearns to return to Cairo as he lives out the last of his days in a nursing home in Ramallah. Moses Lives in Ramallah is a performance dealing with idendity, oral tradition, the psychology of love, and the dicotomy of the sacred and the profane. It combines and bends stories of historic Canaan from the Jewish, Muslim and Christian traditions to form a mini-epic that weaves in and out of the ancient holy texts.