Seamstress: An Opera Documentary (Jarrar) Ramallah 2021

Information on the Performance

• Work Title: Seamstress: An Opera Documentary  
• Composer: Jarrar Donia   
• Libretto:
• Venue & Opera Company: Orient and Dance Theatre of, Ramallah, Palestine  
• Recorded: 2021
• Type: Movie
• Singers: Dory Mead, Tanner Porter, Paolo Debuque, Samuel Kidd
• Conductor: Arianne Abela  
• Orchestra: Instrumental Ensembles  
• Stage Director: Yusuf Karajah  
• Stage Designer: Simbala Desilles  
• Costume Designer:   
• Lighting Designer: Jeff Alder  

Information about the Recording

• Published by: Renaissance Opera  
• Date Published: 2021  
• Format: Streaming
• Quality Video: 4 Audio:4
• Subtitles: nosubs  

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION ON THIS PERFORMANCE

Seamstress is a multimedia documentary song-cycle based on oral history interviews I conducted with Palestinian women from different generations and social sectors in occupied Palestine (The West Bank and Gaza) from the summer of 2012 through the winter of 2017.  Blending audio interviews, photography, raw and archival footage with live chamber orchestra and dance performances, Seamstress aims to create a moving and powerful portrait of love, strength, and resistance in the face of injustice and misinformation. The women interviewed include my aunt, who lives in Ramallah, a seamstress named Shahrat who fled from Jaffa to Nablus pre-Nakba, former students from the Deir Ghassaneh music center, and current artistic collaborators and colleagues, including Palestinian multi-instrumentalist and songwriter Huda Asfour. Song texts are adapted from the interviews, weaving together their different voices, perspectives and experiences in a way that challenges current existing media stereotypes of Palestinian culture and womanhood, providing a global context for Palestinian women’s narratives by focusing on shared universal themes of memory, identity, exile, displacement, femininity and love. The oral histories draw unifying connections between Palestinian women’s individual and collective memories in response to an undermining geographical separation across the West Bank, Israel, Gaza and the Diaspora.

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