About
One Family in Gaza
An original play by Crystal Zevon
Based on texts from Yasser in Gaza
In November 2023, Crystal Zevon, a longtime activist for Palestine, began a text conversation with a young 33 year old Palestinian man in Gaza. Yasser is a civil engineer, a husband and the father of three young children under the age of seven. For more than a year, and continuing, Yasser and Crystal have exchanged texts, photos and videos on almost a daily basis. These unedited texts create the basis for telling the poignant, terrifying, and sometimes joyful story of one family’s struggle to survive through a genocide. Yasser’s texts are juxtaposed against news items of corresponding dates, and the thoughts and feelings of someone living in comfort and safety oceans away.
One Family in Gaza is a play about simply that - One Family in Gaza .
The objective for creating this play is three-fold:
To offer a play that is profound in its reliance on the truths disclosed through a relationship grounded in the reality of two distant and distinct realities, yet a play so simple that anyone can perform it anywhere - from a dining room table reading to a staged performance.
To humanize Palestinians by creating a relationship with one family whose loves, fears, hopes and dreams are not unlike yours.
To motivate those who see the play to continue the discussion, to delve beneath the media’s glossing over of a genocide and take action to expose it.
It is through identification with the basic human truths revealed in the daily life of one family that we can and must create change.
