New York Review: Remote Theater Project’s “Grey Rock” presented by The Public Theater’s Under the Radar Festival
Natalie Rine, Associate New York Critic
“If someone can get a rocket to the moon from Palestine, it’s a celebration of our creativity, of our ingenuity,” the rocket builder Yusuf declares in Amir Nizar Zuabi’s electrifying play GREY ROCK. “It proves that we can be something.”
Yusuf is not a rocket builder by trade, but rather a former repairman spending his days not bouncing back from his wife’s death as his daughter joyously supposes, but rather meticulously preparing to build a rocket to the moon from the secrecy of his own back shed. As the news spreads, chaos ensues: does this scientific endeavor mean he’s a traitor to country? To God? To sanity?
Yusuf is inspired by the 1969 moon landing, attempting to emulate long-held American values such as bravura, a nothing-is-impossible attitude, and technological superiority that he points out his people once trumpeted to great success too, as the birthers of many ancient Western religions and innovations still cherished today. For a Palestinian man to attempt such a feat now, he muses, would send permission for his people to dream again, to hope, and to achieve beyond more than any fearful or radical global stereotype can confine them to in the contemporary political landscape. The play is purposefully written in English, specifically meant to address English-speaking communities delivered by a five-person cast carefully chewing on our unpalatable language. The impact of this is immediate and electric. Zuabi’s writing is a concise, biting, and poetic amalgamation, focused on the minutiae of everyday relationships as much as the grandeur of dreams, never missing a beat or translation. There are no bombings in his play, no military shown, no focus on occupation or escalation, although the reality of the region’s checkpoints, visas, and incursions are present as mere facts of the play’s setting. The militant is peripheral to the metaphor.
“Grey Rock” gloriously magnifies instead the relationship between a father and a daughter, a mentor and an apprentice, a woman and her suitors, all thrown together in this one seemingly impossible circumstance. As Yusuf, stage and screen star Khalifa Natour harrumphed, deadpanned, and patrolled his way through the piece, commanding the narrative with a fervency to draw us into his obsessive orbit. As his daughter, actress Fidaa Zaidan gained power as the character does, starting on unsteady footing but gaining traction as a hurricane inside her builds, breaking the levees of her cultural, societal, and familial expectations in one vibrant conclusive monologue that shows a powerful ability to paint with her words regardless of language differences.
Both father and daughter struggle with gravity in their own ways, fighting to understand what invisible force keeps people where they are. The relatively simple scientific definition of “the force that attracts a body toward the center of the earth, or toward any other physical body having mass” is complicated when man-made notions such as “home,” “family,” or “love” are thrown in, drawing our characters inevitably toward each other and toward destiny. But what is compelling about Zuabi’s play is that it doesn’t settle on any one of those being a contented answer to gravity’s beck-and-call; rather, all those ideals are shown as notions human beings can just as easily leave as they can create, whether departing through jail, death, or rockets. The departure in each of these cases is shown as a bumpy road, one laden with the conflicts of self vs. community and self vs. family, questioning what one is willing to give up in order to “reach for the stars” of what each character desires for themselves. Yusuf describes their land as “heavy;” there is the weight of a magnificent history with prophets and inventions, and now the weight of global-scaled conflict, despair, and destruction. In contrast, America’s relative “lightness” of the land, not weighed down by the same lengthy history, freed people up to dream about such extravagancies as the moon. The gravity of history and conflict is proposed as the reason Palestine and others all over the world have forgotten how to dream and be light, and it is precisely this dichotomy of heaviness and lightness that Zuabi plays on expertly through words, characters, and metaphors.
Speaking of light, the set and projection design by Tal Yarden and lighting design by Muaz Jubeh seem half baked for this run, unfortunately undercutting the precision of the themes. The stage’s playing space seemed narrow, causing characters to weave back and forth behind the curtain, with transitions murky and uncertain. While the projections of scientific machinations are presented as meaningful to the plot and metaphors Yusuf is conjuring, the execution of them as visually unclear (the marker drawing barely leaving a trace) left a befuddlement where there could have been impact.
Zuabi’s direction excelled, however, where levels could be played with (not just the difference in levels between earth and the moon!). Stage pictures are exquisite, showing his mastery to depict relationship dynamics visually just as equally as linguistically. Yusuf must stoop to ask for money from his acquaintance twice, interrupting prayer and contemplation yet meeting his religious counterpart literally where he is (on the ground) as well as meeting him in logical rebuttals. He goes on to also forcefully sit down his daughter’s insipid suitor multiple times in one scene, giving up his own chair while disagreeing about values in yet another linguistic tango between business and science, rationale and dreams. The chair in question is the lone chair in the whole piece, existing at Yusuf’s drawing board as his throne in his shed sanctum, safe from outside scrutiny and strife. Whenever he is seated here, he holds the power, the power to dream and to scheme, and only too late do we realize he is also the only one who knows his true intent.
Zuabi’s “Grey Rock” propels us beyond man-made borders and regulations, capturing the wanderlust of the human mind and spirit to achieve greatness even in ordinary day-to-day lives where everyone has the freedom to dream, plan, and encourage their own legacy and impact. Equal parts revelation as it is revelry, “Grey Rock” is a theatrical force to be reckoned with.
“Grey Rock”
Written and directed by Amir Nizar Zuabi; Performed by Khalifa Natour, Ivan Kevork Azazian, Fidaa Zaidan, Alaa Shehada, and Motaz Malhees; Set and Projection Design by Tal Yarden; Lighting Design by Muaz Jubeh; Sound Design by Katie Down; Producers: Alexandra Aron, and Remote Theater Project; Co-Producer: Bonnie Sue Stein, and GOH Productions. GREY ROCK is commissioned and produced by Remote Theater Project in association with the non-profit organization GOH Productions. Learn more about Remote Theater Project at www.remotetheaterproject.com.
“Grey Rock” ran as part of The Public’s Under the Radar Festival at The Public’s Martinson Hall (425 Lafayette Street at Astor Place) until January 19. Performed in English. Run Time: 1 hour and 35 minutes. For more information, please visit: https://publictheater.org/productions/season/1920/utr/grey-rock/
Photo: A scene from Grey Rock, running January 8-9, 11-13, 17-19 at The Public Theater as part of The Public’s 16th Annual Under the Radar Festival. Photo Credit: Carlos Cardona