Interview with “A Knock On The Roof” Artists

In September 2024, A Knock on the Roof playwright and actress Khawla Ibraheem and Director Oliver Butler sat down with our Associate Artistic Director Aaron Malkin and our NYTW staff to talk more their relationship with NYTW, about their play and what they hope audiences take from it.

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AARON: I wonder if you could talk a little bit about the genesis of A Knock on the Roof, when you started working on it, what the path of working on it has been like including where you both met and first started collaborating. 

KHAWLA: Oliver and I first met in 2019 at the Sundance Theatre Lab, where we collaborated on a project called London Jenin. Oliver was brought in by the Sundance Institute as a director to assist in adapting the play from Arabic to English and tailoring it for an English-speaking audience. During our time at Sundance, it quickly became clear that we shared similar approaches to theatre-making. Even when we disagreed, our discussions were always constructive, leading to better solutions for the challenges we faced. By the end of the lab, we were already envisioning future projects to develop together. 

When the Covid-19 pandemic began, we managed to stay connected. In 2022, we finally met in person again, I shared with Oliver an idea for a play I had begun writing in 2014—a ten-minute, one-woman monologue about a mother training to run with her son from “roof-knocking bombs.” (The roof knocking system started in Gaza in 2008. By 2014, more people knew about it from experiencing or seeing it), After returning home from New York, I delved deeper into research on war experiences, which eventually evolved into A Knock on the Roof. 

For nearly six months, I sent drafts of the play to Oliver. We met over Zoom to discuss and refine the material, working together to bring the story to life, until we reached a stage where in-person collaboration was essential. I traveled to New York and we spent two weeks workshopping the play at the Mercury Store, followed by an additional week preparing for a closed reading hosted by New York Theatre Workshop (NYTW). The goal of the reading was to test how well the story resonated with an audience. At the same time, we began planning an Indiegogo campaign to self-produce the play.  Unexpectedly, that closed reading led to another in Ramallah. The Indiegogo campaign connected us with piece by piece productions. Today, we’ve come full circle, with A Knock on the Roof being produced at NYTW. 

OLIVER: Khawla invited me out to the Golan Heights, where she lives, for two to three weeks to work in the space where she first discovered she wanted to be in the theater, as she was getting ready for a reading [of the play] in Ramallah. As I was getting off the plane, I immediately experienced the Israel and Palestine conflict. There were people on the plane who said that Israel just sent a rocket into Gaza and killed five civilians. That was the first thing I heard as soon as I got off. Someone in front of me said there’ll be protests tonight. I remembered getting off the train and Khawla was like, “We might be on the verge of a war.” We actually spent two weeks not knowing if the reading was going to happen or if we could enter the West Bank until the day before. 

 We were then supposed to premiere this in Haifa and in Jerusalem at the National Palestinian Theater in the fall of 2023 and then October 7th happened. So, there was this whole experience of us thinking it may not be happening, which has sort of been the spell that has cast throughout this whole process. I’m just happy actually we made it. And doing the play is a little bonus. 

AARON: The NYTW and piece by piece [NYTW’s producing partner] production in January won’t be the first showing of the play. As you said, you premiered it in Edinburgh for Fringe Festival and expected to show it at the Dublin Festival in the first half of October. I’m curious what you both learned from the earlier production of the play in Edinburgh?  

OLIVER: I’d never been to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. Khawla and I showed up and said let’s get the show up and see if it works. And wonderfully enough, it did. The fact that it sold out and then we won these awards I didn’t even know existed was actually surreal. The whole thing was an amazing sort of reflection of something that was really touching people and reaching people.  Some of the earliest ideas in Edinburgh stayed true. One was when we were in Haifa, Khawla said that this is an object-less play, where the world transforms around Mariam. Another thing has been the idea of shadows. I had this idea about dissociation through trauma as a way of protecting yourself and staying safe in a situation that is untenable, and we wanted to manifest that in the show.  

During the process, [NYTW Artistic Director] Patricia [McGregor] said, “In the workshop we sort of felt, like the audience, that we were in the room. You want to make the audience feel they are in the room with her no matter where it’s done.” So, we embraced that type of thinking, and the design is meant to create and enable this idea that she is there with us.   

Those elements end up comprising the most important things about the show that we were tried out in Edinburgh and proved to be very powerful and supportive structures for Khawla, who is just brilliant. I was both honored and proud by the transformation that she went through in Edinburgh. Both being able to step into the character and be herself and welcome us into the room.  

KHAWLA: In Edinburgh, we discovered that a significant part of the play’s impact lies in its connection with the audience. The audience doesn’t feel like passive spectators kept in the dark to simply “watch and witness”—instead, they become an active part of the experience. 

This dynamic makes the story feel deeply personal. Rather than sitting in a chair to “pay attention” or “listen” to someone else’s story, the audience becomes an integral part of telling it. This interaction also brings a heightened sense of presence to me as a performer: Mariam is alive on stage—not just a character reciting a memorized monologue. Each show becomes a unique exchange between me and the people in the room. For example, if someone sneezes, I might say, “Bless you.” While this may seem simple, it’s about creating a shared space for those 85 minutes, where the story unfolds in real time.  This approach excites me as a performer, and it’s something I want to continue developing—finding more opportunities where the audience and I, as both Mariam and Khawla, can simply exist together in the present moment. 

AARON: I wonder if you could talk a little bit about what you’re hoping the audience leaves the experience with? 

KHAWLA: I would consider my mission accomplished if the audience leaves feeling like they truly know Mariam, the character from the play—that they’ve had the chance to meet her and connect with her in some way. Each person might relate to her differently: some as a mother, some as a daughter, others to her sense of humor, her way of thinking, or even her relationship with her husband. 

My goal isn’t for the audience to walk away with “profound thoughts or overwhelming emotions”, and surely not to gain new realizations, ideas, or opinions. Instead, I hope the character and the story create a space where each person can think, even just once, “Yes! I know what you’re talking about. I’ve been there.” If the audience feels that connection at least once during the play, that means Mariam feels real—that her story resonates with people. By the end of the play, we’re all leaving carrying parts of her within us. 

AARON: Thank you. The last question I have for both of you is the things that you are most excited to talk about for the project? 

KHAWLA: This play tells the story of a mother doing everything in her power to save her child and herself. It’s a story about the resilience of women and motherhood, the strength of love, and the courage that emerges amidst the hatred and fear a war can spread. 

The play is inspired by the harsh realities of too many wars. As I mentioned earlier, the “roof knocking” system began in Gaza in 2008, and by 2014, when I wrote the first draft of the monologue, more people had come to know about it—either by experiencing it firsthand or through global awareness. The ending of the play, however, draws inspiration from a story from the 1973 war in the Golan Heights, which is where I come from. 

This play has been a decade in the making. It reflected the reality of its time, but sadly, we’ve seen that reality repeat itself: in 2019, 2021, 2022, and most recently in 2023. Who knows what the future holds—whether this will still be the reality in another ten years. I hope not. But this play is shaped by a reality that has left its mark on our collective memory for far too long. Even if the wars stop tomorrow, in January, or next year, the damage caused will continue to echo in humanity’s heart for generations to come. 

Art is a way to write history—a way to shape the memories that will be remembered in ten, twenty, or even a hundred years. Through this play, I hope to tell a different story about a different kind of fighter and survivor, the kind we don’t often hear about in the news or history books: a mother who fights to get her son to bathe, who endures another argument with her own mother, a woman who wrestles with the decisions she made in the name of love—all while preparing to run for her life and her child’s life. 

AARON: Oliver and Khawla, thank you so much for being with us and sharing your thoughts and dreams about this amazing piece. So grateful that you are here today and that we’re being able to share this piece with the world together soon. 

 This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

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Categories: 2024/25 Season and Artist Interviews. Tags: A Knock on the Roof, Khawla Ibraheem, and Oliver Butler.