About me
Elete Nelson-Fearon is a theatre translator, editor and educator working between Arabic, Spanish and English. Elete is the 2024-25 editorial fellow at Words Without Borders and has recently completed the Foreign Affairs theatre translation mentorship, where she translated Palestinian-Chilean play Irreversible Palestine. In 2023, Elete completed the CASA fellowship in advanced Arabic at the American University in Cairo (AUC) and, consolidating her experience as a secondary school teacher, has presented her research into Arabic pedagogy for heritage speakers at the International TAFL Conference held at AUC. Elete has translated, and facilitated workshops with Performing International Plays around, plays from Mexico, Egypt, Cuba, Palestine and Spain. She is an alumna of the Soho Writers Lab, and independently writes theatre reviews at elete.substack.com.
My Plays
Irreversible Palestine
Synopsis:
Irreversible Palestine is a "conference-piece-landscape" centred around Chilean-Palestinian Ana Harcha’s trip to Palestine in 2022. Harcha explores a dichotomy of unspeakability and a surplus of words through poetry, images, lists, noise and song.
The central path of the play comprises anecdotes from the trip and poetic reflections on Palestinian
identity. Harcha tells of her first impressions upon arriving: the paradoxical unfamiliarity of being in her ancestral village; seeing faces that look like, that are, her own; the experiences shared with those driving her around; and the first time she saw the eight-metre-high separation wall.
After rooting her story in the etymology of Arabic words key to this theme–intifada, used to describe Palestinian uprisings; shuhada, martyrs; sumud, perseverance–Harcha closes the play by reflecting on how she has been changed by this journey, and thinking of all the young children for whom life must, somehow, go on.
Number of Characters: 1
Minimum Number of Actors Required: 1
Length (in Pages): 25
Location: Original setting: lecture theatre
Key Words: identity, monologue, Palestine, Chile, indigenous
Has the Play Been Produced? No
Are the Rights Available? Yes
Has the Play Been Published? No
Award nominations/wins:
Reviews:
