Oliver Butler and Khawla Ibraheem discuss A Knock on the Roof ahead of playing at Royal Court Theatre
A Knock on the Roof is an unforgettable play about obsession, survival and everyday life in Gaza. It follows Mariam as she rehearses for the appearance of small warning bombs – a knock on the roof – which give tenants in Gaza 5-15 minutes to evacuate before their home is destroyed.
In this syndicated interview, director Oliver Butler and writer/ performer Khawla Ibraheem discuss the process of creating and researching this show in 2014, and its journey and development since. They also share more about how they make work together, including discussing how creating the character of Mariam was central in creating a piece that could be connected to by many.
What is A Knock on the Roof about?
OLIVER. A Knock on the Roof is about Mariam, a mother from Gaza training for war. She’s living her regular life, when another war breaks she remembers, from previous wars, that the Israeli military had started using a technique called a knock on the roof, where they alert residents of a building with a small bomb on the roof to give them 5 to 15 minutes to escape. She has this creative inspiration to try and train for it, to see how much she can carry and how far she can run in that amount of time.
She becomes obsessed with it, the idea of survival, of figuring out what she is capable of and what matters to her if she’s going to have to leave her house forever.
KHAWLA. It’s about Mariam, a woman and a mother that is trying her best to save herself, her son and her mother in a crazy situation, but also in the midst of all this, she’s also trying to maintain herself, her personality, her character. She’s just like any of us, dealing with her own strangers. But her’s take place in the middle of a war.
Can you talk a little bit about the journey that the show has been on?
K. This play started as a 10-minute monologue in 2014, and then it went in my drawer and I forgot about it. In 2019 Oliver and I met in Sundance theater lab, developing a different play that I wrote. Through our collaboration, we discovered that we have a unique way of working together, we started dreaming of developing more projects together. In 2022 I shared with Oliver this idea about this woman that trains to run from the bombings in Gaza because of the knock on the roof.
I started with larger research about war, motherhood, and training for running a marathon, and when I say research I don’t necessarily mean only reading articles or books, but a huge part of the research was interviewing people and especially mothers that went through wars: in Gaza and some from the Golan Heights (the place I come from). When I felt that the materials I have can carry me through to start I did. So I started writing and sending Oliver drafts, and Oliver would send me back notes and questions . Half a year later, we met again in person in New York, where we workshopped the play for two weeks at the mercury store and New York theater workshop, the aim was to get me on my feet and out of my head as a writer, by the end of the two weeks we held a private reading to get a chance to see if and how the material would be received by the public
O. As a result of the reading in NY, we got invited by PalFest to have a public reading of the play in Ramallah. So, immediately after the readings in New York (spring of 2023), and with the support of the Hakawati theatre in Jerusalem, I went out to work with Khawla in the Golan Heights to develop the play, leading up to the reading in Ramallah. On the day that I arrived, when the plane landed, people on the plane were talking about how Israel had sent a rocket into Gaza. So when Khawla, picked me up from the train in Akka (Acre), she said, ‘we’re on the verge of war.’ We spent the whole time working at the theater in her small town, where Khawla first learned she wanted to become a theater-maker, in Majdal Shams, and for the whole time we were not sure if the reading was going to happen, or if we could even get into Ramallah. The day before, we saw that it would work. So we traveled there, and we did the first public reading of this play at Ramallah for largely audiences of Palestnian and international writers.
K. To me, it was very important because this play has been written in English since the beginning. Up until this moment, I have shared the script with a few people from Gaza that I interviewed, to make sure that the play reads for their reality, I’m not from Gaza, I’m writing based on interviews and research, and I wanted to make sure the play and the reality aligned.
Gaza and the West Bank and the Golan Heights are all very separated areas. It was the first time that I shared this play in the West Bank and for me, it was a very important moment to see how the local audience would react to the materials. And I was very happy with the reactions that I got from the local audience, that they actually did engage with the play and with the material.
The plan was to self produce the play, so after the reading in Ramallah, we applied for a small fund at A.M Qattan foundation, and we got it, and we launched an Indiegogo campaign to self produce the play. Through the campaign that’s when we met piece by piece productions, and they became our co-producers. We started planning the rehearsals for September, and October. The original plan was to open mid October in Haifa and in Jerusalem.
O. I came out in September to Haifa, then a week before tech, Khawla and I are in her car driving towards Jerusalem for a meeting with Elhakawati theater when she gets a text.
K. After COVID, I stopped listening to the news in the morning. It was a Saturday, and usually there is no traffic on Saturdays, so I wasn’t alert that something weird was happening. We are 15 minutes from Tel Aviv, I get a voice message and I see that it’s Amer Khalil the artistic director of the Hakawti theatre. I don’t open the message and I call him to say we will be 15 minutes late. And he’s like, 15 minutes late to what? Did you listen to the news? I park in an abandoned gas station, and I open the news and I see all the videos from the attack of October 7th. Without much thinking I turn back to Haifa, we collect our stuff, and I drive us to Majdal shams, my hometown in the Golan Heights. Everything is chaotic. The Nova party has people from all over, so the victims are from all over. Every place felt like a place that got damaged in this moment.
O. I felt very sad to be leaving people I love, but I flew out. Everyone there just looked terrified.
K. For a while, I hesitated to engage with the play. I felt overwhelmed and unable to face it. A mix of guilt and frustration made me start questioning why I had even thought of writing it, the scenes of the play started to feel too real, and reality itself grew unbearably loud, so I wondered if the play could add anything at all to the horror we witness every single day. In December 2023, piece by piece productions suggested that I come to visit New York for two weeks, to revisit the material and see if we want to do this.
O. So she came to New York, and we met for dinner. It felt like I was seeing a friend from 10 years ago. It felt like these two friends coming together after this immense amount of time, and it was very meaningful, but also sad.
We did this workshop. We talked a lot about whether we should embrace more of the reality of now. Trying to update it to the now felt in some ways cheap. You don’t have to be like, Have you thought about today? No. People are living today.
K. Also, this play has been in the making for a decade, but is shaped by a reality that, sadly, keeps repeating itself. And who knows what the next decade will bring. Will this cycle ever break? I desperately hope so. But the other question is: for how long the impact of these events will continue to echo in our collective memory as humanity?
O. We then found out that the Traverse theater in Edinburgh wanted to produce the play. New York Theater Workshop decided that they were going to produce the play the following year.
The whole existence of this play, from my perspective, has been this play that almost didn’t happen. The play itself embodied this sense of existential crisis. At every step it either didn’t happen or it was about to not happen. The process of the play, and the content of the play ended up being also stuck in the same kind of reality.
K. Then, a few weeks before Edinburgh, a rocket landed in a football field in my village (Majdal Shams) and killed 12 children. And again, it was the same feeling, do I really want to do this? Does this really matter? Because the grief was again, louder. But we went to Edinburgh, and we did the shows. And at the end of every show, I would stand and read a note, of the children that were lost in my town, and all the children and people that were lost in this horrific war that has been going for way too long.
O. Then we went to Dublin, which gave us this huge boost going into New York Theater Workshop, where we opened last month.
K. Up until the New York Theater Workshop production, we did not actually have a real rehearsal process. We had rehearsals in Haifa a year and a half before the opening in New York. And also the rehearsals were cut short, we only managed to rehearse half of the play before everything was stopped. Then in April, when we were supposed to prepare for Edinburgh, my arrival was delayed because there was the Iranian attack and all the flights were canceled. And on the way out of Edinburgh, my flight was canceled because of rockets falling, and I was stuck in Greece for a few days.
How did it feel to finally have that dedicated time to rehearse the show?
O. It gave us the chance to really question every choice that we made. It wasn’t an overhaul, but it was an opportunity. Over the course of this process, Khawla really became an actor. I mean, she was always an actor, but I think she might have called herself more of a director, writer, sometimes, actor. And over the course of this process, she really became an actor. And even practically, at home for her, she doesn’t do runs that are multi weeks long, right?
K. I never did more than a few shows in a row.
O. So now she’s done 44 shows in New York, ahead of our 17 shows here, plus Edinburgh plus Dublin, which is 80-something shows in half a year. She’s become something different. There’s been a transformative quality to the whole piece.
K. Sitting in the rehearsal room, questioning everything we had done up to that moment, felt both like a privilege and slightly unsettling. A constant push and pull— whether to ask questions and look for new answers into the unknown or stay within the safety of what you know and experienced, and you know that it works, we already won awards in Edinburgh.
But Oliver has been an incredible creative partner in challenging me to step outside my comfort zone. I’m grateful for that every day. He has no fear of finding the wrong answer again and again until he finds the right one, I tend to chase perfection. We might be very different in that way, and it can be challenging sometimes, but somehow we manage to push each other toward the right balance in our work. Our rehearsals have been a constant exchange— that allowed both of us to grow in new directions towards the process
Do you think those differences between the two of you are part of what makes it work?
O. Before Khawla and I got to know each other as collaborators, you could look at the difference in our life experience and think, what do these two people have in common? Well, we connected in Utah at Sundance, and what we found was that ineffable thing, sensing between both of us that there was the potential for some kind of electricity to happen, because there was this thing that we couldn’t even name that felt similar, even though there was all this difference. We also flip. There are times where I’m the one who’s more protective, and she’s the one who’s knocking stuff down. But the point is we dance. When she’s expanding, I take some room to contract and give her space, and then when I’m expanding, she takes time. And it’s that dance that I think leads to the sort of ineffable creation, the manifestation of the relationship and our creativity into this thing.
K. The differences that we have, create a space that makes the play resonate with so many different people and audiences.
What makes the play universal?
O. At its core, it is a play about someone in a terrifying situation, waiting and then preparing. There are ways in which Mariam’s experience in Gaza feels like what it’s like to live in our world today. I’m not saying we all have a similar level of actual, existential threat of war, but we all live in a world now, especially after COVID, where we’re waiting to get some sort of notice of some terrible thing that’s going to change our life. We keep having this recurring experience which tethers us to the warning that we’re going to get a notice that another plane has gone down or another pandemic is starting. Our world has oriented us towards this constant level of preparedness and vigilance to just stay safe. When we watch someone who is in a situation like that, trying to figure out how to prepare and keep their loved ones safe, we immediately connect to it in a human way, and say, that is also my story with a different reality, and I think right now in the world, and everywhere we’ve done the show so far, it’s been proven that that is something that we can relate to.
K. Also, what makes it very universal is that it’s built on a very basic instinct that we have, which is love to one another, a love of a mother to her child, or a mother to her daughter, a daughter to her own mother, a woman to her own city, to her own house, to her own stuff. And a complicated marriage and love that is trying to survive in the modern world. It’s built on experiences as all can relate to. I have received messages from people from all over the political map saying how much they related to the play, and I think that’s because even if we are not participating, we are all someone’s daughter or son, and we all are trying to save something we love, while fighting our own battles in the day to day life.
How does humor sit in the play? And why is it important for it to be there?
K. Humor is a magical way to connect to people. Laughter is a reaction. When we laugh, it’s something that we don’t even think about. Something funny happens and we just laugh. And it’s a trick way to make the audience engage in something when you make them laugh, because then something about the conscious relaxes and then the dramatic moments can enter easier when we’ve taken down the walls, when we laugh. People come to the play with certain expectations about how a play about a war in Gaza should sound. But honestly, in our most horrific moments in life, we often grab this moment of joy and laughter as humans, because this is what will make us want to survive for the next day. Otherwise, we’re just going to lose our minds. For me, it’s essential for the play to be funny in order for it to survive.
O. I think humour is a revelation of things that should not be said or cannot be said or should not be done. When something happens in relief, it’s that surprise of something happening that should not happen, right? I also feel like, at least in America, there is this portrayal of Palestinians as being humorless. You know, as if there’s no humour in their lives. But to me, some of the funniest people I’ve met are Palestinians and people who live in really terrifying situations. Humor is something that cannot be taken away, it is a right, and so I think that this ends up being an incredible opportunity to build connection through how we end up finally saying the things that should not be said, or giving our characters the right to say the things that should not be said or cannot be said. It’s a form of resistance and freedom.
Khawla, what do you think that you and Mariam have in common, and what’s different about you?
K. Our sarcasm is totally the same, and our dark humour. Also, this overthinking quality, the way our brains work, is very similar. And how are we different? We are maybe different in the specificity of life: I don’t live under siege, Mariam does, I’m not married, she is, I’m not a mother, she is. But the qualities are the same. I come from a small community, a Druze community in the Golan Heights, and the relationship to living in small place with a small community is also a common experience between me and Mariam, and I think both of our communities have everyone in everyone’s business, but mostly with an attitude of love and caring. Mariam loves Gaza and I love my community. Mariam can be any one of us, I made sure of writing the character that way.
O. I think the instinct to try and understand the relationship between Khawla and Mariam also mirrors what’s happening in the play. I think there’s this core idea that trauma in life can cause us to dissociate as a protective mechanism. And I was interested in that. And then in the same way that an actor embodies a character and trying to understand where the separation is, is sort of where the magic is. I can’t discern a difference, really, between Khawla and Mariam, except for the details that she mentioned. But the pursuit of the difference, trying to see if there is a line in between, is one of the things that draws us in.
What do you want audiences to take away from the show here in London?
O. My core hope is that people engage with the human story. I want to release the audience from thinking that this play is asking you to be someone different or do something different. I want them to laugh with Mariam. I want them to engage with the story. I want them to feel the similarities between them and her. I want them to see, at least from my opinion of the way the American media presents Palestinians, a different kind of Palestinian story that they may not be used to hearing. And yeah, I want them to feel connected and closer to Mariam, and then, by association, connected and closer to Gaza, and then hopefully connected and closer to themselves.
K. If, even for a single moment during the play, someone in the audience thinks, I know what you’re talking about, then my mission is accomplished.
Each person might connect with Mariam in a different way—through her relationship with her son, her mother, her husband, or even something as simple as the way she prepares her coffee. It doesn’t have to be a profound realization; just one fleeting moment of recognition, one thought of “Yes, I’ve felt that too.” And if they carry that moment with them when they leave, then we’ve done more than just humanize the people we often see reduced to headlines—we’ve stepped into their lives, even if only for an instant.
I’m not trying to provoke grand revelations, deep philosophical reflections, or overwhelming emotions. My hope is that the story creates a space for connection, where Mariam feels real—not just a character on stage, but someone whose experiences resonate.
The most important thing to understand is that behind every political decision, behind every conflict, there are real human beings paying the price—with their lives, their loved ones, and their dreams. Even before war, Mariam had already lost so much to political decisions beyond her control. She lost her dreams to a reality she never chose.
By the time the play ends, I hope we all carry a piece of her with us.
Thanks to Royal Court, Oliver and Khawla for sharing their thoughts with us.
A Knock of the Roof is playing at Royal Court Theatre until 8 March. Further information and bookings can be found here.
