‘A Knock on the Roof’ is a tragic, heart-pounding portrait of war in Gaza
A Palestinian woman lives through an IDF bombing in a harrowing new play
Khawla Ibraheem stars as Mariam: a woman surviving wartime Gaza in A Knock on the Roof, now playing at the New York Theater Workshop. Photo by Valerie Terranova
By Samuel Eli Shepherd January 28, 2025
“How far can you run in five minutes?”
That’s the question actress Khawla Ibraheem asks the audience several minutes into A Knock on the Roof at the New York Theater Workshop. Ibraheem plays a Palestinian woman named Mariam during the 2014 Israel-Hamas war awaiting a strike from the Israeli Defense Forces. She runs through scenarios in her head and practices running out of her seven-story apartment while Tom Cruise-esque action movie music blares.
The title of Ibraheem’s new play refers to an Israeli Defense Forces military tactic, first implemented in 2008. In the tactic, the IDF drops a small munition on the top of a building they are targeting to warn civilians to escape. After five to 15 minutes, the army will then drop a much larger explosive, destroying the building.
Over the course of a hair-raising, 80-minute monologue, Mariam ruminates on her life before the war, as well as her uncertain future, as she prepares for the inevitable IDF warning strike.
Miming the act of packing a suitcase for her six-year-old son, Nour, Mariam asks the audience what items they would bring with them if they had to escape their homes. In another scene, Mariam sets a timer to help her sprint out after the knock on the roof, reminding herself to “Act normal.” When I saw the play Sunday, an audience member’s phone rang mid-act. “If you need to answer it, answer it,” Mariam told him, still fully in character. “Act normal.”
Those kinds of moments — in which Mariam breaks the fourth wall, or finds moments of dark humor even in the face of possible, imminent death — are what infuse A Knock on the Roof with a tragicomic absurdity, and what make the play as entrancing to watch as it is painful.
Whether Mariam is lamenting about not exercising enough — “God, I’m in bad shape,” she says as she mimes running down flights of stairs — or making quips with her mom about being bombed while in the shower, the gallows humor gives insight into Mariam’s resilient character, without ever minimizing the actual horror of her situation.
Mariam is witty, warm and messy, and Ibraheem brings those quirks to life by exploring Mariam’s relationship with her mom, husband and son. The script zooms in and reminds us of the three-dimensionality of ordinary Palestinians in Gaza: lives that are not only destroyed during wartime, but are also flattened via reductive media portrayals.
Ibraheem, who wrote and starred in the show, is an actor/playwright originally from Majdal Shams in the Golan Heights, which Israel annexed in 1981. She met director Oliver Butler (What The Constitution Means To Me, The Open House) when they were working together as fellows at the Sundance Theater Lab in 2019.
The play was originally supposed to premiere in Oct. 2023 at the Palestinian National Theater in Haifa, before the Hamas Oct. 7 attacks and Israel’s subsequent war in Gaza disrupted production. It was last performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival last summer.
The New York Theater Workshop production, like a classic Fringe show, is pared down to a minimum. The action takes place on a bare “thrust stage.” The only set piece is a chair from which Mariam narrates her story.
In one monologue, Mariam checks in via telephone with her husband, Omar, who is off in Europe pursuing a Master’s degree, and the longing both characters feel is palpable. In another, she and her son, Nour, swim in the sea to find a brief reprieve from the bombs. Ibraheem switches through these various roles with ease, although the other characters are nowhere nearly as multi-faceted as Mariam.
As the play goes on, Mariam opens up about her life in Gaza before the war. It is here where the play finds its emotional rhythm. The scenes in which Mariam discusses meeting her husband Omar in a statistics class, or Mariam describing her plans to pursue a Master’s before Gaza came under siege in 2007, are vulnerable and hypnotizing. The audience gets a glimpse into Mariam’s dreams, until bombs set the play’s panic and pace in motion once again.
Although it was written before Oct. 7, it is hard to ignore the timing of A Knock on the Roof’s New York City premiere. While the continuing story of the ceasefire and hostage deal looms in the world outside the theatre, Ibaraheem’s script never loses its hyper-specific focus.
Ibraheem never overwhelms audiences with complex historical context, nor does she connect the 2014 war to the countless real life Mariams in the modern day. Ibraheem’s pitch-perfect delivery, miming and haunting body language does all that storytelling for you.
“I act normal,” repeats Mariam as she sips coffee in her chair and waits for a warning strike. Ibraheem’s acting may be outstanding, but A Knock on the Roof delivers a sobering reminder that no part of this woman’s experience is normal. Not even close.
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