​Bring Aseel's story to Columbia

The Collective Uncomfortable, in collaboration with Mid-Missourians for Justice in Palestine (MJP), is presenting a staged reading of There Is A Field, a play written by Jen Marlowe and originally produced by Donkey Saddle Productions. The play is about Aseel Asleh, a 17-year old Palestinian citizen of Israel killed by police in October 2000. Based on interviews and primary sources collected over 15 years, the play offers a uniquely personal lens for understanding inequality as the root of state violence and impunity, and a means of exploring the connections between state violence and structural inequalities in Israel and the United States. Help us bring this play to the stage in Columbia, MO by supporting the campaign!

"Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing there is a field. I’ll meet you there." 

Police officers killed 13 unarmed citizens in October 2000. The youngest of those killed was a 17-year old boy, named Aseel Asleh. Aseel was shot point blank in the neck while at a demonstration outside of his neighborhood.  Aseel’s story is all-too familiar here in the United States. However, Aseel was not killed by police in central Florida, or a street corner in New York. Aseel was a Palestinian child, and he was killed by Israeli police outside his village in the north of Israel.

There Is A Field is a documentary-style play about Aseel’s life and his killing, told from the perspective of his older sister, Nardeen. Through Nardeen’s struggle to cope with the murder of her brother, the play offers an intimate view into the daily racism and violence faced by Palestinian citizens of Israel, and contributes to the vital conversation around the systematic devaluation of Black and Brown lives in the United States.

Engaging the collective imagination with theater

MJP holds these principles in common:

• We support a just and lasting peace for Palestinians and Israelis based on human rights, international law, equality, and relevant UN resolutions.​
• We oppose U.S. military, diplomatic, financial, corporate, and all other forms of support for Israel’s occupation and apartheid policies toward Palestinians.
• We stand in solidarity with the Palestinian struggle to achieve freedom from Israeli military occupation, justice for refugees through the implementation of their right of return, full equality for Palestinian citizens of Israel, and the right to self-determination.
• We stand opposed to Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, all forms of racism, and any other expressions of bigotry directed at any person or group. We also reject the charge of anti-Semitism when it is used spuriously to silence legitimate criticism of Israel’s policies and practices.