FOR writer and performer Randa Jarrar, The Last Palestinian Alive marks a first in many ways.
This is her first solo show, her first time in Scotland, her first time at the Edinburgh Fringe.
Jarrar is part of Welcome to the Fringe, Palestine, a mini-festival at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe aiming to showcase Palestinian art “with freedom and without censorship”.
Her show is a sci-fi solo performance set in 2055, where a Palestinian woman wakes up to find she’s the last person alive.
“I would not have thought to come to the Fringe if it were not for this fantastic group of theatre workers and volunteers who just have worked deeply with Palestinian artists in the past and feel passionate about Palestinian culture and art,” she says.
“They put out a call at the beginning of the year saying ‘hey, if you would like to come, pitch us a show, tell us your ideas’.
“I hadn’t written the show yet, but I love deadlines, I’m a Capricorn, so I was like, ‘I want to do this’. I applied thinking, if I get it, that’s a challenge.”
In the show, the protagonist discovers an AI companion, which is modelled after UN special rapporteur Francesca Albanese. Together they piece together how the world ended, and how people resisted before the end. We meet six different characters who are all played by Jarrar and share their stories.
The show deals with genocide, survival and numbness, but never only as devastation.
“It’s the severe pain and trauma of going through the genocide that has her, and her entire community, choose her to be the one they try to preserve,” Jarrar explains.
“It’s my way of talking about the ways that Palestinians in Gaza [now] and historically have used their innovations and sense of inventiveness to survive these horrific circumstances and crimes that are imposed on them by outside forces.”
Jarrar draws inspiration from Palestinian folklore which she describes as “weird and futuristic and ancient all at the same time”.
She adds: “These magical things happen and the impossible is not the impossible anymore. These folktales have a really big influence on me and rereading them over the past few years during Israel’s attempt at annihilating the Palestinian people has brought me a very deep sense of comfort.”
She also draws from speculative fiction writers like Octavia Butler, “accessing women and queer stories and ideas of survival and the ways our communities have historically been able to survive through innovation and through mutual aid and working together”.
Censorship and subsequent refusal have long shaped Jarrar’s work.
“If you look at my history with censorship, my first novel, getting that published took a long time, almost five years and then in 2018 I dealt with a very extensive doxxing campaign begun when I called out Barbara Bush,” she explains.
“I dealt with a year-long attack by the right wing and newspapers, calling for civil speech instead of just celebrating what we all supposedly had in the US, which is the First Amendment.”
In early 2024, she was physically removed from an event hosted by PEN America, who she had volunteered with for almost 20 years, after protesting the inclusion of pro-Israel celebrity Mayim Bialik. She continues: “For them to platform a Zionist ... I thought I had the right to go there and protest. Of course, only certain people’s speech is allowed. And so, I was escorted out of a free speech event.
“Censorship is a thing. And obviously, Palestinians pay with their literal lives. We have had more than 200 journalists, and we owe them a debt we will never repay as humanity. So, for me, I find that it’s a privilege to deal with censorship and continue to live my life. So, I will not stop fighting against it.”
More recently, she withdrew from the Edinburgh International Book Festival. It dropped Baillie Gifford as its sponsor last year after several visitors and authors threatened to boycott the festival due to the company’s alleged links to Israel and fossil fuel firms.
“They invited at least two Zionist Israeli writers to come, and when I brought it up to them out of concern, especially about the one person I was concerned about who had been making statements about how what’s happening in Gaza is not a genocide, I said I don’t feel comfortable attending if he’s there, and they said, ‘Oh, you know, we’re inviting him for his fiction’,” Jarrar says.
She adds that she was the first to withdraw, followed by Fady Joudah and Omar El Akkad: “The person who I wanted to drop out, he also dropped out, which is a wonderful triumph for us – for me, personally.”
For audiences, Jarrar wants to provide space, not just to witness, but to feel, to grieve and to move.
“I guess I want them to have an hour to immerse themselves in Palestinian art, culture and characters and to be entertained, but also have some ideas for what to do next,” she says.
“I would love for audiences to learn something new about Palestine and about being human and be given space to grieve with each other and with these characters what’s been happening over the last few years, find joy in human resilience and the way humans can take deep, deep grief and anger and transmute it to comedy and art.”
And for herself? “Mostly I’m learning about the ways that people can really get together and make magic happen. That’s the number one reason I’m going to Edinburgh – getting to sit for four days in one place and really enjoy Palestinian art and culture and the diversity of it. We’re not just one story. We are so many different stories.”
The Last Palestinian Alive is on Friday, August 15, 4pm at Portobello Town Hall. Tickets are available at https://www.edfringe.com/tickets/whats-on/the-last-palestinian-alive and the full Welcome to the Fringe, Palestine programme can be found at https://www.fringepalestine.com/programme
