imperfect allies:
CHILDREN OF OPPOSITE SIDES
Performed by Najla Said and Judith Sloan
Written by Judith Sloan with Najla Said
based on conversations and research by Najla Said and Judith Sloan
Directed by Suzanne Agins
December 11-14, 2025
Part of this year’s
Voices From a Changing Middle East Festival:
How We Got Here | Where We Go Next
JUMP to:
SYNOPSIS | CREATIVE TEAM
SYNOPSIS
Judith Sloan and Najla Said present a new work-in-progress, Imperfect Allies: Children of Opposite Sides. Through dialogue, memories, historical records, poetry, images, and humor, two women explore how their Jewish-American and Palestinian-American backgrounds have shaped their identities, their friendship, and their understanding of the conflicting narratives over Israel/Palestine. In this soul-breaking moment, they find tangible ways to have increasingly difficult conversations, while steadfastly denouncing Israel’s obliteration of Gaza. Their journey is a collaboration that challenges even the strongest relationship.
Performances will be followed with an opportunity for audience members to practice the art of listening to one another.
Imperfect Allies began in 2019 with in-person conversations between African-American, Jewish, Indian-American, Queer, and Immigrant artists, produced by Judith Sloan and EarSay. Imperfect Allies: Children of Opposite Sides began in December 2023 focused on Sloan and Said’s friendship as Palestinian-American and Jewish Americans at a time when people seemed to be talking at each other not with each other.
MEET THE CREATIVE TEAM
Najla Said (Actor/Collaborator) is an award-winning actor, playwright, and author. In 2010, her solo show, PALESTINE, had a sold out Off-Broadway run. She has performed it at over 50 colleges, high schools, institutions, and events all over the world. In 2010, she was named one of the"Forty Feminists Under Forty" by The Feminist Press. In 2013, she published a memoir ("Looking For Palestine: Growing Up Confused in an Arab-American Family") based on her play, which is currently part of many high school and university curricula. She has also written two librettos, the first of which was a collaboration with the composer Mohammed Fairuz. Her second libretto, based on the text of her book, was set to music by David Coleman, and performed by the West-Eastern Divan Orchestra under the direction of Daniel Barenboim throughout Europe. As an actor, she has performed Off-Broadway as well as regionally and internationally. Najla collaborated with Vanessa Redgrave on a theatrical adaptation of her grandmother's memoir, which they performed in the UK, Beirut, and New York. Recent TV/ Film: NCIS: New Orleans (CBS-TV) , New Amsterdam (NBC-TV) and Feud (FX). She was recently the recipient of the "Cultural Excellence" award from the Takreem- America Foundation.
Judith Sloan (Writer/Actor) is an award-winning, actor, writer, librettist, audio artist/ radio producer, and educator whose work combines humor, pathos and a love of the absurd. She portrays voices often ignored by the mass media including in her solo shows, Denial of the Fittest (Nominated best comedy performance Edinburgh Fringe Festival), Yo Miss! and A Tattle Tale: Eyewitness in Mississippi. Awards include NYSCA Commissioning Grant (2022/2025); NYFA Fellowship 2013; Missouri Review National Audio Competition First Place 2009/2010. As co-founder of the non-profit EarSay (www.earsay.org) Sloan spearheaded multimedia book, theater and music projects including Crossing the BLVD (Winner Brendan Gill Prize) with Warren Lehrer, and 1001 Voices: A Symphony for a New America (librettist with music by Frank London) commissioned by the Queens Symphony Orchestra. She founded ongoing arts-in education programs including Cross-Cultural Dialogue Through the Arts and Transforming Trauma Into Art with immigrant youth. A frequent guest lecturer/performer on college campuses throughout the country, Sloan is an adjunct professor at NYU’s Gallatin School (Dean’s Award for Excellence in Teaching 2024). In 2019, Sloan created a conversation series called Imperfect Allies through EarSay, which grew out of her collaborations with multi-ethnic, multi-racial and intergenerational artists on her play It Can Happen Here which won a Queens Council on the Arts Commissioning development grant.
Suzanne Agins (Director/Dramaturg) has collaborated with such writers as Cusi Cram, Deirdre O’Connor, Gordon Cox, Hilary Bettis, Ken Weitzman, and more. Her work has been seen at theaters including Labyrinth, Cherry Lane Theater, Ensemble Studio Theater, Cape Fear Regional Theatre, Hudson Valley Shakespeare, Hangar Theatre, Dorset Theater Festival, the Eugene O’Neill National Playwrights Conference, and Williamstown Theater Festival where she served as Artistic Associate. From 2016 to 2022 she was the Artistic Director of the Upstart Creatures, a company dedicated to producing off-the-beaten path work in conjunction with a multi-course, gourmet meal. She is also an Intimacy Coordinator and has worked on feature films, micro-dramas, and shorts, SAG-AFTRA and indie. She received her certification from IDC, a SAG-AFTRA Accredited Intimacy Coordinator Training Program. She holds an MFA in Directing from UC San Diego, is the recipient of a Princess Grace Fellowship, an adjunct faculty member at NYU, and a member of SDC.