Winter Solstice | ضربة برد

How do we speak candidly to our friends in a landscape of censorship?

Written and directed by Maitha Ali, Winter Solstice is a gathering of five friends in a desert to celebrate the Iranian holiday of Shab-e Yalda, marking the longest night of the year, coinciding with the Ursid meteor shower. This play is an unraveling of Ameera and Diana’s “friendship”, marked by estrangement and identity crises — and interrupted with bad poetry. Shooting stars become the vehicle to start, stop, censor, and manipulate the trajectory of the night. The shimmering sky above thus becomes the sixth character of the play.

Maitha Ali is an Arab-Persian (Ajami) writer and theatre practitioner who views her practice to be a vehicle for political education toward global solidarity and liberation. She explores themes of more-than-human conviviality, migration and (dis)belonging in public and domestic spaces, de/anticolonial movements, and the age of post-capitalist individualism and lovelessness.

Winter Solstice | ضربة برد will be presented on the 2nd of January 2026 as a part of the Engine Room: Next Page Season at Omnibus Theatre! Engine Room is a series of rehearsed readings platforming new writers and giving their work a chance to receive crucial feedback during their developmental stages. Now, more than ever, is the time to explore theatre that attempts to challenge the state of the world as we know it. In this play, Maitha Ali unravels how we show love for each other, for the world and strangers and for ourselves is a state of lovelessness and censorship.

Your donations will go towards bringing this rehearsed reading to life at a time where it is most needed! We are very committed to paying our creative team and appreciate all the help we can get as this is a completely unfunded project! Whether your donation comes as the love of a friend or the belief of a stranger, your contribution will be supporting young artists in London and across borders, it will help a work in development with so much potential be the best it can possibly be and reach a community more than deserving of recognition.

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