Ismail Khalidi

Born in Beirut to Palestinian parents, Ismail Khalidi is a playwright, screenwriter and director. Khalidi’s own plays include Truth Serum Blues (Pangea World Theater 2005), Tennis in Nablus (Alliance Theatre 2010), Foot (Teatro Amal 2016), Sabra Falling (Pangea 2017), and Dead Are My People (Noor Theatre 2018). He also co-adapted two novels for the stage with Naomi Wallace; Ghassan Kanafani’s Returning to Haifa (Finborough Theatre 2018; Pangea 2023) and Sinan Antoon’s The Corpse Washer (Actors Theatre of Louisville 2019). Khalidi's directorial debut was the Chilean premiere of Foot, which was produced in Valparaiso and then Santiago in 2016-17. He co-edited Inside/Outside: Six Plays from Palestine and the Diaspora (TCG 2015) and his plays have been published in numerous anthologies, including the upcoming collection, Until I Return: The Selected Works of Ismail Khalidi (Bloomsbury, 2025). His writing has been featured in American Theatre Magazine, The Kenyon Review, The Nation, Mizna, Guernica, Al-Jazeera, The Dramatist and ReMezcla. Khalidi was the 2023 Artist-in Residence at Boston University’s Center on Forced Displacement and is a Directing Fellow at Pangea World Theater. He holds an MFA from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts.