Polls are open for our 2026 Best of the Bay! Vote here now, and enjoy our Editors’ Picks of our favorite Bay Area things, which we’ll be posting throughout the month and beyond.
Stop me if this sounds familiar: the US military machine begins a poorly-thought-out operation in the Middle East. POTUS hubristically declares that the skirmish with be over shortly, yet all negotiation deadlines breeze by, and there’s no clear end to the conflict in sight. Both the White House and mainstream US media fall back on demonizing MENA (Middle Eastern/North African) people, in a manner reminiscent of Goebbels-style propaganda.
The members of Golden Thread Productions know the story well.
Amid preparations for the SF theatre company’s 30th season of telling complex MENA stories this year, real life threw in a plot twist. Several of its performers and artists (including outgoing artistic director Sahar Assaf) found themselves unable to return to the United States for the premiere of the work they’d spent countless hours creating due to a wartime ramp-up in draconian immigration enforcement.
Other companies would have cancelled their season, or adjusted it to minimize the impact of such distressing real-life parallels. Instead, Golden Thread (with new AD Nabra Nelson) did what it has done for three decades straight: pushed ahead, telling complex stories that added a much-needed perspective that was often missing from media narratives.
It’s what the company did after 9/11; it’s what it did after October 7; it’s what it does each and every year. Being the only company to consistently speak out in favor of Palestine isn’t winning them a lot of funding, but it puts their souls at ease.
As Nelson herself says, “It’s really despicable for people in arts organizations to be afraid to speak out when you compare that fear to what people are actually facing. I don’t think there’s a specific thing an arts organization must do when there’s a war or genocide, but to not have that in the forefront of your mind, and make steps to listen to your community, doesn’t make sense to me.”
Grab your tickets to an upcoming Golden Thread production—like those in the October 9-November 1 ReOrient Festival—here.
