Khalil Khalil forces us to ask what a name means. The performance's sole character, Khalil Albatran, was named after his older brother killed in the First Intifada (a Palestinian uprising). Through the performance, we are called on to witness him bear the weight of a name that means so much in the world he inhabits and yet does not quite reach him in his own life.

The whole show is done in Arabic with English subtitles projected for the audience to read. This language mismatch lends the performance a sense of foreignness on one hand and an air of authenticity on the other. We, as the audience, are brought as close as possible to the lives of two men; one who we will never meet and the other who performs before us but is out of our reach.

The performance begins in darkness with Khalil rapping to us unseen. He says that he wants to enter a grave and be with those who have passed, and we are drawn to the intensity of his words. At times, the stage falls silent, and we are once again focused in the moment. We see his body illuminated by stage lights, fighting unseen enemies and feel the confusion and fear of the moment. As Khalil moves us through the story, he stops for a moment to have an intimate heart-to-heart with someone we cannot see, potentially his deceased older brother. The audience is a witness to someone living in the shadow of both a greater struggle and someone who has been claimed by it.

Throughout the performance, Khalil uses music to deftly display his emotions and the feelings of his people. He struts defiantly to pumping club music while the word “Intifada” is projected above. He embodies every Palestinian who threw a rock at their oppressor and struggled against torment as if death could not claim them. Through his performance, we bear witness to the struggle.

As the show progresses, we hear a dua recited over the speakers as part of a father's letter from prison to his son. The stage lights strobe, and we see Khalil fight with the rupture of his family and the turmoil that it has caused. He brings us the story of many Palestinians who suffer the weight of all that has been done to them. Khalil tells us of his schizophrenia and the visions he sees of his dead brother; we realize then that in his mind, he is not alone on the stage.

As the performance continues, he feels frenetic and harassed. The emotional state caused by his situation becomes clearer and clearer to us, and we are sucked with him under the weight of occupation and the shadow of his brother. A thumping beat propels him and us onwards, and we begin to feel the end drawing near. Again, Khalil raps to us, and we feel his passion and his intense fight against all that holds him down. As we reach that ending, he produces a harmonica and sits on the stage playing it. Soon, a modern RnB beat plays while Arabic singing draws the performance to a close. He has found some resolution with his name.

Khalil Khalil ended with an intimate question and answer with Khalil Albatran and director Bilal Alkhatib. The two discussed how they first met in a café and that the performance was born over two years of their friendship. Though Bilal vowed that this would be his only play, I believe that it was hugely important and of great benefit to all who had the opportunity to see it.