Gathering
- Role
- Costume & Prop Designer
- Company
- Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre
- Director
- Samar Haddad King
- Year
- 2024
Played atWorld premiere at The Shed, New York, June 2024 · European premiere at FAB Festival, Bordeaux, October 2025, then Scènes nationales across France · Cal Performances, Berkeley, 2026
props + costumes by me
Credits
- Concept, text & direction
- Samar Haddad King
- Choreography
- Samar Haddad King with the performers
- Original songs
- Samar Haddad King
- Music
- Vivaldi's The Four Seasons, recomposed by Max Richter
- Costume & prop design
- Nancy Mkaabal
- Lighting design
- Muaz Aljubeh
- Dramaturgy
- Enrico Dau Yang Wey
- Assistant direction
- Stephanie Sutherland
- Rehearsal direction
- Zoe Rabinowitz
- Design consultant
- Amir Nizar Zuabi
- Production manager
- Frances Caperchi
- Performers (New York, 2024)
- Waseem Alzeer, Aya Aziz, Nicole Baker, Sebastian Charles, Joshua Leon Eguia, Dahlia Khair, Yukari Osaka, Zoe Rabinowitz, Arzu Salman, Mohammed Smahneh, Samaa Wakeem, Enrico Dau Yang Wey, Ash Winkfield
- Production
- Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre, commissioned by The Shed, New York
- European tour
- Au Contraire Productions with Yaa Samar! Dance Theatre
A wedding day under siege, told with dance, song and hundreds of oranges, to Max Richter's Vivaldi.
Gathering is an invitation: a party, a protest, a celebration of harvest, the championship game.
It follows Israa on her wedding day, in a village under siege, as she pieces together broken memories after an attack. Samar Haddad King tells it with movement, text, song, puppetry and acrobatics, to Max Richter's recomposed Vivaldi: The Four Seasons and her own songs. Oranges are at its heart: hundreds of them, handled by the performers and by anyone in the audience who chooses to join in, as a participant or a witness.
My role in the production
I designed the costumes and props for the world premiere at The Shed in New York in June 2024. The production has since toured France, opening at the FAB Festival in Bordeaux in October 2025, and came to Cal Performances in Berkeley in 2026.
The production
PhotoHeather Cromartie (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8) · Pierre Planchenault (9, 10, 11)
Behind the scenes
A raffia piece in progress. 
Costumes laid out before the show.
Planning a production, shoot or campaign?
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