In 2024 Ashtar Theatre started a new project: letters to Gaza. During the Leo Season Birthday extravaganza, KP, Tarneem and Ahmad all created audio art in what they called "Mermaid Palace: the Cairo Office" aka: the very spacious air bnb KP rented where they each had a room and a desk to create at. When Tarneem sat down to write a letter to her home, this work of poetry emerged in only a couple of hours. We didn't edit a single word. It’s been 6 months since she left her home in the north of Gaz...
Oct 19, 2024•11 min•Ep 7•Transcript available on Metacast This episode was named months ago: a prayer, a wish shared by one Tarneem Jaber and one Kaitlin Prest. "THE GENOCIDE IS A MEMORY, NOT AN ANNIVERSARY". The genocide has gotten even more terrifying as we mark an entire year of slaughter, terror and complacency. Attacks are now zeroing in on the North of Gaza: the home of Ahmad Tarneem and Hamza. Every day, sometimes every hour they try to call their mother and oldest brother (and his wife, who just had a baby) who are still there, with no way to e...
Oct 15, 2024•1 hr 4 min•Ep 8•Transcript available on Metacast Artist and business owner Doreen Toutikian, founder of Beirut Design Week (and many other beautiful things that she’s had to leave in her past due to war) sits down with KP on February 23rd 2024 and performs monologue #10: Taima Okasha. She reflects on growing up hiding from bombs, the “Palestinian exception” anti-Palestinian racism in the arts and her fears of what might happen to her own home, Lebanon, if Israel is not stopped. Six months and many voice memos later, some of the fears Doreen ex...
Sep 23, 2024•1 hr 3 min•Ep 7•Transcript available on Metacast Audio artist and organizer Aliya Pabani takes Gaza Monologue #19 and binaural in-ear microphones (be sure to listen for the 3-dimensional effect: listen in headphones and you will walk with her) to a Toronto branch of the largest worldwide financier of weapons used by Israel.
Sep 14, 2024•32 min•Ep 6•Transcript available on Metacast “Before, you could count how many buildings they destroyed. Now, you count how many buildings they didn’t destroy” — Tarneem Jaber Tarneem Jaber (19 yrs old) was starting her first week of med school on October 7th. Her brother Ahmad (21 yrs old) was in his third year of dental school with only two remaining. Hamza, the oldest (24 yrs old), was supposed to graduate this June: He was a volunteer at Al-Shifa until it was obliterated. The three siblings survived the destruction of their home, food ...
Sep 03, 2024•1 hr 13 min•Ep 5•Transcript available on Metacast Comedian Alaa Shahada talks about artist life in Jenin, West Bank. We hear a radiomagic excerpt of his one-man show "The Horse of Jenin". He talks about his dreams for the future of Palestine and performs Gaza Monologue #22 Mahmud Abu Shaa’ban. Alaa is a graduate of the Nobel prize nominated Freedom Theatre acting and the co-founder of the Palestine Comedy Club. EASE ANY GUILT YOU FEEL ABOUT WHERE YOUR TAX DOLLARS GO BY SUPPORTING SOME BRILLIANT KIDS TO FINISH THEIR EDUCATION ....
Aug 23, 2024•46 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast Ali Dajani grew up in Jordan and studied in Canada, where he met KP, the friend that sits down with him in his Amsterdam home to read Gaza Monologue #1: the story of Ahmad El Ruzzi. Ali's paternal grandfather left Jerusalem in 1948. "What happened in 1948?" our radio friend asks. They both laugh. She apologizes for her ignorance. He begins to explain. Discussions of whether the cute-ass canals and oh-my-god-there’s-a-boat’s will become his permanent home frame the recording of the first monologu...
Aug 15, 2024•34 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast "It's kind of corny, but I think about this quote from Che Guevara: "the true revolutionary is guided by feelings of great love." Aliya Pabani, artist, organizer and collaborator. A glimpse into the friends and friends of friends that share their stories in our upcoming series: an adaptation of the Gaza Monologues by Ashtar Theatre (Ramallah). A group of artists, activists and students from Palestine and beyond read the famed monologues from 2010. Speaking words written by teenagers experiencing...
Jul 25, 2024•7 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast In this update-isode, we follow KP's whereabouts and goings-on since the Processing Palestine episode and the events that led to the genesis of our upcoming series: GREAT LOVE: The Gaza Monologues Revisited. Responding to Ashtar Theatre’s global call to share testimonies from young Gazans first performed in 2010, the series features a chain of personal connections from New York to Toronto to Jordan to Athens to Beirut to Nazareth to Jenin and most importantly: to Gaza. Connections that were forg...
Jul 19, 2024•34 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast KP says sweet nothings about the great love of her life: SOUND. A shared moment and meditation: recorded at 4AM in Athens Greece with the window open as the rain fell, gazing at the Athenian mountains aka: former home of the Gods. Use this episode like you would a meditation app: come back to it when you need a moment of peace. Take out the meditation pillow. Play it when you’re taking psychedelic drugs. Use it to relax during your break at work. Play it with a group of friends on a road trip. P...
Apr 03, 2024•18 min•Transcript available on Metacast The love story underneath the love story. We finally meet the real-life Charlie Park. Audio artist and friend Brendan Baker : the sound genius who inspired and supported KP to be the artist she is today. Real moments from the real relationship that started it all. If you are an artist or a writer interested in the complicated journey of translating real life into a fictional universe, this one is for you. If you are a regular human being interested in how love is born and grows and changes over ...
Feb 05, 2024•1 hr 11 min•Ep 8•Transcript available on Metacast The original unpublished title was “Anatomy of a Resentment”. This episode chronicles the era of a relationship wherein every minor annoyance is a symbol of the very major sacrifices we make to accommodate the shortcomings of the person we love. The story underneath the story: Mitchell Akiyama and KP spending 80+ hours pretending to be in a relationship in the summer of 2018. Fortunately, the frustrations you hear in this episode are (mostly) fiction. Six years later, Mitch and KP are Toronto be...
Jan 09, 2024•35 min•Ep 7•Transcript available on Metacast What is love? What is it really? bell hooks writes that love is something that we do. Not something that we feel. Not a story. So what do we do when we’re inside of a love that feels like a great love of the ages? The kind of romance that has a life of its own? The story underneath the story in this episode is meeting Johnny Spence. The performer and musician that breathed life into the character “Devon”. Former owner of sweater. This is episode 4 of The Shadows, from CBC Podcasts, made by Kaitl...
Dec 22, 2023•45 min•Ep 6•Transcript available on Metacast There are certain kinds of things a sweater spends its life dreaming about. Primarily: achieving the coveted position of: favourite. The story underneath the story of this episode is one that we will never tell. What we CAN tell: is that the sweater who speaks in this episode is real and it lives to this very day in KP’s trunk. It was given to her in the year 2014, 9 years ago this very week of November. She washed the sweater once and only once since then. The last time she wore it was last wee...
Nov 28, 2023•42 min•Ep 5•Transcript available on Metacast A window into the set-up from which an audio heartthrob emerged: Charlie Park. A neurotic and immensely talented puppeteer conceived of by artist Phoebe Wang and performed by sound artist Mitchell Akiyama. This is episode 2 of The Shadows from CBC Podcasts: an auto-fictional series in which KP explores the life she would have had if she’d become a puppeteer instead of a radio producer. There IS a Terry Gross cameo in this episode. Listen closely. You also hear the real life puppetry aficionados:...
Nov 14, 2023•43 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast As people all over the world grieve and struggle, KP invites you to take a moment to reflect, meditate, pray, manifest and grapple with the question of what those of us who are not there can do. Links and Resources from this episode: How to Stop a Genocide (while in the global north) , Hussan S.K The Inside Story Podcast: What Influence Can International Opinion Have on the War In Gaza? [Al Jazeera] Jewish Voice for Peace : visit this site for straightforward actions to take in the U.S.A Save Pa...
Nov 05, 2023•48 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast The story underneath the story: what happened after we made “Movies In Your Head”. In a clawfoot bathtub moaning in agony, “The Shadows” was conceived. KP’s first serialized fiction show: the story of having to choose between romanticism and realism. Does the fairy tale really exist? Or does it only exist at the beginning of a relationship? Our main character believes that she’ll be one of the outliers who will fall in love, and stay in love FOREVER. Featuring: episode 1 of “The Shadows” from CB...
Oct 17, 2023•1 hr•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast Have you ever fallen a little too hard a little too fast in love with someone you’ve just met? Have you ever caught yourself imagining the beautiful house in the country the two of you would grow old together in? We go back in time to the era before the term ‘ghosting’ had been coined and explore the phenomenon that Ayinde Bennett calls “making movies in your head”. Featuring: the Prix Italia Gold Award winning radio play (the first podcast to win a Prix Italia! That’s some radio history!) co-cr...
Oct 03, 2023•33 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast In the final episode of the series Kaitlin isn't sure whether or not she truly wants to get into it with her father. Kaitlin is conflicted. Is having one last conversation with her Dad on tape a good idea? Does she have the courage to confront her dad face to face? Resources for accountability and healing at https://www.theheartradio.org/dad
Jul 18, 2023•54 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 3: At age 33, Kaitlin is stranded living with her parents in Ottawa, living in their basement just like she did when she was a teenager. It's the first time she and her dad have lived together since the period the family euphemistically calls 'the dark years'. Trigger Warning - discussion and depictions of parental abuse. For resources go to theheartradio.org/dad
Jul 04, 2023•1 hr 11 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 2: Kaitlin's father, Greg, proudly claims the title of mister mom in 1986. He's always wanted to be a dad. When the apple of his eye enters her tween years and starts hating him he struggles to be the kind of dad he thought he should be. Trigger Warning: topics related to parental abuse, trauma, self-gaslighting, gaslighting. For resources go to theheartradio.org/dad
Jun 27, 2023•35 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast Episode 1: Kaitlin and her Dad fought so much when she was a teenager that the family calls those years '“World War III”. She tells the story of what happened after she left home and decided to love him anyway. As she became an adult, therapists and friends urged her to examine what really happened in those years. When she tries to talk about it with the family, she knows she has a big decision to make. Trigger Warning: topics related to parental abuse, trauma, self-gaslighting, gaslighting, def...
Jun 18, 2023•54 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast Kaitlin and Natalie Prest do a post-game analysis after creating the 5 episode series: SISTERS. The two sisters unpack all the things that didn’t get said in the narrative series, discuss topics that were raised and answer a couple of listener questions. The sisters open up about their personal experiences touching on topics such as mental health, diagnoses, self-care, borderline personality disorder, dialectical based therapy, and methods to ask for help from loved ones during times of struggle...
Jun 12, 2023•30 min•Ep 7•Transcript available on Metacast Kaitlin and Natalie try to create boundaries for the first time in their lifelong relationship. They work to navigate their relationship together and separately. As they embark on creating the final episode of this series, they realize they are having fun again.
Mar 14, 2023•31 min•Ep 6•Transcript available on Metacast We go back in time to before Kaitlin hired Natalie. She brings us inside of her uncertain world, and her journey to figure out what is wrong. TRIGGER WARNING: suicidal ideation, reference to childhood and sexual trauma (no depictions), borderline personality disorder
Mar 07, 2023•45 min•Ep 5•Transcript available on Metacast It’s the pandemic, and KP hires her younger sister to work at her company. As an assistant producer. Natalie is having flashbacks to their youth, when she performed as the butler at Kaitlin’s dinner parties. Is this the new version of the butler role? As they set out to make art together, attempting to do it in a way that doesn’t reinforce old childhood patterns Natalie finally sees who Kaitlin is on a day to day basis. TW: suicidal ideation, depression, anxiety, alcohol....
Feb 28, 2023•50 min•Ep 4•Transcript available on Metacast Natalie and Kaitlin go into their 20s living separate and faraway lives. Kaitlin comes home from New York for christmas every year, and they hug and talk into the night, falling asleep spooning like they did when they were little girls. Kaitlin makes a grand gesture and buys tickets to go on a special sister adventure: to the Jem and Holograms Convention. What ends up happening at the convention is something neither of them saw coming.
Feb 21, 2023•43 min•Ep 3•Transcript available on Metacast Kaitlin was Daddy’s little girl. And then: Natalie was born. The older and the younger sister: competing for attention, being bossed around, borrowing clothes, getting in petty fights and loving each other anyway. As little girls Kaitlin and Natalie fought because they were too similar. As teenagers Kaitlin and Natalie fought because they were total opposites. What does their adult future hold? Will they be friends or a family obligation? TW: Light reference to abusive parental behaviour. No men...
Feb 14, 2023•44 min•Ep 2•Transcript available on Metacast She’s the talented one. She’s the hard worker. She’s the pretty one. She’s the one that Dad likes more….SISTERS. A preview into our newest series coming to you February 14th: on the day the world celebrates love, we celebrate Sisterhood. The new season is coming to you as part of a brand new partnership with the incredible: CBC Podcasts!
Feb 01, 2023•4 min•Ep 1•Transcript available on Metacast Welcome to The Heart. We’ve been in operation for 14 years! What’s next? An overview for those new to the feed. And a window into what double double toil and radio we’ve been cooking up for 2022. Support The Heart and donate to Radiotopia Now! https://on.prx.org/3HK9OIh . From the bottom of our hearts, Thank you!
Feb 23, 2022•15 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
