“Welcome to Nowhere. I’m going to share with you how I got here. And what ‘here’ actually means to me.”Bianca Mastrominico reports on Khalid Abdalla’s powerful solo show Nowhere, seen at the Traverse, Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2025
When Khalid Abdalla walks on stage and begins speaking about the title of his performance, Nowhere, he does so with a gentle voice and an unassuming, soft presence, marking the difference between the ‘somewhere’ we all are right now – at the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh, for the Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2025 – and a ‘nowhere’ which is a space built by absences, memories of personal struggles, and collective crisis. For somebody like Abdalla, belonging to two cultures and two nations – Egypt and Great Britain – ‘nowhere’ embodies an inner place of contradictions and the painful recognition of having to always negotiate the feeling of being estranged at home.
On stage, behind the performer, a big set-screen (conceived by the production’s costume and set designer Ti Green) becomes a window into the world of history that shaped the life journey of Abdalla and his family from Egypt to the UK.
The slick video design by Sarah Readman, including screening of raw footage of the Egyptian revolution in 2011 shot with a mobile phone and images of the counterrevolution that followed, signal the moment when Abdalla, eager to reconnect with his Egyptian roots, finds himself involved in the wave of rebellion known as the Arab Spring.
Emotionally charged stories of friendship, loss and grief are visualised together with family heirlooms, such as the portrait of Abdalla’s grandfather passed down through generations, symbolically reminding the family of the political activism that runs in the blood.
The projected images not only conjure a visual memoir but create a liminal space between past and present which Abdalla uses to question and expose in picture (which sometimes are physical polaroids projected onto the screen) – the colonial history which has shaped his path in life and that of his family.
Defining himself as both an actor and an activist (beside being a writer and a well-know filmmaker and producer), Abdalla’s dramaturgical process (working with Ruth Little and Chris Thorpe) and embodiment seems to be continuously split between these two dimensions: the desire to tell a story; and re-enacting what he calls an anti-biography through which he connects the historical, economic and geopolitical circumstances that laid the path for his grandfather and father to become political prisoners in Egypt, and the ethical drive to make sense of his own experiences of xeno-racism and micro aggressions in Britain, particularly as an actor during casting calls and interviews for films in which he is inevitably offered the part of an Arab character – be it playing one of the hijackers in Paul Greengrass’s feature United 93 or Dodi Al Fayed in The Crown on Netflix.
Born in Scotland and raised in London, the first impression of Abdalla’s stage voice is that of a well-educated and well-mannered British man. However, this register is actively and consciously put to the test throughout the performance when Abdalla comes out as Glaswegian, or speaks Arabic to recall conversations with family and friends.
Abdalla is candid and fully aware of how his life path was affected by the choice of his parents to stay in Britain, to not risk that the father would be put into prison back in Egypt due to his political views, and there are many beautiful and raw moments in the performance where bitterness hits, such as in the remark ‘the darkness of the world creates the frame for so much joy…’
Merging physical performance and atmospheric soundtrack with strong visual storytelling – all brilliantly directed by Omar Elerian, an Italian director, dramaturg, and theatre maker of Palestinian descent – this is an exceptional, heartfelt and transformative show because it never lets us forget our shared humanity behind the political stance.
Before the ending, Abdalla asks us to draw a blind self-portrait on a square piece of paper which we have been handed in an envelope together with a pencil and a tiny mirror, while queuing in the foyer. Is it an act of acceptance of who we are or a way of reminding us of our own identity and privilege in Western society?
At the very end of the performance Abdalla makes an origami dove and the process is projected onto the screen where the dove appears huge and almost threatening. He then tells us that he feels uneasy talking about peace in a way that doesn’t recognise the complexity of cultural as well as political forces shaping our world, which include neoliberalism, capitalism and colonisation. These are the forces that lead to greed, violence and war.
However, while in this ‘nowhere’ it is difficult to reconcile with the idea of global peace, in this somewhere – the theatre – Abdalla hopes we might find resolution because we can still play, and all is possible.
And so, for the epilogue, he reverts to the soft presence and compassionate quiet voice of the beginning to talk candidly about Gaza, war, genocide, and the injustice of conflicts. Tears start to pour down the actor’s face – honest, felt, human tears – and our collective heart melts. As an activist he leaves a recommendation with us, to bring that feeling of freedom and understanding we gained from being somewhere (in the theatre) out into the nowhere of our shared lives.
I see audience members pausing at the exit. I see them crying – and I want to cry too. As Abdalla appears in the foyer, I go to greet him and ask him how he manages the shift between two very diverse cultural mindsets while continuing to be so honest and critical, yet compassionate, towards both his Egyptian cultural roots and British upbringings, and he candidly answer that it is always a tension. In Nowhere Abdalla recognises these tensions with compelling urgency and an outstanding presence, warmly inviting us to reconsider and reconcile with what it means to be human.
Featured image (top) Khalid Abdalla: Nowhere, photo Manuel Vasson.
Nowhere is produced by Fuel and plays at The Traverse, Edinburgh, 12 – 24 August 2025. For further information and to book, see www.edfringe.com
Nowhere is part of the Here and Now Showcase 2025. Here & Now – Performance Created in England is delivered by Battersea Arts Centre, FABRIC and GIFT, and is funded by Arts Council England. The show premiered at Battersea Arts Centre in October 2024.
Further dates in 2025:
Scènes du Grütli, Geneva, 11 – 13 September 2025. Part of La Bâtie, Festival de Genève.
Project Arts Centre (Space Upstairs), Dublin, 10 – 12 October 2025. Tickets available via the Dublin Theatre Festival. Part of Dublin Theatre Festival.