THE PITCH


“one of the most powerful antiwar plays ever penned” 
-- Plays International  

“…summons the inspiration for a dandy film.”  
-- VARIETY

 
Set in South Lebanon, Karen Sunde’s HOW HIS BRIDE CAME TO ABRAHAM – an Off-Off Broadway play rewritten as a feature film – is a soaring love story born out of the same conflict as the 2009 Academy Award nominated WALTZ WITH BASHIR.  

When a fleeing refugee encounters a wounded soldier, irresistible Palestinian and Israeli characters clash, then ignite a passion that heals. ABRAHAM taps three genres – Romeo and Juliet on a battlefield; enemies trapped together who must rely on each other to survive; and lovers whose cultures divide and estrange them.  While the timely Israeli-Palestinian plot has appeal for world markets, the film’s small cast and limited locations permit a low budget.

Our quest is to ignite the passion of a Producer and a Director for ABRAHAM. The film has no attachments.

Though ABRAHAM is intimate, it also has perilous Middle East warfare and the private battles with history that haunt its peoples.  Audiences say it depicts the humanity of Israeli and Palestinian adversaries who must depend on each other, that it opens hearts and envisions a path to co-existence.  ABRAHAM has already generated infectious word of mouth from theatre-goers deeply moved by its message of hope.  At its end audiences sit stunned and silent – first mesmerized, then bursting with talk.  Plays International called it “One of the most powerful anti-war plays ever penned.”

ABRAHAM’s impact on audiences and multiple requests led Sunde to rewrite it as a feature film to be viewed worldwide.  The film project was immediately sponsored by IDOC/North America, a non-profit dedicated to fostering human renewal, education, and democratic ideals. 

Our creative team produced a TRAILER to convey ABRAHAM’s excitement that itself became a finalist in A&E’s Shorts Festival. The team included cinematographer Yahel Herzog (“The Making Of” films BOURNE ULTIMATUM, THE INTERPRETER, UNITED 93) as co-director with Sunde; Amir Babayoff, a popular lead in the Israeli television series WINGS; and the captivating Maya Serhan, a Palestinian/American with an extensive career in Independent film (DEAR J, TOGETHER, SUMMERTIME).  

ABRAHAM’s screenplay and script breakdown are drafted.  Its companion documentary PLAYING PEACE continues, and Full House Productions, NY has created an AUDIO PLAY of ABRAHAM. 

ABRAHAM is for every demographic; its appeal to young and old, male and female, across ethnic and religious divides is already proven.  Enthusiastic industry feedback predicts the film will deliver even more powerfully than the play.   According to VARIETY the play’s “cinematic thrust…summons the inspiration for a dandy film”    (See REVIEWS and FEEDBACK)

CONTACT US to read the screenplay, to learn how our plans proceed, to take up a thrilling project, to make this film!


QUICK BACKSTORY OF THE PLAY

After its debut at Playwrights Theatre of New Jersey (1992), for the next decade ABRAHAM had multiple performances and readings in New York and nationwide at theatres and college campuses culminating in a 2002 Equity revival at Playwrights Theater.  Then in 2003 the play had an Off-Off Broadway production at Looking Glass Theater by Praxis Theatre Project, New York, in which the current actors were discovered, a score composed, and a documentary about the project, PLAYING PEACE, began shooting.  The play’s official premiere was in January 2004 at the Unicorn Theatre in Kansas City.  ABRAHAM’s first publication in book form was in a collection, PLAYS BY KAREN SUNDE (2001); its second was as a single, HOW HIS BRIDE CAME TO ABRAHAM (Broadway Play Publishing, New York, 2006).

Stage performances continued with a production for International Catholic Associations by Actors Stock Company/NYC in 2006 and one at Youngstown University, 2008, and readings at other venues, including the Princeton Middle East Society at the Woodrow Wilson School for International Affairs, twice at Stanford University for their Sociology of Terrorism seminar, and in New York, for Congregation Ansche Chesed synagogue, the Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, and twice for the Israeli/Palestinian Working Group at Quaker House, the United Nation’s sanctuary for quiet diplomacy.

University of Massachusetts undergraduates identified so strongly with ABRAHAM’s young couple they turned on to international affairs; Stanford University students said ABRAHAM changed their perception of the conflict forever; at a matinee in New Jersey packed with multi-ethnic high-schoolers and gray-haired retirees, all sat riveted and breathless together, and in New York, Sunde reports: “Israelis and Palestinians stood side by side weeping while they thanked me.”