Seeing a work-in-progress is a great way to get introduced to a new play. As the play begins to take shape, its life morphs into a staged reading, and audiences are given a rare insight into the creative development of a new production. Already successfully staged in Israel, playwright Tomer Aldubi’s Sharif is a powerfully poignant queer coming-of-age story that offers a profound exploration of these experiences rarely given mainstream attention.

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Sharif, Daniel Hintner, is a typical teenager trying to understand his sexual identity. Meeting Nour, Tarik Badwan's secret feelings, desires, and longings give way to a connection with another man he thought was impossible. As his relationship with Nour grows tighter, the general social and political issues they face on the West Bank start to put clouds over Sharif’s happiness. Having already been grappling with the changes to his relationship with Nour, Sharif is faced with putting his own life on hold and taking over the family bakery. As tensions grow between Sharif and his parents, Yasmine Alice and Amir Boutrous, he’s outed and must flee his home for shelter in Israel, a choice that leaves him vulnerable and helpless.

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This is the second time I’ve seen Sharif, and the difference is noticeable. Aldubi has reduced some characters and simplified the story, which allows the audience to fully see, feel, and understand Sharif and the situation he has been forced into. Aldubi’s writing is sincere and has a purpose, but at the same time, he doesn’t try to preach. Instead, what he creates is a parallel world in which, across an assumed border, queer communities celebrate their freedom and their ability to love and live, yet all around us there are people desperate for that same freedom. Young men like Sharif only know fear, as if being who they are and wanting to love who they love is something to be ashamed of.

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Towards the end of the piece, Sharif, now low and more desperate than he’s been before, meets a shopkeeper who lures him in by dangling money and a prospective job as a way to entrap him. The moment felt too real, and after the reading, I mentioned in conversation that the scene should be cut out. I said that this was so real that the audience would be too fixated on it and that it risks overshadowing the rest of the play. It was only after I took a breath that I was able to appreciate the impact this scene has. Even with scripts in hand and a bare stage, as Hintner and Boutrous take the audience out of the JW3 theatre, you’re there in this ratty convenience store. At this point, Sharif is so exhausted and has seemingly been let down by everyone around him. Hintner doesn’t miss a beat in letting the audience feel Sharif's despondence. It’s the initial conversation between the shopkeeper and Sharif that lulls the audience into a false sense of security, and Aldubi, for a brief moment, plays on this. Sharif is wary but is desperate, and the shopkeeper is more than eager to take advantage of the situation.