Application 39 at Aviva Studios

In 2048, exactly a century after the Nakba, Gaza is preparing to host the Summer Olympics. It sounds like an impossible proposition – and that is precisely where Palestinian writer and theatre-maker Ahmed Masoud’s new black comedy Application 39 begins.

Coming to Aviva Studios this October, the play follows two young IT workers at Gaza municipality who hack the Olympic bidding process as a prank – and unexpectedly win. What follows is a surreal journey through occupation, bureaucracy, reconstruction and the huge task of imagining a city capable of welcoming the world.

Drawing on real-life testimonies, including from people in Gaza, Application 39 uses satire and dark comedy to explore a future shaped not only by conflict, but by survival, rebuilding and possibility. Rather than presenting Gaza solely through images of destruction, Masoud asks audiences to imagine something very different – a city still standing, still creating and looking towards a future of its own.

Writer and theatre-maker Ahmed Masoud, who grew up in Jabalia Camp in northern Gaza, told us, “The play has allowed me to dream that when people come together hope can be born.” And that sense of possibility runs right through the work.

The production comes to Manchester as part of a UK tour, directed by Cressida Brown and co-produced by ETT, Matthew Schmolle Productions and Stratford East. The Guardian has described the work as “art, activism, political resistance and storytelling”, while also recognising the joy and humour that sits alongside its subject matter.

Bold, funny and rooted in lived experience, Application 39 offers audiences a different way of thinking about Gaza – not only as a place defined by what has happened to it, but as somewhere shaped by hope, with a future still to be imagined.