Valantina Abu Oqsa is a Palestinian actress, theater director, poet and playwright. She was awarded the 2012 Etel Adnan Award for Women Playwrights announced for her play I Am Free,[1][2][3][4][5]
Abu Oqsa was born in Mi'ilya village, in the Upper Galilee, in the north of Israel, on 3 December 1967. She lives in Haifa, Israel, with her husband and children.[6]
Abu Oqsa is a member of the Managing Committee of the Tenth International Women Playwrights Conference (WPIC)[7]inCape Town. In 1986, she started her career in theater with Al Hakawati theater Group[8] in Jerusalem after a year and a half of studying theater in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. At the theater, she is an editor, writer, director and producer. She participated in theatrical productions in Palestine, and performed in cities in Europe, the United States and Arab countries, in several languages. She is one of the co-founders of the Palestinian theater League[9] in Jerusalem.
On 9 April 2002, during the Battle of Jenin, a group of Palestinian activists tried to deliver supplies and medicine to the Jenin Refugee Camp. Abu Oqsa was among them and was shot in the left arm by an Israeli soldier, and as a result completely lost the use of her left elbow. She became known as the "Struggler artist" to Palestinians.[10]
Her play I Am Free was described as "poignant, realistic and cruel, it is a dramatic political statement. Her enchanting language, her full-fledged characters of unusual depth and her unique approach to a very important theme, arouse - or should arouse - the admiration of other playwrights, regardless of class, gender, taste and ethnicity."[11]
Abu Oqsa has written poetry since 1981. Her first poem was published in 1984, in Al Etihad. She had ten of her poems published in various Palestinian newspapers and in 1999 she published her first poetry book, فالنتينا أبو عُقصة.[13]
| Year | Title | Role | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2005 | Mazeh Fee Jad | Umm Sami | TV series |
| 2008 | Laila’s Birthday[14] | Woman in the queue | |
| 2008 | Pomegranates and Myrrh[15][16] | Mariam | |
| 2008 | My Simple Story | The mother | |
| 2015 | Love, Theft & Other Entanglements[17] | A blind woman |