The intent of Ami Dayan’s play is laid bare at its outset.

“Our objective is not to necessarily agree, prove anyone right or wrong, or even alter anyone’s position,” actor Mark Collins told a Boulder audience on May 31, during the last of several performances of “The Conversation,” a dramatized discussion about Israel and Gaza.

“We are committed to fostering productive dialogues in the hope that minds and hearts might expand,” he added, voicing a hope that “listening in good faith” would foster mutual respect, understanding and even self-examination.

Dayan, an Israeli-American who wrote and stars in the play, calls it the “forbidden” discussion. Fresh horror has made it more so, seemingly by the hour. The day before the final Boulder show, a United Nations official called the Gaza Strip “the hungriest place on Earth” amid Israel’s “stranglehold” on aid as its war with Hamas continues. A day after the performance, a man calling for the murder of Zionists set fire to a group of peaceful marchers seeking the release of Israeli hostages. The site of the attack, on Boulder’s Pearl Street Mall, is a short drive from the theater.

A month, more horrors and a near-war later, Dayan and the cast are set to bring the show to Denver next week. The play opens Wednesday at the Buntport Theater, with additional shows on Thursday and on July 6, Dayan said. The play’s return is faster than Dayan had planned, but he said the urgency to have the conversations — and to maintain Gaza’s place in them — has only grown, particularly in the wake of the Boulder attack. The play follows four “volunteers” plucked from the audience who come on stage to argue, vent, defend, empathize and share personal stories about the conflict in Israel, Gaza and the West Bank.

Dayan plays an Israeli whose family fled persecution in Europe. Former Boulder High School teacher Julia Halaby plays a Palestinian whose father was expelled from his home after Israel was established in 1948. Two other actors, Sonny Zinn and Mel Schaffer, play more neutral characters who push the complexity and humanity of the conflict while Halaby and Dayan’s characters dig in and argue.

True to Collins’ opening as one of the conversation’s facilitators, the play is not a lecture or a brow-beating. Audience members won’t find a detailed debate about the history of Israel and the Palestinians, the Oslo Accords, or the first and second intifadas.

It’s still rooted in reality, though — including discussing the death tolls in Gaza and the Oct. 7 attacks by Hamas; the recent detention in the United States of Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil, a Columbia University graduate student; and the killing of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C. Halaby’s character was influenced by her own Palestinian father, who really was removed from his Jaffa home in 1948.

But the play primarily meets the audience where it is: on an emotional, personal level.

“It creates a sense of (intellectual) danger, in my opinion, because you might be challenged,” Dayan said. “I might be uncomfortable, but I’m willing to go there, and I’m heard in this space.”

Conversation as a seed

Schaffer, who viewed their role as joining art with activism, said the play initially faced opposition from people on either side “because they didn’t know what to expect.” That wariness has no doubt been fueled by the ever-growing death toll: More than 58,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza during Israel’s military campaign, according to the Gaza Health Ministry. More than 1,200 Israelis were killed in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack by the terror group Hamas, while 250 people were taken hostage.

The actors pointed back to the first lines of the play. The goal is to establish common humanity as a foundation. Schaffer, who plays a “smart-as-(expletive)” young person challenging the other characters, said they wanted to plant a seed.

“And if the seed is conversation,” said Schaffer, who uses they/them pronouns, “then that’s what matters.”

Sorting out commonality and humanity can be messy, said Jennifer Ho, the director of the Center for Humanities and the Arts at the University of Colorado Boulder. Dayan sits on an advisory board at the center.

“What we want is short TikTok videos that tell us what to do, saying ‘You’re right and, therefore, I believe in what you stand for,’ or ‘You’re wrong,’ “ Ho said. “… The fact that I have to sit and listen may cause me discomfort. But it will always remind me that I’m dealing with a human and not just somebody who — this is how we get to political violence, to the guy who shot and killed the people in Minnesota.”

She was referring to a man’s shootings of two Democratic lawmakers and their spouses in that state earlier this month, killing one representative and her husband.

The play was a joining of Dayan’s and Ho’s work. Dayan had created an interview game that seeks to build trust over a series of questions, many of which are basic get-to-know-you prompts. The center at CU had started hosting a series of difficult dialogues to publicly discuss complex and heated topics.

Dayan suggested using his question-and-answer method to expand the dialogue series. The first topic was Israel and Gaza.

After the Oct. 7 attack, he’d organized staged readings of an Israeli play about maintaining humanity after a massacre. They also included readings of poems by Palestinian writers.

As the conflict dragged on, Dayan decided to write a play that dramatized one of CU’s difficult dialogues.

He still uses the play and poems: His pro-Israel character reads a poem from the perspective of a Palestinian who writes their mother’s name on their leg so that they can be identified if they’re crushed in an airstrike. Halaby’s character reads the beginning of the Israeli play, which describes the beginning of the Oct. 7 attack from an Israeli perspective.

Gov. Jared Polis attended one of the final Boulder performances. Reema Wahdan, a doctor and Palestinian activist who participated in panel discussions after the play, said she spoke with Polis afterward about how Colorado-based tech and defense companies are involved in the war in Gaza.

The conversation ended with Polis walking away, Wahdan said. On Friday, the governor’s office said Polis “did not deliberately walk away from anyone” after the performance. In a statement, the office confirmed he took his family to see the play and enjoyed it, noting that he congratulated cast members and panelists afterward.

“Art can be a great way to have difficult conversations, and I really appreciated the perspectives presented in the play,” Polis said in the statement. “We had good conversations around our dinner table following the play and I hope that it also inspired others to continue pursuing civil conversations.”

Not always finding agreement

The messiness that Ho described is true even for the actors, particularly in the wake of the attack on Pearl Street.

Schaffer’s character is neutral, but Schaffer the actor has tried to hold “very differently sized truths”: the firebombing down the road and the sheer scale of the killing thousands of miles away.

During a joint interview, Dayan and Halaby had a civil but firm back-and-forth about the Boulder attack and about whether marching for one thing — returning the hostages or demanding a ceasefire in Gaza — means ignoring the other.

“It’s a truth, bring the hostages home. This is their focus — I’m fine with that,” Halaby said of the marchers. She later emphasized that she condemned the Boulder attack. “But week after week after week, it does imply that you’re asking people to turn a blind eye to a genocide.”

“The problem with saying, ‘Oh, (the marchers) didn’t have a sign (protesting killings in Gaza) — therefore what? Therefore, they deserve it?” Dayan said, as Julia shook her head. “That, to me, is such a waste and misuse of the important message of: Let’s talk about Gaza.”

Befitting the play’s intent, the conversation moved on to the shared goals of the actors. But the back-and-forth was so emblematic of the tension the play seeks to explore that it seemed like an extension of the production. (After the interview, Dayan said the conversation wasn’t a performance — but that he might add it to the play.)

Audiences, meanwhile, have generally responded well. Only one person has walked out, the actors said, and that occurred after most of the production was over.

Wahdan, the Palestinian activist, described the play and its efforts to flip Israeli and Palestinian perspectives as “beautiful.” Schaffer said they’ve brought family friends who are pro-Israel to watch.

“They listened. They were polite about it,” Schaffer said. “I don’t know if we changed minds or opened minds at all, but it just meant a lot that they were there and they stayed and they had positive things to say. I think just that is going further than anything else I’ve seen.”