My mission is to keep [Iraqi Jewish] culture alive; to sustain that culture because we don’t want history repeating itself. And to educate – we are all the same people. We are all in the mindset of being ONE. And that we should celebrate our differences instead of fearing them or being alienated by those differences.
L to R: Christina Kotlar, Producer; Frances McGarry, Host; Valerie David, Featured Guest
Valerie David, is a New York City-based performer/playwright. Her mission in life is to educate and empower through the performing arts.
~David Perlman Photography
Valerie’s mission in life is to use theater as a unique, humorous, entertaining, thought-provoking vehicle to inspire while helping to foster healing, especially in a world with rising prejudice, intolerance and discrimination—never giving up the beliefs that love and peace will prevail and always triumph in the end.
Valerie David’s award-winning solo show, Baggage From BaghDAD: Becoming My Father’s Daughter, is about one Middle Eastern Jewish family’s true inspirational journey of being forced to flee from religious persecution during the 1941 “Farhud” pogrom in Baghdad. It is the story of Valerie’s father and his family’s struggle to transcend their harrowing past and build a new home in America. As father and daughter learn to love and to accept their differences, the importance of family takes center stage as she begins to understand how his tale of survival and perseverance shaped her convictions and her future.
Because the play is rooted in the historical civil unrest for the Jews of Iraq, Baggage From BaghDAD also mirrors the current struggle of today’s Ukrainian refugees, and the continuing rise of racial and religious discrimination worldwide.
Her goal for Baggage From BaghDAD is to perform it both domestically and internationally as an educational piece to create awareness of The Farhud, an essential, important part of history that has largely been forgotten—a Middle Eastern pogrom against the Jews of Baghdad, where over 1,000 Jews were killed and forever changed their lives.
Some of the universal themes of Valerie’s solo show center on immigration, refugees, social injustice, generational trauma, discrimination, prejudice, mental health, repression, bullying, and the love and loss of family. This play celebrates the resiliency of the human spirit. It finds humor and hope, even in the darkest of times.
It is an accepted fact that Hitler had Mein Kampf translated into Arabic and thus began the trouble for the Middle Eastern Jews. There were plans for concentration camps and gas chambers, as over one million Jews lived in the Middle Eastern countries in the 1930s/the ’40s, and the Middle Eastern Jews’ existence in the Middle East dates back thousands of years. Valerie’s family was part of that diaspora. Her family fled the night of The Farhud with only what they could carry, never to return.
This tragic time in history had a permanent impact on Middle Eastern culture with its main themes highlighting today’s turbulent times and the global increase of prejudice and discrimination against those who are minorities, those of different faiths, and sexual orientation. Valerie takes you on a journey portraying over 15 different characters spanning her family’s travels, their experiences throughout Iraq, Europe, India and eventually settling in the U.S. and those whom Valerie herself encountered along the way.
Valerie wrote and also currently performs the award-winning, internationally acclaimed solo show, The Pink Hulk: One Woman’s Journey to Find the Superhero Within. She wrote the autobiographical comedic drama The Pink Hulk as a cancer survivor to express the empowerment she felt being able to find humor and superhero inner strength going through three bouts of cancer to become a 3-time cancer survivor—first Stage III Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma, Stage II Breast Cancer, and then Stage IV Metastatic Breast cancer, which she has conquered. Valerie is a true superhero—she currently has no evidence of disease—no trace of her cancer as of April 2019. The Pink Hulk has been accepted into almost 50 different play festivals worldwide since its 2016 debut, performed in over 25 different cities, including touring in Europe, and is a testament TO NEVER GIVE UP! It has won several awards including the Audience Choice Award in the Shenandoah Fringe and WOW Award in Sweden’s Gothenburg Fringe, and Valerie has been touring the show since 2016, including performances virtually throughout the pandemic. Valerie won the Act Solo Show Award in the Reykjavik Fringe Festival for her in-person performances in Iceland in July 2021. Valerie and The Pink Hulk have been featured on TV, radio, in publications and on podcasts, including NBC 4 New York, CBS, FOX, amNY, Heal magazine, The IndyStar, Breast Friends Cancer Support Radio Network, Mia’s World, First Online With Fran and is thrilled to be returning, The Crisis Help Show, the Jim Masters Show! Live, Tamara L. Hunter’s Service Hero Show and Reykjavik Fringe Festival podcast. Valerie raises money through The Pink Hulk performances for domestic and international cancer organizations. For more info on Valerie, visit https://pinkhulkplay.com/
Memberships include the Dramatists Guild, League of Professional Theatre Women, AEA and SAG-AFTRA. She also performed improv throughout New York City with improv groups Faceplant, Cronuts and Cherub. A graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts-Manhattan campus and James Madison University,
Valerie also teaches improv both domestically and internationally and at nationwide state thespian conferences. A big thank you to Fran for this opportunity!
Social Media
Email: PinkHulkPlay@gmail.com
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IG: @pinkhulkplay
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