Jenin

The Economist: A theatre of protest “The Island” opened to packed audiences in Palestine’s Jenin refugee camp

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ADAPTED from South Africa’s Robben Island, where Nelson Mandela was jailed under apartheid, to an Israeli prison cell, Athol Fugard’s play “The Island” has opened to packed audiences in the Jenin refugee camp on the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Confined to a concrete floor set in a sea of sand, two cellmates keep up their morale by rehearsing a production of Sophocles’s Antigone, in which a woman chooses to die rather than obey the king’s decree not to bury her brother, a political dissident. “You won’t sleep peacefully,” Antigone tells the king when he condemns her to death.

Despite its transposed setting, the play retains its poignancy. Almost every Palestinian on the West Bank has a brother, father or husband whom the Israeli authorities have, at one time or another, locked away. At present, 4,500 are behind bars. Jenin may have the highest rate of any town. Imprisonment has become a male rite of passage, as well as a place of higher education: many opt for distance learning at Israeli universities.

Ahmad Rokh, one of the actors in “The Island”, who has served four prison terms, was first put inside at the age of 14. The refugee camp in Jenin was a prime source of suicide-bombers during the second intifada (uprising) that lasted from 2000 to around 2005. Nearly a decade on, it has recovered a sense of humour. The audience laughs at the prisoners dressed in drag.

The theatre has had to overcome a troubled phase. Two years ago its founder, Juliano Khemis, a half-Palestinian, half-Jewish actor, was killed in circumstances that neither the Israeli nor the Palestinian authorities have explained. The Freedom Theatre has reopened its drama school after a hiatus of more than a year.

Though the number of Palestinian political prisoners has halved since the height of the second (and most recent) intifada, it is still twice as high as it was a dozen years ago. Those behind bars include hundreds of stone-throwers, 15 members of the Palestinian parliament and 170 people held without trial under “administrative detention”. The Palestinian Authority also runs its own prisons, where scores of leading members of Hamas, the Islamist group that rejects Israel’s existence, have been locked up.

When an Israeli production of the same play was performed at the Hasimta Theatre in Jaffa three years ago, the director, Alon Tiran, observed members of the audience leaving “in a different mindset from when they arrived”. He could not ask for more than that, he said. In Jenin, reactions have been more pronounced. “We are all Antigone,” says Ahmad Jbarah, better known by his nom-de-guerre, Abu Sukar, who attended the play’s opening. “The more the oppressor condemns us as criminals, the more heroic we are,” he says. Mr Sukar was in prison for 27 years for his part in a bombing in Jerusalem in 1975 that caused 15 civilian deaths.

This article appeared here

Suicide Note from Palestine: New play opens at The Freedom Theatre on April 4

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One day before her final exams, Amal has a concerning nightmare: she is Palestine and she has decided to die.

Amal’s nightmare drafts between confusion, torture and despair – notions set as strange characters that symbolise some of the key players in world politics that shape the land, history, politics and the occupation of her country. Interrogated and manipulated, Amal is forced into a comatose state and can barely speak.

– This play is important because it’s pointing at the place of the pain inside the Palestinian people’s minds and hearts, says the Director, Nabil Al-Raee.

Suicide Note from Palestine is a window into the younger generation of Palestine; a generation just as hopeless about their present as they are about the future. The play provides a rare glimpse on the general depression, confusion and concerns of a people regarding its land.

Suicide Note from Palestine is a physical video/visual art performance, inspired by 4:48 Psychosis by Sarah Kane. It is an exploration of identity and uses social satire to present an image of the national trauma of the Palestinian people.

Suicide Note from Palestine is performed at The Freedom Theatre, Jenin Refugee Camp:
Thursday April 4 Première @16:00
Saturday April 6 @12:00 and @16:00
Sunday April 7 @12:00 and @16:00

For more information visit The Freedom Theatre website.

The Palestinian Circus: creative acts between reality and hope

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Posted: December 21st, 2012 ˑ Filled under: .culture, .theatre ˑ  No Comments

This post is also available in: Dutch

al.arte.magazine 

Over the last weeks, The Palestinian Circus School has been performing in Belgium in various locations, offering a show around the theme ‘Kol Saber!’ The travelling company of performers from Ramallah, Palestine differs from the traditional circus setting with the large tent and animal acts. However, classic circus acts such as acrobatics and tightrope walking do form a part of their show, albeit choreographed in a special way and embedded in a story. The young Palestinian people actually use the circus to tell their story to the world.

The Palestinian Circus School was established in 2006 by the Belgian Jessika Devlieghere and her Palestinian husband Shadi Zmorrod. The school teaches around 170 children and young people 9-27 years of age in different parts of the occupied Palestinian territories. Shadi Zmorrod is the former artistic director of the Jewish Jerusalem Circus and started the circus school when the circus refused to take in Palestinian children. The project is a form of cultural resistance against the occupation and the daily threats. The school aims to offer children a solid and safe haven where they can escape the depressing daily reality, just like a real circus family would do. A place that allows them to explore their creativity and develop social and psychological skills. An artistic world in which they can discover fun, embrace hope, create a positive self-image and learn to work in a team.

Kol Saber - © Veronique Vercheval

Kol Saber – © Veronique Vercheval

More than a school

Some of the early students became local trainers themselves in the basic techniques of acrobatics, juggling, trapeze, flower sticks, pois and clowning. They went on to tour refugee camps in the occupied territories with surprising performances. They also performed abroad, in France and Belgium. One of these trainers is Fadi Zmorrod. “I’ve never done anything like circus acts before I started. After three weeks of intensive training I was amazed at the physical capabilities I turned out to have. It’s therapy. I use it to release tension. ” Young students learning more about their culture, and how to trust others, makes the circus school more than just a school. “We went to other cities. The hardest thing I encountered were the many checkpoints, because they made me nervous. But I also learned more about my culture. We had to get rid of some old ideas like ‘men are stronger’ and ‘girls have more fun.’ For example , touching eachother is prohibited. We have to be physical but without touching eachother. The trust factor is also at play. Girls have less confidence. We learn about gender roles and empowerment. “

The youngsters needed something to look forward to in order to take life into their own hands. The circus school enables them to do just that, without having to live in constant fear. According to Noor Abu Rob, one of the young artists, growing up was difficult. “We only had the streets to live in and sometimes we couldn’t go to school because of a curfew. For me, circus is an open world. I can express myself better through the circus than through words. “

Kol Saber - © Lucia Ahmad

Kol Saber – © Lucia Ahmad

Kol Saber - © Veronique Vercheval

Kol Saber – © Veronique Vercheval

When they first performed in Belgium the shows theme was ‘Circus behind the wall’. The performance was based on the Palestinians’ daily lives, in which the notion of separation is central. The title refers to the wall that separates the Palestinian territories from Israel. The Palestinian Circus wants to teach the public about communication through juggling and clowning acts. This time around they performed their new contemporary circus production ‘Kol Saber!’. The production centers on the various realities of streetlife, a story of the ongoing challenge to escape the external power holding sway over their lives.

‘Kol Saber!’ literally means ‘Eat (the sweet fruit of) the cactus!’, but figuratively speaking ‘Eat patience!’, and tells the story of young people waiting for a change in their society. They try everything and keep believing in hope but finally have to accept the fact their lives will remain the same.

The 14 december show in the De Roma concert hall in Borgerhout was overshadowed by the death of the 17-year-old Mohammad Ziad Al-Salaymeh, one of the students of the Palestinian Circus School. He was shot and killed near a checkpoint by an IDF soldier on his birthday. Mohammad went out to buy a birthday cake and came under fire because the soldiers suspected him to be carrying a gun. Later the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported he had been carrying a toy gun. That news devastated both performers and founders of the travelling company. Jessika Devlieghere held an emotional speech and the young artists dedicated the show to Mohammad al-Salaymeh and the many other innocent victims. It was not the first time that candles were lit. In 2008 they did the same, observing a minute’s silence. The young artists hope this is the last time.

Ahmad Abu Taleb - © Vince Buyssens

Ahmad Abu Taleb – © Vince Buyssens

Ahmad Abu Taleb (21) from Jenin has been performing in the Palestinian Circus for 4,5 years now. “For me, the circus is a way to tell my story and that of the Palestinian people in a creative way and to show it to the world. We recently lost our colleague Mohammad al-Salaymeh. No matter how many atrocities we experience, we will find the power to perform over and over again. Because for every Mohammad who dies by Israeli violence, we are performing even more passionately on stage.”

As has been said, the performance was far from a traditional circus show, but rather a profound story poetically told by means of dance and circus techniques like juggling, aerial acrobatics, balancing acts and jumps. With coats dancing for life, diverging and converging, fighting and living, in a tense context, until a mysterious coat falls from the sky and change the rules of the game. ‘Kol Saber!’ portrays the conflicting life between the bitter realities imposed by the occupation and the sweet and colorful dream of the bereaved sea.

Kol Saber - © Lucia Ahmad

Kol Saber – © Lucia Ahmad

The project gives the students a sense of dignity and is a way to prevent becoming a victim in a dehumanizing conflict, allowing them, on the contrary, to be proud to be Palestinian.

Artists: Ahmed Abu Taleb, Fadi Zmorrod, Mohammed Abu Taleb, Mohammed Abu Sakha and Noor Abu Rob
Directed by Shadi Zmorrod
Costume design: Fadila Aalouchi

More information: http://www.palcircus.ps/
Written by Malikka Bouaissa – Asma Ould Aissa

This article first appeared in al.arte.magazine 

SoA Women take Shakespeare project to Palestine

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By Zoë Miller

Columbia Daily Spectator

Published October 1, 2012

The Manhattan Shakespeare Project’s current venture is centered on the creation of original theatrical pieces that will incorporate Shakespeare’s sonnets and Palestinian youth songs.

For the all-female Shakespeare company Manhattan Shakespeare Project, all the world really is a stage­ for cross-cultural communication.  MSP’s newest project, “Shakespeare For A New World: The Palestinian Voice,” is centered on the creation of original theatrical pieces that will incorporate Shakespeare’s sonnets and Palestinian youth songs. Teaching artists Sarah Eismann, SoA ’12, and Jensen Olaya, SoA ’12, will travel to Palestine in late November, accompanied by documentary film director Lena Rudnick, SoA directing candidate, to work with students at the Drama Academy Ramallah and the Jenin refugee camp’s Freedom Theatre.

Eismann said that although “Shakespeare For A New World” and MSP are not political entities, projects “have the potential for having political undertones” by nature of the fact that MSP is an all-female company traveling to a region often associated with more rigid patriarchy. But the purpose of “Shakespeare For A New World,” above all else, is for Eismann and Olaya to work with the students at the Drama Academy Ramallah to create theater and art. Due to their geographical location, the Palestinian theater students are extremely isolated. The project will “help get their voice outside of the borders of Palestine,” Eismann said.

The concept of “Shakespeare For A New World” emerged after Eismann performed in an international production of “A Midsummer Night’s Dream” that took place in 2011 at the Folkwang University of the Arts in Germany. The “Midsummer” cast was comprised of acting students from Folkwang, in addition to students from Columbia, the Drama Academy Ramallah, the Shanghai Theatre Academy, and the Lucian Blaga University of Sibiu. Eismann said that she was inspired by the beauty of “a Palestinian Helena working with a Romanian Demetrius.” Shakespeare’s words, she realized, could effectively cut across cultural and linguistic barriers. “We found our common world. We found our common language,” she said.

The Folkwang production, Eismann said, led to an epiphany. “If only the world could work this way, we would have no problems,” she said. “It wouldn’t be me against you—it would be what was on that stage.”

Eismann was thrilled when the Drama Academy Ramallah’s director invited her to teach the “Shakespeare For A New World” workshops and make this vision of “a completely united, holistic, humanistic world” more of a reality—at least in theater.

As time went on, the project gained momentum and “exploded into this very idealistic, very grandiose plan.” The intense, six-hours-a-day workshops will include not only actors from the Academy but also teenagers at the Jenin refugee camp, which is one of the oldest, most devastated refugee camps in Palestine. With the help of a team including Rudnick, these workshops and the performances that result from them will be filmed.

In the next five years, Eismann hopes to take the methodology that the MSP team learns from the Ramallah and Jenin workshops and bring it to high school students in New York.

The end goal, she said, is to get diverse communities across the globe to learn about each other, “to use Shakespeare to talk, to create theater, to create peace.”

arts@columbiaspectator.com

This article appeared in Colubmia Spectator

 

 

 

 

Freedom Bus takes cultural resistance to the streets

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Freedom Bus takes cultural resistance to the streets

The Freedom Bus, an initiative of Jenin’s Freedom Theatre, used interactive theatre and cultural activism to bear witness, raise awareness and build alliances throughout occupied Palestine and beyond. From September 23-October 1 2012, Palestinians and allies from around the world took part in a 9-day solidarity ride through 11 communities in the West Bank of occupied Palestine. Read more

The National: West Bank theatre founder languishes in prison

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West Bank theatre founder languishes in prison

JENIN, WEST BANK // Six years ago, a fierce Palestinian fighter laid down his weapons and helped found a liberal performing-arts theatre in Jenin’s conservative refugee camp. It was a remarkable turnaround for Zacharia Zubeidi, who fought for Fatah’s Al Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades during the second intifada, to exchange violence for what he called cultural resistance against Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian territories.