Palestine humanised

The famed Ramallah-based Al Kasaba Theatre group payed a visit to Abu Dhabi last week to perform their award-winning play, Alive From Palestine: Stories Under Occupation.

The performances were simple, hilarious, sad, moving, disarming and ironic. The play came about after the theatre group took to the streets during the 2000 intifada to speak to the people and find a creative outlet for their plight.

The result was over 30 monologues, close to 20 of which were selected to make up Alive From Palestine: Stories Under Occupation.



Bar poor sound quality at the Abu Dhabi National Theatre and crying babies, the play was excellent; never too political, never disparaging and very often disarmingly funny. The group usually provides scrolling subtitles for non-Arabic speaking audiences, but this time around they provided us with a booklet. I can understand Arabic pretty well, but some of the accents (ie, the heavy Jerusalem accent) were too strong to follow.

The Al Kasaba Group has gone all over the world with their performances: Japan, Canada, US, UK, Australia, Sweden...At the press conference held the day before the performance, one of actors recounted a performance of Stories Under Occupation while in Brussels, during which the Israeli ambassador was attending. The actor rushed to speak to the ambassador at the end of his performance to ask him what he thought of the performance, to which the ambassador replied: "It was great, and these are dangerous words."

Dangerous in the sense that the Palestinian plight is humanised through the play, and becomes more than just a news item for the world to watch, ponder momentarily, and discard. Dangerous because the occupiers may see more than just pesky Palestinians intruding on their land. Dangerous because the rest of the world may begin to empathise with an overshadowed and forgotten population.

"We find time for entertainment, we play cards, or leaf through our tidings in yesterday's wounded papers. We read the horoscopes. For the year 2002, the cameras will smile for those born under the sign of the siege. Whenever yesterday comes to me I say: 'It's not time yet, go away, come back tomorrow.'" (excerpt from Alive From Palestine: Stories Under Occupation)