In 2011, masked gunmen assassinated Palestinian-Israeli actor Juliano Mer Khamis, former artistic director of The Freedom Theatre (TFT), but the legacy he left behind is being taken forward with as much fervour. Juliano was a strong believer in cultural resistance and that is what TFT, started in Jenin, north of the West Bank, in 2006, is renowned for.
Eleven cities in India were fortunate to witness street plays, Freedom Jatha , organised by Jana Natya Manch, Delhi (Janam) and Freedom Theatre, with Hamesha Samida being recently performed at Karnataka Chitrakala Parishath in Bengaluru.
On the sidelines of the performance, Faizal Abu Alhjya, of TFT, with members of Janam, spoke of theatre as a tool of resistance, and about occupied Palestine. Faizal recounted the horrors of being holed up in a camp with his family and other Palestinians while there was constant bombing. “None of us thought we would come out alive,” recalls Faizal, who was a teenager at the time. “We were rescued by the army. When I left, I thought this place is khallas (finished). Today I see it as the strongest theatre in the Middle East.”
A passionate and emotional Faizal made it clear that their resistance is not against individuals, but against the Occupation.
“At Freedom Theatre, we start with accepting everybody. We as Palestinians, have a lot of problems. There are many parties and ideologies. When you grow up as a Palestinian, you are already in a box. You don’t decide the frame within which you are put. As a Palestinian, I find this a big mistake. So in Freedom Theatre, we don’t want to put people in a frame. Our art work starts with you, without any expectations or pressures. We give people a place to think.”
He adds that the violence of the Occupation goes beyond bombing.
“It has succeeded in destroying the Palestinian identity. Your mind is pushed down until you feel nothing.” And that’s where Freedom Theatre comes in: to free and nurture the mind. “If you tell a story, it will live a 100 years, at least.”
The Freedom Theatre is multi-dimensional, says Faizal: “We have a theatre school, a multi-media department, where we teach photography, filmmaking. We have a magazine called Voices .”
Sudhanva Deshpande of Janam, threw light on the Palestinian struggle, and corrected misconceptions around Palestinians.
“The Palestinian struggle is a truly secular struggle. The fight is against the Occupation, not against the Jews or the Muslims. When we think of Palestine, we think of two stereotypes: one is that they are victims of bombings, and the second is something that comes from the West — of being a terrorist. There is a different kind of depiction that is real—that of the artiste. Young Palestinians are creative people and they bring to us the idea that the world can change. And that’s what we are trying to do.”
