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Yalla é um podcast de conversas sobre a Palestina—uma luta contínua contra um sistema colonial que persiste há décadas. É sobre romper o silêncio, desafiar narrativas e manter viva a resistência. Porque é preciso falar sempre, independentemente do que o mundo escolhe ouvir.
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Yalla is a podcast that delves into the Palestinian struggle, examining the enduring resistance against a colonial system that has persisted for decades. Our mission is to challenge dominant narratives, amplify silenced voices, and sustain the spirit of resistance. Speaking out is imperative, regardless of the world's attention.
Today, we speak with Emile Saba,
Palestinian theater director,
actor and artistic director
of the Ashtar Theater
in Ramallah.
And...
Emil began his theatrical life
at Ashtar itself,
as a student, in 2001, right?
His work is rooted in magical realism,
poetic, image-driven storytelling
carried by political urgency.
Ashtar was founded in 1991
as the first
theater training organization
for young people in Palestine.
It became the hub
for the theater of the oppressed.
And it is also the home
of the Gaza Monologues,
a project
in which young people in Gaza
turn their own testimonies
into theater performed
around the world,
from marginalized Palestinian communities
to the floor of the UN.
So,
first of all,
thank you for being here
and for making the time to be here.
- Hope you enjoy it.
- Thank you for having me.
You're welcome.
So, you lead the theater...
You lead a theater
with an extraordinary legacy.
Ashtar was the first
youth theater school in Palestine.
What does it mean to inherit
and lead that legacy,
a theater that was built
on the idea that performance
is not just for watching,
but has that weight of a goal
to change realities.
Yeah,
thank you so much for having me.
It's a great responsibility to
lead a theater with such a big legacy
and history and a lot of artists
and students and actors
worked in the theater
for almost 35 years.
We'll be 35 in November this year.
I started, as you mentioned, as a kid,
I was 12 years old,
I went and I continued training
and rehearsing and performing.
Then, I left and came back.
So, I experienced
a lot of stages of the theater.
I was taught
by the best directors and teachers
that worked at Ashtar
and other theatres too.
So, there's a huge responsibility
on how to continue this legacy.
How to even make it better
and to sustain it
and to reach even more people.
But we believe in the same thing.
And we know that we're very important
in our community
and in Palestine theater is needed.
And we found out that,
especially during the genocide,
theater is something essential
and it's not an entertainment thing.
And it's not an extra privilege.
Because we see
that our story is not really said well.
And correctly.
And we're being portrayed all the time
as human animals,
or as terrorists, and all of these things.
So, theater comes to shed a light
on the real day to day stories
that people don't see on the news.
And we try as much as we can
to be a safe space
for people, for children, for the youth,
to always be creative and encouraging
and to be this free stage
for people to talk and be together.
That's what we're trying to do.
And I think this will sustain the legacy.
And the plays that were produced by Ashtar
over the years,
were not only for entertainment.
There's always something
behind the play.
There's a topic, an issue, a conflict.
We try to create
critical thinkers out of our actors,
people that can be international citizens
and can look at things with a critical eye
and have a tool,
which is art and theater,
to express and to reach people.
We're now also stepping into
a new stage.
We're establishing an academy
to teach theater and circus.
Yeah, it's a new chapter.
So, we're moving places,
we're moving from our place in Ramallah
to a nearby town called Birzeit.
- A beautiful place. Did you go there?
- Yeah.
To the university and the museum.
Yeah, so, we're in the town
and it's going to be a hub
for masterclasses
and for students
to learn theater for two years
and to host artists
and to work with the community.
So, this is like a step into novelty
from the legacy and a continuation.
Before asking more questions on the work,
do you, by any chance,
remember why you joined the theater
for the first time?
Yeah, I mean,
I've always been an actor.
At home, with my friends at school.
I always wanted to be in plays
and I used to bring kids
from the street
and my cousins and I always liked
making plays with them.
Film them and...
I wanted to direct...
I would dress up as characters
and walk in the living room,
while my parents were sitting watching TV
and I started doing something.
When I was 12, I did a play.
It was Little Red Riding Hood
and I played the wolf.
I remember that, after the play,
I went to the director,
and I asked him:
"Is there a place I can go
to learn how to do this?"
He said "yeah". "I'm from Ashtar."
I didn't know then.
I went there and I really found myself.
I made great friends
that are still my friends now.
It was a space to create
and be so many things,
and to learn about yourself.
I always had this kind of urge
and need,
but I didn't know how.
Throughout the years,
I was exploring it
and trying different stuff.
Then, I went to the US
and I studied acting
because I wanted a kind of approval.
I needed a certificate
to tell me that I'm an actor.
Yeah, you're
already learning from the best, but...
It helped me and it showed there.
I was like: "Wow, I knew so much."
I did so much
and I wasn't aware of that.
So, it reassured me.
The Gaza Monologues
began with the children
of one war
and, since then,
there have been many more.
Unfortunately, there's a genocide.
And what's it like
to return to that project?
Now?
To put the words of Gaza's
young children on stage again,
knowing that many of them may
no longer be here
or even how lives
from generation to generation
are being impacted by these stories?
I mean,
I acted in the Gaza Monologues
when I was younger
and it was the first time
that I really felt that theater
can be political
and you can do something artistic,
and human,
but also with an impact and a purpose.
When I did it, I felt like "yes",
this is an example of a work
that can move people and really
change them and spread awareness
and bring...
I felt so much responsibility
because the people
I'm representing are alive
and they're my age
and they're trapped in Gaza.
But since then,
and they were written in 2010,
and there were 33 actors
that were Ashtar students and Iman Aoun,
who's the founder,
a co-founder of Ashtar,
worked with them,
with their director Ali Abu Yasin,
for a year with psychosocial interventions
and theater to produce these plays,
these monologues,
and since then
they didn't stop writing.
Every war, unfortunately, they write.
So, we collect the stories,
the monologues,
and we spread them out
and it has been a great movement.
Unfortunately,
it's a bittersweet thing, you know,
because you don't want the war
to happen again,
but once it happens,
people find it the best way
to talk about Palestine
and bring these human, child voices...
And you can see, every year,
how their voices change
and how their perspective...
The first ones had some hope.
The second ones, less hope.
The ones they wrote from 2023 to 2025
are angry monologues.
They really lost
any hope in humanity...
And childhood, in every sense.
And everything that's a part of childhood.
Yeah, it's not there anymore.
We are in contact with them.
They work with us, they practice,
and they write.
So, it's an ongoing thing,
but I think it's very important
because it documents
the daily impact of war
that we don't see on the screens.
We just see numbers and we see
whole neighborhoods getting demolished,
but when you read the monologues,
you read names,
street names,
incidents, hopes, dreams.
- It's giving a soul to the data, right?
- Yes, absolutely.
A soul.
And you see how people,
especially in theater, they gather...
The monologues were read
and performed at demonstrations,
in front of the White House,
in hospitals, prisons, churches,
mosques, everywhere,
and they've been translated
to so many languages
and still, every day, we have people,
groups around the world that register,
read and perform.
So, it's a very strong thing to do.
Yeah, but the actors are still in Gaza.
Some of them fled
and went to other countries,
but most of them
are still in horrible situations.
Yeah...
Your artistic signature, let's say,
is magical realism.
So, poetry and images
rather than a straight kind of documentary
and in the context...
And this is...
I find it fascinating
because this is in a context
where the facts alone
are already overwhelming
and the content is already deep.
Yeah...
Why magical realism in Palestine
and what can poetic,
imaginative theater reach
that a news report
or a documentary cannot?
Great question.
I didn't know that I was doing
magical realism,
but from one piece to the other
I saw people writing honestly
about the work
and describing it as that,
so I was, like:
"Maybe I'm doing magical realism."
But the context
that we're living in is very surreal.
We're not really living in
a logical situation at all.
Things happen all the time.
It could be good magic or bad magic,
but there's something
supernatural always happening.
And, in theater, for me,
because we are in a political context,
and I see the expectations
that they want to see a Palestinian play
about Palestine,
but what topic do you want
to talk about Palestine?
So, from there,
I started any work that I do,
if it's political, with something
fictional in it.
It's either things that happen suddenly,
like a radio speaking poetry.
Or characters suddenly start singing or...
There's something that is unreal
that's happening
because people are on the edge
between real and unreal.
At the end of the day, we're making art.
I want people to be entertained
and to be amazed somehow
and to get the information
and to get the story,
but also to be
talked to on a different level.
I love aesthetics
and the beauty of theater.
I don't want to do something
that they can get the same information
from the news or from a book
because everything is there
and this is the question
that we always face:
what do people need?
What do I want to say to people
that they don't know?
Do I want them to go on the streets
and make a revolution?
Can I afford that?
Can I protect them?
I can't.
Do I want them
to have new knowledge
or new ideas, but I feel
everyone knows everything already.
It's out there in the open.
So, it becomes like
just having and creating this
human connection and love for art,
that it can elevate you,
it can take you to a world
that is not here for an hour,
or an hour and a half,
and maybe that
will create something within you.
And that's fun.
Because I love fiction
and I love magic
and the supernatural
and fairy tales and mythology,
so, I try to integrate it
into my work all the time.
- Yeah...
- Yeah...
Your production, Gernica Gaza,
takes its name from the Picasso
anti-war painting,
which is very well known.
You said it shows Palestinians
not as victims,
but as resilient beings
reaching out for connection.
And...
Audiences are filling theaters
night after night,
with many saying
it's finally allowed them to cry.
So,
why was it so important for you
to refuse that aspect of victimhood
and
what happened in the room,
if you could describe it
from the point of view
of the playwright and who is seeing
how the audience is reacting to it?
When people can finally
let themselves weep.
Yeah, it was, or...
There were several moments.
First of all,
the play was written by two writers:
Ismail Khalidi, who's a Palestinian,
Chilean-Lebanese writer,
and Naomi Wallace,
who's a famous American writer.
They wrote it during the war,
in 2024,
over three months,
which was a very fast process.
They got...
I went to them with a play
called Gernica, by Fernando Arrabal.
It talks about a couple being hit,
bombed and the wife is under the toilet,
trapped in the toilet
and the husband is outside
and they talk about war
and helping each other and stuff.
I went to them with the play
and asked if they could adapt it to now.
I was looking for a play
that can speak to the moment
and there's nothing.
Nothing could stand to what's happening.
How can you put everything on stage?
- Those questions...
- Maybe with Joana's...
Definitely.
I'm very inspired by her work.
So, they wrote this
inspired by Picasso's painting
and the main concept was human animals
and kind of reclaiming
that name, that title, that...
If they called us "human animals",
what does that mean?
The play talks about the impact of war
on humans, on animals,
on plants, on nature, on air,
because we're all one.
So, during the performances,
it was the first time that
I experienced that the audience
and myself weren't clapping.
No one clapped on the first show.
Everyone sat there after it ended
for 10 minutes in silence.
I was like: "Did they like it?"
But also what does "liking" mean
in this situation?
The characters, I wanted...
I'll stay on the audience.
Then, from every performance...
When we finished the show
and I went to see the audience,
they were crying.
They came to me and they were like:
"Since the war,
this is the first time
that we allowed ourselves
to feel what is happening."
We also worked on the sound design.
We kind of brought the...
The realism and the magical realism.
There are a lot of abstract sounds,
but then you hear bombs
coming from everywhere.
The drones,
the planes,
the warplanes and bombs in the distance.
We kind of brought that experience
to this black box.
So, the people
were really feeling the impact
and the characters
are very inspiring and strong.
I wanted them to be colorful.
We had clean, colorful clothes,
and one of them is a surfer girl,
another is a beekeeper,
one of them is a freedom fighter,
one of them is a boy who found out
that bringing together
pieces of humans and animals
can bring them to life.
So, he finds a cat without a leg
and a baby's arm.
He puts those together
and it comes alive again.
So, we were trying to convey
these ideas of connecting
and that we are shattered,
and we are disconnected like limbs
and we're trying to...
I wanted to give hope to people.
As in, we can move on from this.
We can become stronger
and we can become human animals,
but maybe with horse legs
and deer antlers.
Something super human.
Then, through the performances,
I saw people warming up to it
and clapping and it was connected
to what was happening outside.
At the beginning,
there were a lot of bombs
and we went out of the show
and there's a new genocide
happening in Rafah
or in Dair al-Balah or in Gaza.
Then, people started giving
and allowing themselves
to enjoy the play as an artwork
and clap and interact.
Then, near the end of the tour,
there was sometimes laughing
and clapping within the show.
I felt that the psychology of the people
started to change.
You probably felt that there's
different clapping, right?
There's clapping from...
Or even...
When you feel represented
and you are clapping
out of that adrenaline.
"Yeah, I want to hear this."
Absolutely, yeah. It's not like...
Exactly. "How beautiful". Yeah.
So...
We were just talking about
how theater is
also psychosocial survival
and all that you are describing.
What have you seen
theaters do for people,
but especially for children
carrying trauma
that has no other outlet?
Yeah...
I mean, I...
I've seen, and I'm seeing,
how an hour
of just play for kids can really change
their mood and their perspective
about themselves
and for their love to continue
and come back to the theater.
And focus in school.
We worked with a lot of schools.
We went to classrooms
and gave them 45 minutes,
sometimes an hour, of theater games.
And we observed their improvement
and a lot of kids
had their focus improved,
their spirit became better,
and, at the end of the day,
it's a safe space,
that they don't get anywhere.
Not in school,
not at home, not in the street,
they just play
and it's play with a purpose.
We try to kind of dig
a little bit deeper every time
into their problems, worries, fears.
They write a lot.
They act out their problems
and the scenes that they see.
It's a great, healthy outlet.
Slowly, they become more aware
of how to handle
things happening around us
because it's a very stressful life.
So, theater becomes an escape for them,
but also a tool.
And...
And it's therapy.
It's psychological work,
but through theater.
It's fun
and you heal yourself without knowing it.
Yeah, this is more
of a theory question,
but I was just thinking
that sometimes there's some tension
around the word "healing"
because it almost transforms
this as a private process,
in a way,
or if...
If simply...
If people simply just had to cope with it
to survive and...
And cope better with an occupation
that shouldn't exist from the start.
So, all of these...
I just feel that,
in different contexts,
speaking with different Palestinians,
the word "healing"
or when you talk about it, it's always...
There's some tension...
For some, it's okay,
for others it's not about healing.
So, how do you...
How do you hold...
... healing and politics together?
In the sense of helping people
to survive, as you were saying.
It's a survival mechanism
and a coping mechanism and therapy.
But also,
doing this without teaching them
to accept the unacceptable.
Of course, we don't at all teach them
to accept anything
that should not be accepted,
but we live in continuous trauma
and there's a lot of trauma
that is unresolved.
We don't get a chance
to sit with our trauma
and every generation
passes it on to the others.
So, we feel it in the kids
that they are not aware
of why they are angry
and why they're hitting each other,
screaming or being...
Or not wanting to participate.
There are so many effects.
We're not doctors,
we're not healers, in that sense,
but when you allow kids to play...
I do a workshop
called The Personal is Political.
-The Personal is Political.
- Yeah.
Everything around us is political.
Your phone is political,
your clothes are political,
the water is political, everything is,
but to start from the personal,
to find what is happening...
Why do you walk this way?
Is it because someone
told you when you were a kid
to straighten up your shoulders,
which created tension your whole life?
Not just for kids, but also for grown-ups.
Things like that.
We try to make them aware
of why and how
and then, once you know it,
and once you realize
certain things about yourself
and about your surroundings,
you start acting
with more awareness, perhaps.
So, things don't just go into you
and change you, such as negative stuff,
without you knowing it.
At least, you have a little control.
You can see that in people
who are in theater,
even if they're not
pursuing acting as a profession,
but they've been to the theater,
you see that they're always outspoken,
they have more confidence...
They go study psychology
or political science,
or they become cultural ambassadors
or something that they feel...
There's something that you feel,
but it's always hard to explain
that you're a little bit different
because there is a closeness
to your psyche,
you're more in touch with yourself,
even with war and everything...
Even at home,
I did it with my family,
my mom and my sister.
"Okay, let's do some breathing,
let's do some exercises
because we need it."
I play with my niece
and my nephew all the time.
When the bombs were hitting us,
I would just say to tell stories
and to do something creative,
like drawing.
So, your mind goes into a better place.
That's what theater does, in that sense.
So, Palestinian storytellers
have long been targeted,
like the novelist Ghassan Kanafani,
for example,
whose only weapon was his pen.
And many more...
The Israeli occupation
has been targeting theaters,
producers, archivists, and all that.
So, when people, or people's writers
and stages,
are targeted and destroyed,
from your perspective,
what is being really attacked...
... there?
What is the...?
And also what is the responsibility
of the storyteller who survives?
For sure,
what is being attacked is the story.
The truth, let's say.
The narrative, the imagination, as well.
And they want to break us.
These storytellers, these institutions...
Not only as humans, but also the identity.
The identity, for sure.
It's mainly that.
That's why
when Ghassan Kanafani was writing,
he was moving nations.
He was a leader.
He wasn't just writing stories or plays,
he was reflecting
and seeing what's going to happen
in the future
and motivating people
and telling them "you're bad"
or "you're good".
People looked up to him
because he was able to think
and to tell them things
and that's what happens...
When they invaded
the El-Hakawati theater,
the Palestinian national theater,
in Jerusalem,
during a children's musical show.
What was the threat?
They were just kids.
The threat is that
they were Palestinians,
they are making Palestinian music,
they're remembering the music
that they want to
end.
That's what they do all the time.
They want to kill the story.
So that the new generation don't know,
but what happened in Gaza
revived the story again
for the new generation.
Now, every kid
knows what is happening in Gaza.
When I was...
In 2010,
honestly, I didn't know everything.
When I did the Gaza Monologues,
I started to know,
but my parents
were kind of sheltering us
or not giving us the full picture.
But now, when you kill artists,
when you imprison them,
when you close theaters,
this is...
You know about any culture
through its art.
Through writers, films, plays, music...
You don't go to the politicians,
they are the real politicians.
They know that there's a great threat
coming from artists
and the truth is always in the art.
The identity, the memory...
So, they know that it's dangerous
and they target it all the time.
Yeah,
and it's also an intimidation strategy.
When you invade a children's play,
maybe for...
For some of those children,
it's a reason
to stop trying to be an actor
or to...
Or even for people to go to the theatre.
Yeah, they get traumatized...
Also,
maybe a parent would say:
"No, I will not send my kid there again."
That creates a chain reaction
and you lose a class.
But they do that
with checkpoints, with roads.
We canceled so many performances
and rehearsals
because people
can't reach the theater to come...
Or it's not safe.
Yeah, they know what they're doing.
- Very much.
- Yeah.
One of, coming back
to what we talked in the beginning,
I think one of the things that
it's interesting to learn
from your perspective
is that you actually
also went to study American theater
and then you came back.
You learned from the best,
then you went to
study American theater
and then you came back
to do theater under occupation.
So, what did you learn
and what did you have to unlearn
regarding the American theater training?
What did you choose to bring home
and what stayed behind?
Yeah, well, awesome.
At the beginning,
I wanted to study in the UK,
because I had this idea...
- Straight to the colonizer.
- I mean...
I was like:
"Okay, I need good training."
But then I went to the US.
I got a scholarship.
- Where?
- In Connecticut.
In the East Coast, at Yukon University,
which is a great university,
they had a great program
for masters and BA.
I learned a lot.
I learned about myself,
who I am as an actor.
They really broke me.
I found out
that I had so many masks on.
So, I had to unmask a lot of stuff
to know who I was.
That was really great.
And I learned a lot of...
They're very professional
and that's a great thing.
They respect the craft,
they teach you how to deal with crews
and whose job is what
and how to prepare for the role,
how to learn your lines,
because they are inspired
by Stanislavsky
and many other acting schools
around the world.
So, that was really great
and the program was very rich.
Like, every semester,
every couple of months,
we learned a new school of theater,
either physical or comedies,
or classics and Shakespeare, of course.
But what I didn't...
... see that I couldn't operate in this
was that it's sometimes theater
for the sake of theater.
Art for the sake of art
and I felt like I was betraying myself.
Although I wanted to do that,
when I was in Palestine,
I just wanted to do plays...
"Give me something that is not political",
I was tired from it,
but then you'd put on
this huge production,
with 30 actors,
but what's the story?
The audience would come in,
they'd see costumes, scenography...
- It's entertaining.
- It's entertaining.
Yeah, but you don't really change anyone.
They don't talk about...
It's a school. I'm not talking in general
about American theater.
But you don't really touch
sensitive topics,
you don't really change people
or the actors.
We did a lot of stylized pieces
and we were learning
the style of Jane Austen,
but I didn't want to do that.
Who wants...?
I'll watch the movie.
There are these things.
I also saw that it's a huge market.
There's a lot of fish in the market
and there are people
who are extra talented,
they can dance
and fly in the air and sing,
but it's hard to find jobs.
And it's hard to kind of shine.
So, I thought I'd go back,
I'd bring what I learned
and that's what I did,
but there are also things that we do
that has a soul, a purpose,
and at least we are talking about...
We have an issue, a case
that we're talking about.
And even if we do a play
that is not political,
it is political because you make a play
in such an exceptional place,
under exceptional circumstances
and that's what my mission is now.
It is that these expectations
about Palestinian artists
and Palestinian theater
should change
because people always expect
the freedom fighter
and the gun and the rock
and the checkpoint, but, for us,
these things are...
We talked about them so many times.
We can just have a kitchen table play
about a couple living in Palestine
talking about maybe abortion
and it is Palestinian.
If you want to watch a Palestinian play,
go watch it,
these are Palestinian actors,
and you can learn so much from just that,
which we do from any American movie.
They don't talk about the revolution.
Or the war.
It's like a romcom.
But you learn about the food, the city,
the language, how they think,
relationship, culture, status.
So, there's so much.
So, we try, or, at least,
I try not to pigeonhole myself
into boxes
even if the expectations are good.
But I'm like: "No, just take me as I am."
- "If you're really interested, yeah."
- Yeah.
As a sidenote, it's not related to this,
but your family is from Jaffa,
which means "the bridge of the sea"?
- Yeah...
- And...
What...
What does it do to the imagination
of a people, for example,
in the West Bank?
That, you know,
the sea is actually
a few dozen kilometers away
and for a lot of them it's unreachable.
What does it do
to the imagination of people
who are away from their own coastline
and do you feel that theater
can return what geography denies?
Even in the sense
of the experiences...
You have been traveling a lot.
You know, is theater...
Can theater give those experiences
to people who cannot reach them?
I'll start with the first half.
The sea means a lot to Palestinians
because it stands for the loss of land
and most of the cities
that were occupied first
were the coastal cities.
So, my family,
my dad's family especially,
from Jaffa, were exiled to Ramallah.
So, they lost lands,
they lost their houses...
My grandparents' house
is still there at the coast,
but it's an Israeli restaurant now.
It's called Taj Mahal.
- Wow, very Israeli...
- Very Israeli.
And...
There's this "missingness"
to the sea
and I feel it when I travel
and I come to the sea here in an Uber
very easily.
I just stand on the beach and I'm like...
It does something to you.
Having this open coastline, open horizon,
that we're losing
because buildings
are on top of each other,
so, you don't have an open eyesight,
which helps with the imagination
and dreaming.
So, we're in front of blocks
and people link it to freedom
and everyone keeps talking about the sea
even if they're not from the sea.
I never lived by the sea
and when I went to Jaffa's sea,
I did not feel good.
Because I felt like...
This is... They're everywhere.
I felt like
there's something stolen from us.
- Even the sea is occupied.
- Of course. It is.
It's different to look at the sea.
It's full of opportunities
and seeing a...
A sea with military ships doing it.
- Yeah.
- Yeah.
So, bringing it to the stage
or bringing these experiences
that I was like lucky to have.
I don't know if it's really changed
because sometimes
you don't want to do that,
because there's a little bit of...
"I experienced this,
so, I'm going to show you that."
They don't really echo the same experience
of putting a sea on stage.
In Guernica, we have footage
because there's live video art.
There's footage of the sea.
For me, water calms me down.
And it's Gaza,
so, it makes sense to have a sea there.
But it comes with stories
of real sadness.
When I heard about the merchants
that existed in Jaffa
and the oranges and the ships,
I felt that maybe we need more
of those stories
before the occupation
to remind ourselves
that we were there once.
This is our story, this is our sea.
And it's kind of like
taking strength from that,
not from the loss itself.
But, in theater, in general,
like when you watch theater pieces
and when you learn new skills
and new styles, I bring...
I bring that to kind of...
I make people see things
that they can't see in another country.
- Yeah...
- Yeah...
It's a tough question.
Yeah, yeah...
Yeah, I love the sea
and it's also like a...
Yeah, I just...
Maybe from being there...
When I learned this about your family
going to Ramallah,
all of these...
I remember going to Haifa and...
With Palestinians.
And the first thing when we arrived,
we had been in the West Bank for a month.
When we arrived and saw the ocean,
we were like...
But, at the same time,
honestly,
the experience there was horrible
because after you see
the whole occupation
and then you go to Haifa
and you see the occupation there,
like settlers with guns...
- At the beach.
- And the apartheid.
That Palestinians can only...
Even Palestinians who are Israeli citizens
can only go to certain coffee shops.
They're not welcomed in certain places.
But when we arrived,
I remember a friend saying:
"You know, this is Palestine too."
You know? It's about how we can...
In the liberation movement,
we all talk a lot about being...
Even when we talk about returning,
we're not returning to the same Palestine,
but that Palestine...
I hope we can return to
and reclaim the sea
as a...
As a free space and... Yeah.
No, I love that.
So, final question.
If you want more, I can keep going.
That's okay.
Final question before the last one.
As you have been traveling,
but also inside of Palestine,
what, you know, beyond the applause...
Because, as you were saying,
sometimes, the best reaction
is those people who didn't applaud
and just sat silently for 10 minutes,
but beyond the applause
and the symbolic
solidarity that you might feel
when you are traveling,
and everyone sees those
theater shows and all of that...
What do you want from artists
and audiences
who watch Palestinian theater
from the outside?
From the outside?
This falls into the matter
I talked about regarding expectations.
But what do you really want from us?
Well...
What you're doing now
is amazing and great.
I would maybe frame it as...
When we say "support",
it is bringing the light
on Palestinian art
because we saw,
especially during this war,
that a lot of artists
have taken the stage
and the stardom and the light
just because they're Palestinian
or quarter Palestinian
living somewhere in the world
and they rode the wave of the genocide,
and the wave of...
After each bombing, there's a song.
Or there is something that is kind of:
"We're going to use that."
But the artists in Palestine were ignored.
No one really highlighted their work.
It felt very easy to work
with a Palestinian here,
which is valid, of course.
But I feel that...
- It's not the same...
- You have to give the stage.
If you really want
to support Palestinian artists,
give them the stage
to say whatever they want to say.
Whatever work they want to make.
Don't dictate to them.
Don't tell them...
Because I experienced this.
"I want you to talk about..."
Sometimes, they treat us like politicians
or like people that speak
for the whole country.
But we're artists.
We don't like the news at all.
- And Palestinians are pluralistic.
- Yes.
Different artists
will want to talk about...
And even have different opinions about...
Yes, we clash all the time.
We're friends,
but everyone has their own point of view
about what's happening
and how to get out of it.
What kind of art you want to make.
If you want to support someone
or really be there for them,
just allow them to be who they are
and allow them to say
what they want to say.
And...
Of course, I'm not giving this...
Sometimes,
I feel that Palestinians are treated as...
"Whatever you say and do is great."
This isn't good.
Because we're professionals
and we're real people.
We know when it is...
That that doesn't happen
between Palestinians.
Yeah, it doesn't, of course.
We give no chance to each other.
We're very harsh.
So, I felt that I wanted
to be treated as a human, as an artist.
We're equals, let's say.
Then, we take it from there.
We work together, we can find ways.
Because people who support Palestine,
the Palestinian cause, from the outside,
sometimes have a clearer mind
because you're looking at it
from the outside.
You can see components,
like the case of Joana's film.
I really loved it
because she's from the outside,
so, she was able to see
bits and pieces
that maybe we pass by every day
and don't really look at.
I didn't know about the sunbird thing.
She was talking
about the Palestinian sunbird
attacking those vicious invading birds
that Israel kind of...
... put in nature
to eat the natural birds and stuff.
So, I felt that...
Right, there are a lot of advantages
by being on the outside
because you are our wing
and also our voice.
There are opportunities here
that we don't have there.
It's great to collaborate all the time
and be like "okay"...
And being asked: "What do you need?"
"What's happening with you?
What do you need to talk about?"
Instead of coming with an agenda
that we have to fulfill
or an expectation that we have to be...
I have this play called
2077: Who Wants to Survive.
It's a solo detective story about...
Its sci-fi about the future and AI.
When I was performing it
in the Arab world,
I had people coming
and looking for Palestine in it.
"Where is Palestine?
Are you talking about Palestine?"
"Well, we are Palestinian,
the writer is Palestinian,
the actor is Palestinian,
the theater is Palestinian, it's fiction.
We're talking about AI,
which affects us all.
We're all in ChatGPT
and all of that, so...
We have the right to be part of the world.
We care about other causes.
We talk about Africa, the Congo, India,
and everywhere.
Spain, Guernica,
why do I go to Guernica and Gaza?
I can call it Gaza and that's it.
It's because we feel
that we're connected to others.
From that incident with the play,
I was like: "No, no, no, don't box me."
"If this is what you care about,
I'm a Palestinian."
"I'm from Palestine."
And the play
is from a Palestinian perspective.
Yes.
It's different from someone else's.
- From a German perspective.
- Yours is different.
We'll do it differently
and their point of view is different.
So, these things...
It's good
to have a conversation about this
because we feel sometimes
that there's an isolation
between the artists in Palestine
and abroad, you know?
Shukran kteer.
Ahlan wa sahlan. Shukran elek.
Thank you, really,
for making the time.
We'll do an episode two in the theater.
- Thank you so much for having me.
- Thank you.
At Don't Skip Humanity,
believe in storytelling
as a path for collective liberation
and, at Yalla, every voice is a reminder.
A reminder
that Palestinians keep creating,
keep resisting. keep living,
and fighting for their liberation.
So, if you want to hear
more of these stories,
more of these voices,
and you believe that these stories
are a way for collective liberation,
collective mobilization,
join us and support us.
Thank you. Shukran.