| Aic in Spanish | Tue, September 07th |
| Aic in Spanish | Tue, September 07th |
On 25 July 2010, I joined a small group of international students on a visit to the Freedom Theatre in Jenin. Since its founding in 2006, the organization has been running a theater stage, an acting school and an array of professional projects related to acting, cinematic filming and photography.
The theatre is the only one of its kind in the northern region of the Occupied Palestinian Territory to develop a professional setting for theatre and the arts. Considered the most significant cultural center of Jenin, the Freedom Theatre was created with the goal of empowering the youth of Jenin Refugee Camp through the arts as a means for social change. As youth living in an isolated, violent, and oppressive environment, often vulnerable to nightly raids by the Israeli army, they are deprived of a healthy childhood with a means to explore their identities and environment. The theatre provides the youth a kind of safe haven to express their stories through theatre activities and workshops and thus develop the skills, knowledge and confidence they need to confront their existing situation and touch communities outside their own.
The large and welcoming theatre facilities contain not only a theatre, but also offices, a lounge, and kitchen. The atmosphere was open and relaxed. I had the opportunity to meet several staff members and students from the acting school. The students were very comfortable not just with one another, but also with all of the international visitors. Besides casual hangout and listening to one other sing and play instruments, they were engaged in rehearsal for the theatre's upcoming play, Men in the Sun. Our tour guide, Shaina Low, an American who has been working at the theatre for several months now, informed us that the students occupy the theatre often because they love being there and having graduated high school, often "have nothing else to do" in their communities as graduates. Indeed, the students truly felt at home in the theatre and treated one another like family.
Shaina also explained to me the tense cultural situation often faced by the female actresses. Jenin remains a predominantly conservative town in which women often stay at and care for the home. As such, for the females in the play to be able to play a significant role outside their home and break cultural tradition is controversial and ground-breaking. Shaina told me about Samia Steti, an exception to the rule often applied to women in conservative Palestinian communities. I had the pleasure to meet Samia, the Programme Manager of the Freedom Theatre, who Shaina described as a brilliant crux to the group's staff. She has three daughters and has always encouraged them to do what they believe in.
After touring the attractive premises of the theatre, we had the pleasure of viewing an 18-minute long film titled "Honour" made by Mustafa, a student from the acting school. The film explored the transformation of what Mustafa took to mean honor all his life. He used to believe that protecting the family's honor was more important than life itself. He would beat his sister, thinking he was saving the family's honor, when in reality he realized he was only beating her to satisfy his male ego. In the film, Mustafa's sister confronts him about the violence against her, expressing that she once trusted him. He makes up to her and ends his violent ways. Mustafa also includes the story of two other women who were victims of abuse. The film was successful in exposing an otherwise tabooed reality found frequently in Palestinian (and indeed many other) culture in a very frank and simple, yet moving, method.
Shaina and Mustafa ended the day with a tour of Jenin refugee camp. The camp contains a mere 400 homes, yet the population appeared much greater. In 2002 during the Second Intifada, Mustafa explained how Israeli forces came to the camp and destroyed several buildings, killing nearly 60 civilians as a result, many of whom were women and children. Shaina and Mustafa showed us a nearby cemetery of martyrs killed in the Intifada. There was a large stone marker in the center listing the names of several young suicide bombers whose bodies were lost. On one of the walls scribbled in Arabic graffiti read "The martyrs are the true leaders."
Jenin's bloody past contributes to its spirit of bold resistance up until today, and the Freedom Theatre has truly revolutionized the outlet of resistance. As Shaina said, the youth at the theatre are passionate and "really feel like they're doing something" to change the conflict and the situation they are in.
