In the United States, theatre artists spend exhaustive amounts of time pleading with our government for more federal funding, or for more public appreciation, or for prettier costumes. I believe that most of these things are valid and necessary to the livelihood of theatre in this country. But as Americans, we generally have the tendency to ask for more, more, more without ever appreciating what it is we have in the first place. We want higher budgets and bigger names; in other countries, theatre companies want to cast an actor without fear of them being murdered or detained by their own government.
The New York Times has published one of the most moving articles I’ve ever read about the state of a theatre company in Israel. The Freedom Theatre, an Arab-language troupe who works out of a refugee camp in the West Bank, was shocked and grieved last April when their founding member was brutally murdered outside their building. Since then, the students and teachers have found a cathartic way to deal with their mentor’s death, by putting together an adaptation of Beckett’s Waiting for Godot called While Waiting. Performed in Arabic, the production is breaking both Israeli-Palestinian and Samuel Beckett rules by casting Vladimir and Estragon as women.
I was shocked after I read this article by how ignorant I was of my own fortune. Literally, every actor knows every part in the Freedom Theatre’s production because at any moment, one of their actors might not come back. They live in fear every day of being shut down and thwarted by their government, or worse yet, of being murdered on the front steps of their theatre. At one point, the company’s production of Alice in Wonderland was shut down because of the negative Palestinian undercurrents the government believed to be in the text. I sit here getting to study theatre as a collegiate major, knowing that no one will ever stop me from pursuing my artistry as an individual, and in Israel people are dying just to be heard.
Luckily, While Waiting is getting a mini-tour on the North East, beginning with a performance tomorrow at Columbia University. Later, they will return to New York and perform again with help from the Public Theatre on October 30th. The students of the theatre are still mourning the loss of their leader, but they are attempting to heal through the power of their art. Healing through art is not something I take for granted, but I have lost sight of how lucky I am to simply to allowed to try. And thus, a mission statement: from this point forward, I will attempt to push my own boundaries and take bigger risks, because if I’m free to say what I want, why shouldn’t I say everything?
