Palestine: scenes but not yet fully heard
Taghrid Choucair-Vizoso
Image by copyright: Ellie Kurtz
One of the stars in a play about Palestinian life at London’s Arcola Theatre, Scenes From 68* Years, doesn’t appear on stage.
Film actor Maisa Abd Elhadi auditioned for her role on Skype - “a very odd experience,” recalls Palestinian-Irish playwright Hannah Khalil.
Khalil’s first draft contained a scene in which a Palestinian expatriate in London, like millions of migrants around the world, Skypes home to the West Bank.
“I said, ‘Wouldn’t it be great if we could actually have someone in Palestine Skyping – one of the characters would actually be talking to someone in Palestine,'” she explains.
“The director said, ‘What a good idea. Let’s do that.’”
They held the auditions “and we were so lucky to get Maisa, who is an incredible film actress.”
Having found the actor, they needed to give a bigger role, so Khalil added a monologue in the middle of the play for her.
But the world keeps changing, and it turns out that Maisa will not be in Palestine during the Arcola production. She will be touring in Europe, Skyping in from various cities.
Now it’s up to the stage manager for the production to make sure the Skype connection works every night.
To cope, the production team has a rule of three: if the connection fails twice, the play will continue without the Skype scene.
“The audience will be denied the scene,” says Khalil, “but that in itself is kind of poignant,” a sad symbol of Palestine’s political isolation.
Khalil describes the play itself as a series of about 30 snapshots of Palestinian life since 1948, “an anecdotal idea of what life is like,” focussing on domestic life in the midst of conflict. That means laughter as well as sadness and frustration, “because Palestinians are known for their black humour.”
The concept arose from her previous play about Palestine Image by Copyright; Harriet Prime
Yasen Atour and Peter Polycarpou
“There were so many stories and I thought if I write a play about all these people’s stories it will take a lifetime. So I wrote a series of scenes, which was great fun. But then I had to find an order for all the scenes, to make a structure – and that’s been the devil of it. “
Though the play is not didactically political or polemical (“It’s not supposed to be a history lesson”), Khalil is resigned to inevitable accusations of bias towards one side or the other in the Palestine-Israel conflict – “I’ll probably get bashed from both sides.”
Khallil lived in Dubai for 10 years as a child and in several other countries - her father was a hotelier – before settling in Britain. She’s writing a play about women in Britain’s Yarl's Wood Immigration Removal Detention Centre, and at the back of her mind is a musical about Syria – more proof that Palestinians are known for their black humour.
Why the star in the play’s title? To give the work life after 2016. Next year it will become Scenes from 69* Years.
* Scenes from 68* Years is at the Arcola Theatre, 24 Ashwin Street, E8, until 30 April. Info: 7503 1646/ boxoffice@arcolatheatre.com
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