 Hi, come on in. Welcome to Friday morning at the gathering. A lot of people had 14-hour days yesterday with workshops at 9.15, and final performance ending late. It was really kind of the idea was not to create an endurance test, but it was. So we're moving in. Each of our days and sessions are structured intentionally a little bit differently. Yesterday I had some really beautiful plenaries or kind of what you might call fuller meal conversations. And there are a couple of those today. But today also has more of these what we're calling kind of pop-up performances or pop-up discussions where we get a kind of window into an interesting project through performance work and some discussion around it in more of a 15 or 20 minute section. And then our work, in a way, is to kind of connect across those things. So we have kind of this morning and into early this afternoon kind of a constellation of pieces that I think are that resonate with each other, but are going to be presented as kind of discrete 20 minute units. But then our notion, assuming time cooperates with us, is that we'll have some time to coordinate across. So and we have an actor on their way. So there's been a little bit of just sort of exploring what the order of things will be. But we know where we're starting. And the sort of frame that unites these things is dreaming beyond conflict, theaters of aspiration, broad and could be applied to so much of the work we're doing. But it's kind of, if you look at the arc of our day, some of the performances tonight, culminating with Ashtar Theater's performance of Oranges and Stones tonight, there's a kind of lot of work that I think is going to be really interesting to think about in dialogue with each other. There's no better person to take us through this morning of things. My good friend, David J. Diamond, from Lamama, Umbria, and many other important affiliations in our field has been actually a huge collaborator and co-creator with me on kind of putting together all of these moving pieces of the day. So I'm going to hand it over to David, who's going to introduce Modi Lerner and our first kind of constellation of performance work this morning. So here's David. Good morning. How's everybody doing? Good, welcome. Welcome this morning to Dreaming Beyond Conflict, Theaters of Aspiration. This morning, we're going to see several different performances and have some conversation. And at the end of the performances that you'll see this morning and that some of the conversation will all come together to have a more general conversation with everybody, depending on how much time we have left at the end. So I encourage you to think about how you might want to contribute to the conversation. I wanted to start off by just telling you a little bit about a couple of recent experiences I have that relate to our conversation today as a way of sort of finding a way into this conversation. I recently went on a fascinating trip to Palestine and Israel with a group called American Friends of Combatants for Peace. If you don't know Combatants for Peace, it's a very, it's a fascinating organization that really piqued my interest as it was begun by members of the Israeli army who decided that they would not do what the army instructed them to do in Palestine in destroying people's homes and in hurting people and they left the army and they created a group together and they invited, actually a group of Palestinians who had been incarcerated in Israeli prisons wrote to them and said, we're really interested in what you're doing and your protests, we want to meet with you and over a year's time, this group of Palestinians and group of Israelis met together and created this group called Combatants for Peace, formed to find a way to end occupation through nonviolent means. Every part of this organization is co-led by Palestinians and Israelis. They have subchapters all over the West Bank and in Israel. They do all different kinds of action but the thing that really intrigued me about them is that one of the leaders, Hain Alon, is a theater director, teaches at University of Tel Aviv and he directs theater but he also brings that theatricality and that theater knowledge to combatants for peace and so a lot of the work and the activism that they do has a theater component or a theater base to do a lot of the theater, the oppressed work of Augusto Boal, as you know, I'm sure you know of all about that, also bread and puppet and other forms. So I got a window into their world as I visited throughout, went on this trip throughout Israel and Palestine and it led me to the conclusion that while there aren't just two narratives about what's going on, there are hundreds of narratives and there are a lot of subtle and complex differences between how people view the situation and what are the possibilities for moving forward. So it proved to me how complex and challenging things are in many areas of conflict around the world and we're gonna hear about some of those today. Another thing, I recently went to this memorial service. There's a memorial day and in a combatants for peace co-sponsored a memorial day in Tel Aviv inviting Palestinian and Israelis together to mourn the deaths of everybody who has passed during the conflict over the years. So I was at the New York synagogue where they had a live stream of the event and their own speakers. But again, the complexity of the situation and the ability of theater and our work as artists to illuminate different aspects is what has been so striking to me and what has impressed me so much about what all of the artists you're gonna see have put together. I just wanna read you one quote and then we'll get on to it. This woman, Dr. Amal Abu Sa'd, widow of Yaqob Abu Al-Qiyan who was shot by border police during the demolition of his home in Um El-Qiran. He writes this. Reality is multifaceted. It has different aspects. It has depths, meanings and consequences. In order to change our reality of suffering, we must act and educate. This is the meaning of education. Helping people develop the ability to understand these layers and different aspects and to adjust their actions accordingly. Not to fear complexity, but to examine it. Not to give it up, but to embrace it. Not to run away from it, but to be guided by it so that there will be a better future for all of us living here. I think that's a nice way for us to get started as we move through the day. I want to remind you that you'll see some performances today this morning but then Gray Rock by Amir Nizar Zawabi and produced by Remote Theater Project and Alex Aaron who's here. We'll also pop up this afternoon and then don't forget to come see Oranges and Stones by Iman Aoun this evening. So it's a whole day of a variety of different voices that you're going to hear. So we're gonna start off this morning with one of the great Israeli playwrights who we're happy to have with us. Moti Lerner, would you come up and introduce the work. Moti. Thank you, yeah. So good morning everybody. So as David said, I'm a playwright from Israel and I've been writing plays for more than 30 years and many of them have to do with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. And the main purpose in writing these plays is to create a change in the collective consciousness of the Israelis, a change that will enable them to accept the natural and existential necessity of permanent peace with the Palestinian people. And talking about the strategy of the writing I want to say a few words before we present two monologues. I think that I see three simultaneous means to achieve this purpose of promoting peace through a play. One is the most natural and the simple is to create a change in the political or moral consciousness of the individual spectator who sits in the audience by creating a strong catharsis for him or her, a catharsis which will strengthen his own personal commitment for peace. The second means is to use the struggle of the characters on stage, the struggle to achieve peace on stage in order to create discourse about achieving peace outside of the theater. This is not something simple because in the last 12 or 14 years the discourse of peace in Israel has diminished. I mean we hardly speak about it. People lost hope, they don't think peace is possible and they don't discuss it anymore. So the struggle of the characters on stage can create a discourse outside of the theater to resume the discussion of peace. And the third one, which is not less important is based on the fact that writing a play in order to promote peace means that you hope, you, the writer, hope that peace is possible. And this is something essential. If you write a play about peace and if you show everybody how hopeful you are that peace is possible, that might touch the hearts of the people and they get some of the hope that you have, some of the hope that you are trying to inspire. So I will go first to the first monologue. The first monologue is from a play called The Admission. It's a play that was done here in DC in 2014 in theater J, at that time Ari Roth was the artistic director. The Admission is about a conflict between a son and his father. The son discovers that his father, this is, we are talking about 1988, that his father took part in killing Palestinian civilians in 1948 during the War of Independence, during Israel's War of Independence. And that son feels that recognizing the responsibility for the creation of the Palestinian refugee problem, the taking responsibility is the first step towards reconciliation with the Palestinians. And he wants his father to admit the killing, to admit the fact that he was responsible for killing. The father refuses, of course, to admit and he takes him about half a play until he is forced to admit. And then he gives this monologue that Marty Lodge will give now in talking to his son, admitting for the first time that he was responsible for the killing. Please, Marty Lodge. There were probably some injured after the battle, the trucks came and two bastards tried to stop the others from getting on. One threw a grenade that he had hidden under his shirt. Four of my soldiers were killed, 20 years old. Just a month after getting off the boat, we shot those two bastards. The Arabs started screaming, throwing stones. 1500 people surrounded us, no reinforcements, nobody could rescue us. We continued shooting until they calmed down. If they hadn't, they would have finished us off and stayed in the village and they would have stayed in other villages too. And the war would have continued until today. We wouldn't be talking about a few dozen dead. We wouldn't be talking about a few thousand dead. We'd be talking about hundreds of thousands dead from our side and from theirs. Would that have been better? Answer me. Would you pat me on the shoulder and tell me what a decent man I am? A week after the battle, an official arrived to investigate what happened. He also determined that it all happened during combat. All of it. I admit that we expelled. I mean, we were afraid they'd join the Iraqis and the Jordanians who invaded the week before. So now you know it. And now you have to live with it without hypocrisy, without expulsion. We would allow us to continue living here, building here, repairing ourselves and those of them that stayed here. That's why I always help them. After Udi was killed, I doubled my donations. So now you can go check. Ask whoever you want. If you find out that I was wrong, that I spilled blood for no reason, that I expelled for no reason, I'll pay the price. So the very last drop. And even though I've already paid and you know how much I've paid, but if you find out that I was right, that I did what I needed to do, what everyone expected of me, then I hope you'll stop blaming me that I'm a murderer. Thank you. Okay, so the play was done here because it was not done in Israel. Only after the production here in DC, we were finally able to have a production of it in Jaffa Theater in Israel. The play ran there for about two and a half years and I think because of the importance of this play, to me I participate, I was there almost every night and I let post-show discussions and I can testify that the Catholic experience of the protagonist in the play created some sort of catharsis to the spectators and most of them left the theater with much more and they were much more empathic with the suffering of the Palestinians created by the Israelis in the 1948 war and that was a big achievement, a very big achievement. The second play is called Scream in the Silence. It takes place immediately after the failure of the Camp David Summit of 2000 where President Clinton tried to mediate between Prime Minister Barak and Chairman Arafat who negotiated a peace agreement. The protagonist of the play is an Israeli writer who can't accept the failure of the summit and he put all his moral authority in Israel to create a public discourse which will force Barak and Arafat to resume the negotiations on the two states' solution that didn't, in which they didn't succeed during the summit. So Marty Lodge will read now and one of the, actually it's a part of a scene between the writer, Mr. Landau and his father-in-law who is also a writer. Now the father-in-law doesn't collaborate with Landau because he's not as hopeful about the power of literature. Landau on the other side is very invested in the power of literature. He believes that literature can make the difference. Please Marty. Literature can change the immediate political reality but it has the power to strengthen the moral backbone of the readers and that moral backbone can give us hope for a change right now, isn't that so? Everyone who has ever read a book knows that. That's why most people continue to read because most of them want to be moral. Most of them know that every immoral society will eventually crumble from within and vanish. They know this could happen to us here too. Sometimes our readers are too weak to be moral. Sometimes they make mistakes and fail. Sometimes their moral senses go awry. That's the moment we need to be there to help them. I know, Abner, writers don't have political power but they have moral power because those who want to be moral listen to them and at such a faithful moment we are obliged to wield this power of us and persuade the public to take moral positions. What is more moral than saving human life? And if the negotiations that were stopped could save human lives, we will go on a hunger strike until they are resumed. Let's call on all the writers who are exasperated with war to join us in demanding a political solution from the government. When death is rampant around us, we need to leave our writing desks and halt it with our bodies. So that play hasn't been produced yet. There are hopes that it will be produced in December at our National Theater Habima if we have a proper minister of culture in the next government. We're still waiting to see who's going to be the next minister of culture. The play, again, is important and I know that if we can raise again the public discussion about peace in the country, it will prepare the hearts for peace. Without that preparation, the political peace is not going to be enough. The political peace is not enough. We need much more than just a political peace and the work in the theater can help that work, creating the empathy towards the other. If the play will not be done this season in Israel, I hope that I will be able to do it outside of Israel and by doing so create a pressure on the Israeli theaters to do it because, again, the discourse of peace that has been lost, that discourse is highly important. Thank you. What do you see as the risk of doing this play in Israel by a public institution now? The risk is two levels. One is that the government would cut the subsidy for the theater. In Israel, the theaters are getting subsidy from the government and they don't want to lose parts of it. And the other thing which is not less difficult and frightening is that the theater will get a stigma of being a left-wing theater. Now, being a left-wing theater is not a good thing today because the public would like to go to a left-wing theater. So that is the risk they're taking. So in the first play, in the admission, you're looking back at what happened in 1948. Why would it be important part of the conversation for us to revisit 1948 in light of what's going on today? I think as you read from the quote by the man from Umel Hiram, the complexity of the conflict goes back more than 100 years. The play by Imam and Edward this afternoon goes back to 1917, even earlier than 1948. And I think that in order to create the empathy that is so necessary between Israelis and Palestinians, Israeli must recognize their responsibility for 1948. It would never work without it. If we continue to deny the nakba, if we continue to deny the fact that we have expelled 700 Palestinians, 700,000, sorry, that we have expelled 700,000 Palestinians in 1948, the relationship would be based on what you call fake truth, fake news, fake news. It's impossible to create this, it will be impossible to live together without that recognition. And I struggle for creating the possibility, for creating the circumstances that we will be able to live with the Palestinians, either into states, maybe later in a confederation, maybe later in one state, but that idea to live together side by side, it will not happen unless we recognize the suffering which was created by us. Thank you very much and I wish you all the best with the new piece and I hope to see it soon. I hope Derek is going to direct it, where's Derek? I ran out, okay, heard that, okay. Modi Lerner. So I think we're gonna move on to, so yeah. So as we talk about the conflict in Israel and Palestine, we can't forget that so many other conflicts are taking place around the world, around the Middle East and the Syrian war is ongoing, it kind of recedes from the public eye, I think in America, in light of other things, but it's present, people are suffering and that's why I'm really proud that we're going to be able to hear a bit of a piece by Sadala Vanus, the great Syrian playwright. To introduce it to you is the translator, MacArthur Granty translator and playwright, professor at American University of Beirut. Please help me welcome Robert Myers. Thank you, good morning. The person I'd like to bring into the room who gives me hope is the former president from my home state, Georgia, Jimmy Carter. Remember when he...