 Hello, my name is Iman Aoun. I'm the artistic director of Ashtar Theatre in Palestine, and I am Edward Malim, the general director of Ashtar Theatre. We found Ashtar Theatre in 1991 to be the first theatre school for youth in Jerusalem, and then it was spread out in the West Bank and Gaza. Since then, we've been working with young people at schools and universities, and with their teachers. As well, we've been working with the theatre of the oppressed, with community members, and with professional actors. The play Orange and Stones was produced in 2010, directed by Mujesola Adebayu. Since then, the play is still touring around the world. In 2017, we retook the play for the centennial of the Balfour Declaration. The play has no words. We hope you will enjoy it. Thank you. Thank you for checking the sound. Hello everyone, and thank you for watching Orange and Stones by Ashtar Theatre from Palestine, and thank you for staying for the post-show discussion as well. This is the fifth GLOD political theatre as a civil right episode. GLOD is a fortnightly online platform presenting political theatre from around the world, and it's hosted by Hal Rand Theatre Commons. My name is Sunzyana Kozokorescu. I am co-artistic director and co-founder of Besna Theatre, a British-Romanian political theatre collective devoted to challenging institutionalized and normalized violences in our society through theatre. Today, I am joined by the two actors you've just watched in Orange and Stones, Iman Awun and Edward Mualem, the director of the piece, Mujesola Adebayu, and former UN Special Rapporteur for Palestinian Human Rights, Richard Falk. I want to remind people watching that you can donate to the presenting company by following the link that pops up, and if at any point you have any questions for the panelists, you can send them to us by email at contact.besnateater.org or by commenting or messaging directly on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. And now I'd like to give it over to our panelists, and if you want to introduce yourselves, I know I've said very briefly a few things about you, but if you want to talk a bit more in depth about, maybe we can start with you, Iman? Sure. Well, first of all, thank you for this wonderful hosting. We are really happy to be with Glod, and I'm Iman Awun, I'm the artistic director of Ashtar Theatre in Ramallah, and I'm an actress myself and a director. So, I live in Jerusalem, but I work in Ramallah, but also in the West Bank in general. And Edward? Yes. My name is Edward Mualim. I'm an actor. I started acting when I was 15 years old. I'm a founder of the Hakkwati Theatre Company. And in 1991, me and Iman, we co-founded Ashtar Theatre, and since then, I'm the director for the theatre, the general director and actor and trainer at Ashtar. And Modusola? Yeah, hello. It's great to be here. It's a real honour. Modusola Adebayo. Theatre might make a theatre artist, and I don't really mind which part of theatre I'm kind of working in. So sometimes I direct, I write, I act, I produce, I perform and teach sometimes. And I have worked with Ashtar on a few different theatre productions, and it's a great honour and a joy to be here with them and with all of you. Thank you. And Richard? It's also wonderful for me to be with you all, and it's a great honour to have witnessed this very fascinating political theatre, which is at the experimental frontier and very moving in its own special way. I'm a professor of international law, taught for many years at Princeton University in the US, and currently holding the chair in global law at the Queen Mary University London. And if it were not for the pandemic, would be there in London probably at this time. But even at this distance, it's a pleasure. Thank you very much, Richard. It's a pleasure to have you all, and thank you so much for accepting our invitation. Like I said before, it's an absolute honour to have you all in this panel. I'd like to start with a couple of questions addressed to the team of Oranges and Stones. So the first question would be, why have you chosen to tell the story of the Balfour Declaration without words using physical theatre? And that's open to the whole team. Anyone can jump in and answer if you wish. I thought I can start. March, would you like to start? Okay. So I think that one of the things that Silent Theatre is presenting is the depth of the issue. It is louder to present something without words. Because if we would have put words in the play, we would have needed volumes of words and of text. And it won't be as accurate and as precise as the gestures, as the movement, as the items that we have used. Because every single movement, every single look, every single object on the stage had been studied, tested and presented with meaning and with purpose. Do you want to add anything to that, Mojicola? Yeah, absolutely. I totally agree with Iman. And yeah, we would have needed volumes and volumes. And volumes have been written and volumes have been spoken about occupation in Palestine and beyond. But sometimes I find the layering of language obscures some very startling realities, you know, and one of the ways in which occupation can be made to seem very complicated is through language. And through the inadequacies of language and the manipulations of language, and I'm a language lover, I'm a poet and a playwright, and I usually use words. But sometimes in political contexts, language can be very loaded, very manipulative, and sometimes a deeper understanding comes from just sort of seeing an image. And also the piece, you know, was an idea I had after working with Ashtar and having the privilege of working in Palestine quite a lot. And I just had this frustration when I came back to England after working with Ashtar very many times. And, you know, people not understanding or not resonating with how I would describe the situation. So I say, you know, the Palestinians are living under occupation. And the word occupation has very little emotional resonance in the English language anyway. It has very little weight to it, has very little gravitas to it. If you say word like apartheid has certain gravitas, certain resonances, certain associations that are emotional. And that, you know, basically a toilet is occupied. My occupation is theater teacher, whatever. And that people didn't sort of respond to this idea. So the idea was that, okay, if you could, if you could see a picture of what occupation looks like and imagine yourself in the shoes of somebody who's living under occupation, then you may well have more empathy, and you may start to ask some questions of the ways in which you've been communicated about this situation in the past. So, and, you know, and theater is the art of empathy. And sometimes it's easier to empathize when you, when you strip, strip things away and see a situation and imagine yourself in somebody's shoes, which is, which is what this kind of war. So it's to, yeah, to try and take what is seemingly a very complicated situation and actually bring it to its kind of essence, if that's, if that's possible, that's the ambition anyway. Yeah, absolutely. I resonate with you completely on the idea that language can obfuscate the emotional reality sometimes, and that the political reality as well, and that it can be a lot easier to just show pure, pure emotion, the conflict of emotion between two people without, without using words. And I think you've done it very successfully in the play and I have to congratulate you all for such a beautiful, poignant and heartbreaking piece of work. It was not easy. It was really very hard for us to, to act without words, to use our body only. And every movement has a meaning, so we had to work very precise when every movement with Bodhisatta. And thank you, Bodhisatta, for that. Had you done a physical theater before or was it your first time? We do physical theater, but it was first time doing theater without words. Let's say we do use our body, we do use image theater because we are also trained theater of the oppressed actors. So theater and positioning and multi-layered understanding of an image is part of our understanding for what theater could really present. And how did you, how did you work without words? How did you, did you, did you have a different process than you do usually, both as actors and you, Mojisol, as a director? Yeah, I, I will be first created the show, which is many, many years ago now. Edward has a fantastic memory for years, so 10 years ago. Wow. And it's been touring the world ever since and credit to the actors and theater for that. It's just incredible to sustain that and the pain of it as well. It's deeply upsetting piece of work. So respect to the actors for keeping going and keeping doing it and making it more and more beautiful in every iteration. But yes, when we developed the piece 10 years ago, I brought in some, some experiences that I'd had, some of my training is in physical theater, but this is a different kind of thing because it's not about a kind of muscularity. It's about a clarity and it's also about stripping away and letting go actually of, of, of, of kind of over expression. And so I think that's one of the challenges of the piece is to, to not kind of make it into a kind of mime show, but to let go and trust that when a glass is handed or a stone is picked up or an orange is peeled, that trust the clarity of the image and trust that it speaks and trust the audience to kind of be drawn in. Those are really difficult things. It's much harder than doing incredibly kind of physical kind of work and throwing yourself around the stage. You know, if you're, if you're fit and healthy, that stuff, you know, that's, that's technique and training and athleticism, but actually to let go and to hold the story within and the image within yourself in a sense and trust, trust the, trust the image, trust that you don't have to try and push communication is extremely difficult, much more difficult than it looks. And so one of the things that we use is, we draw, I draw on some training that I had done with Phillips who really an American director using Samuel Beckett, very influenced by kind of Samuel Beckett, which is kind of requires an act to kind of let go and some kind of mind body work very much influenced by Buto, the Japanese dance form or dance form that's kind of based on walking really and very slow, very meditative work, but the actors themselves, you know, they bring in their own, those are just a few things I bought, but they also bring in their own training, which is extensive and, you know, they've been making theatre for longer than I have. So they also put in their own, their own skills and brought things to it that I, you know, I can't sort of name, but they can. Just to add one more sentence, maybe that in this work there was a big group working on the show. It wasn't only Edward in 2010, I wasn't there, I just joined in 2017. So, but my colleagues, Riham Sahab, who was playing the role that I took, Rashad, Rashad, Mohamed, I mean, the names that are of beautiful, wonderful actors who were there in the rehearsal room, in the laboratory work with Mojisola. And then it was like a community that created such a strong ideas and positions and images and meaning and presentation. So just wanted to refer to the work of everyone. And of course, the work of the musician Rami Washiha was also a character in itself, by itself. It was a strong presence without his music that guided the line that were talking to us on stage all the time. We wouldn't have managed really to present the work in a way we presented because that was the talk, that was the inner, the feelings spoken out through the melody. Absolutely. And that is very present in the piece. That is very strong. Mojisola, you mentioned at some point, you know, the deliberacy that is needed, you know, to pick up a stone and peel an orange. And that actually leads me really nicely to a question that I wanted to ask. And I think that some audience members who are not familiar with the situation in Palestine may ask themselves, why oranges and why stones? What do these mean? And I want to open this up to everyone, including Richard, if you want to jump in to talk about these two symbols. I think it would be fascinating to hear Edward talking about that. Why oranges and stones, Ed? Well, the play was called 48 Minutes for Palestine. And then we had, we changed it in 2017 to oranges and stones, because what is in Palestine, oranges and stones? The most that you can see in Palestine are the oranges and the stones. And the oranges and the stones, they can tell the story of Palestine. More so is also the oranges are symbols also of Jaffa and the land that was stolen in 1948. So it was occupied by the Israelis. So we lost the ranches, we lost the food, we lost the beauty, we lost the fruits. So the fruitful part of Palestine was occupied, and that is the symbol of the orange. The stone is also the symbol of struggle of the Intifada. It was the only thing that we had. Yeah, it was the first and the only way to resist through these stones when the young people used the stones to throw against tanks and alteries and soldiers. So these two are really strong symbols that we live with. That's why we have chosen that word, or these two words. Absolutely. And I'll add one thing to that, which is very poetic and eloquent description. And it's absolutely, yeah, I mean, yeah, absolutely. And just, and also in the theater process itself, we, when we created this show, we didn't have a budget. Sometimes we're very fortunate and we get funding and other times, and we don't, but we keep making theater, whatever the circumstances and actually are incredible at just at doing that at being incredibly resourceful and creative. So we didn't have a budget, really. And what we needed to, Ed said to me one day, you know, we need to create, we need to define the space somehow. We need to define the stage. We need to know where the beginning and the end of the stage are. And I was just wondering around outside Ashtar Theater in Amala, and I thought, well, there's a lot of stones, there's a lot of stones around. And oranges are, when they're in season, they're incredibly cheap. So just bought a massive bag of oranges and started playing around with them and the stones. So it's also about being resourceful as a theater artist when you have very little. And what was so beautiful was I remember the day when we put those oranges out and they're like light bulbs. They're like, they're, you know, they just kind of, they fill the stage with this, with this color and light. And the contrast between them and the stones, I think kind of works really well. So it was also, it was political, it was poetic, and it was also economic. The holy trinity of theater making and the grassroots really. Absolutely. Richard, would you like to add anything to that? I mean, all of you were very eloquent and express better than I could have what the essence of the theater experience was. And I think the choice of stones and oranges as was suggested is the most transparent way of achieving this focus on the essence of the injustice and the resistance to that injustice. And for me, the stones have so much been associated with the perseverance of the Palestinian people against the ordeal of occupation and the prolonged ordeal. It's an extraordinary narrative of both tragedy and a sense of spiritual strength and it has inspired many people, including myself, to witness this kind of flame that won't be extinguished. And that's a very powerful experience. And I think the transparency of these symbolic images is, as has been beautifully said by the director, so much more, it communicates so much more vividly and in some strange way linguistically than reliance on language as we generally understand it. So I think that's what provides this theater piece with its special magic. Thank you, Richard. I wanted to ask you as well. I mean, we, you know, you said it that sometimes it's difficult to explain things to people who are unfamiliar with the political and emotional reality in Palestine. But I'm sure that we have audience members who perhaps don't know what the Balfour Declaration is or what occupation actually entails. And I would like to ask, Richard, if you can, to explain plainly for our audience what the Balfour Declaration actually did for Palestine and what is behind the scenes of this emotional piece that we've watched. Well, in brief, I think the Balfour Declaration was the pledge by the British Foreign Secretary at the time, Lord Alfred Balfour, of support for the Zionist project of establishing a Jewish homeland in Palestine. Note it was support for a homeland, not a state, and that distinction is often lost. It also has always, for me, epitomized this last stand of colonial arrogance, the notion that one would decide the future of the Palestinian people, whether Arab majority or the Jewish tiny minority at that time, which was about 8 to 10 percent of the total population of Palestine, that kind of colonial arrogance would override the will of the people that were living and had been living for generations in the land. One understands that the background that is familiar to most people, probably including the audience, was the Jewish experience of the Holocaust. The Balfour Declaration, of course, preceded by 20 years what the genocide that occurred during the Nazi era. But the two things get merged in a very confusing way, and very little empathy is placed on the Palestinian end of this experience. The European countries, and also the North American countries, particularly my own, the US, did very little to obstruct Nazi atrocities. And the Palestinians, of course, did nothing to cause those atrocities, and yet they paid the price, and they also were used by these liberal democracies as a way of assuaging their guilt for not doing more. And again, the Orientalism of making a non-Western people pay for the crimes of the West is itself a powerful, not exactly image, but it's a powerful reality that has been repeated in many other contexts, maybe not as vividly as in Palestine, but it's characteristic, I think, of what the colonial mentality imposed on especially Asia and Africa over a long period of time. And I mean, the one other thing I would say is that Zionism had the challenge of trying to uphold this sense of being democratic and not violating international norms. And the only way it could do that and still establish a Jewish mandate in Palestine was by ethnic cleansing. So you had this need, given the partition that came much later of Palestine under UN auspices, disregarding once again the will of the people that lived there, and creating the political necessity to get rid of the Palestinians who were in the part of Palestine that was allocated to the Jewish emergent state. And so one has this remnant of colonialism at the very time historically when colonialism was collapsing everywhere else in the world. And the only way to make that kind of project work is to be extremely coercive because no people in the 20th century, middle of the 20th century, was going to accept the idea that colonial rule was still a valid way of governing people. So you had it built into the beginning of the, the post spell for reality, a dynamic of resistance and repression, and that goes on as we speak. And I should stop speaking. I could listen to you for hours Richard you know that. I wonder if anyone else wanted to add something to what Richard has said. Well, I think Richard had had put the whole idea in such a thorough way. The only thing that I would say is that, as he said, it is a colonial project that one of the most unfortunate matter is that the whole world, the UN on top of everybody else, did not want to listen to the people. The oppression had been established in this part of the world since 1996, after the Zionist Congress. The first Zionist Congress when the beginning of the Jewish immigration have started into Palestine. And the Palestinians started to raise their voice, started to say something wrong is happening there but no one wanted to listen. And they're still happening the same thing. I mean, what we are facing today with this, what they call peace, the new peace agreement between Israel and the Emirates is another chain of that history and that story. So unless the Palestinians would have the rights, full rights, right of return, right of having their own country and the right of choosing what they want, then there will not be peace in this land. And so the world really need to be bold for once and to stand in the right place and to stand with the oppressed people and not to clap for the oppressor. And that's the problem. Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. Thank you. I wanted to ask you and Edward, actually, in Palestine, how vivid is this idea of British colonialism? Because of course, before the Balfour Declaration, Palestine was a British colony. So how present is that in people's minds? How aware people are in? How much accountability do you think? Sorry, I'll rephrase that. How much do you think the British Empire is accountable and should be held accountable nowadays? We believe that the whole, not only the British, but the whole international community should be held accountable. Of course Britain on top of it, France as well, the U.S. But also what is the EU doing to us at the moment, trying to impose political agenda on the way they would help the Palestinian and support the Palestinian community is another episode of the same thing. I mean, after the Holocaust, the Germans have paid trillions for the Jews and for Israel, per se, and they still are. But UK, Britain did not pay a penny for the Palestinians in return to the Balfour Declaration and to what they have done. So the conspiracy or the political will of the Western world was from the beginning to impose Israel here because they wanted a country that would become the police in the Arab world in order to stop the Arab nation of becoming one strong ally and to keep controlling the resources, the petrol and now the gas. And that would bring me to the fact that Israel had put Gaza for 14 years now, 14 consecutive years in prison and in siege, only because there is gas on the shores of Gaza. Because they don't want the Gazans to use the, and they don't want the Palestinian authority to use the gas, which is our right. So and the whole world is allying and supporting Israel in that. So if we are talking with frustration is because we know that politics is really the art of supporting the powerful. Thank you. Thank you, Iman. Does anyone want to add anything? Richard, do you want to add anything? Oh, you've got a cat. Oh my God, I'm so sorry. I know this is live, but when I see cats, I just can't help myself. Turkey, you'll see many cats. Yes, I would say it's important to understand that after World War One, the peace diplomacy that followed shortly after the Balfour Declaration, which was issued in 1917 during the war, was not completely successful in establishing a British colony in Palestine. They and the U.S. under Woodrow Wilson was pressing for self-determination of peoples liberated from the Ottoman Empire. And what the international community ended up doing was to create this so-called mandate system, which gave Britain administrative rights, but supposedly as a sacred trust for the well-being of the people that it was responsible for. And this was a kind of halfway house between colonialism and self-determination. But the self-determination part was really ignored, and so it didn't end up the way this sort of Wilsonian idealism, which tried to check French and British ambitions in the Middle East or at least moderate them. And that is part of this story, and it's part of why Britain sort of doesn't feel as guilty as it should feel, especially the British elite, because in the Balfour Declaration there's a kind of clause that says nothing should be done that would hurt the interests of the non-Jewish communities. And again, that was language that had no bearing on behavioral reality. And so it's a, as all these narratives of national evolution tend to be, it has complex patterns of disappointment and illusionary appeals that are never fulfilled. And I think Palestine's tragedy is one that is compounded by the idealistic elements in the international world, including the UN, as has been said. Instead of being, it's accused of being an Israeli bashing organization, actually it legitimated a colonial project at the great expense of human rights, of the self-determination, which was supposed to be the cardinal norm in the period after World War II. Richard, you've just been muted. Perhaps your wonderful cats have helped you with that. I said a bad thing. And the cats were like, no. No, the cats have viewed me from time to time. Well, I was just going to say that the complicity of the UN is an important dimension of why this situation has been allowed to go so long without any kind of adequate justice being implemented. And hopefully, as bad as things now appear, changes will happen as a result of continuing Palestinian resistance and a growing global solidarity movement. And one hopes a less pro-Israeli successor to our current President Trump. Since we mentioned the UN, I wanted to ask you more about your role at the UN and also what challenges you faced and why the UN has not been as helpful for the Palestinian cause. Well, those are big questions. But let me just say my role as special rapporteur was to report on Israeli human rights violations that were committed during the occupation. And it's a position that is within the scope of the activity of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva. And these special rapporteurs are appointed by consensus, which means you can't have any opposition to your appointment. It's an unpaid position, but a position that, because it's unpaid, is not susceptible to UN discipline. And even the UN Secretary General, in my case, said he lacked the power to dismiss me, which was helpful in the sense of reinforcing my independence and at the same time getting him off the hook for not being able to carry out Washington's fond wishes, not to have a critic of Israel in this position. And it is used, the reports that were issued twice a year and given to the General Assembly in New York and the Human Rights Council in Geneva are probably the most comprehensive objective reporting that was relied upon by many governments and NGOs, important NGOs like the World Council and churches and others. So it was a taxing position because I was being attacked by Zionist NGOs that are very well organized in Geneva and attacked me as a militant anti-Semite and a self-hating Jew myself and a lot of other things. But I realized I was doing a reasonable job when the Weitzman Institute, a pro-Zionist organization that's located partly in Los Angeles and publishes each year a list of the 10 most dangerous anti-Semites in the world, listed me as third and the only persons ahead of me were the Prime Minister of Turkey and the Supreme Guide of Iran. So I realized at that point that this position must have a certain impact and I felt it worthwhile to continue. And just briefly, if you could tell us why your work at the UN hasn't been as fruitful as, I mean not your work, I'm sorry, I'll rephrase that again, why the UN is not offering the Palestinians the support that they so badly need. Well you have to understand that the UN was created in a way that gave primacy to geopolitics rather than international law and human rights. The veto power enjoyed by the five permanent members of the Security Council really in effect is saying these countries can do what they want. They don't have to be subject to the discipline of law or the UN Charter or the General Assembly or other parts of the UN itself. They have the right to veto any policy or recommendation or decision that they find contrary to their interests. And this kind of geopolitical primacy is part of the constitutional structure of the UN. And therefore it's really not, you can't expect the UN to do more than it was empowered to do. And so one realizes that what it can do is change the discourse, but it can't change the behavior unless it is backed by the geopolitical forces at play. For instance in 2011, when the geopolitical forces converged on doing something about the Libyan internal struggle, the UN was too effective and ended up supporting a regime changing intervention in Libya. It did the same thing in the first Gulf War that made Iraq leave Kuwait. So the UN can be effective behaviorally if and only if the geopolitical forces seek to implement its political will. But if its political will goes against geopolitics, which solidarity with the Palestinian struggle has always done, then it is paralyzed at the behavioral level. You probably remember the Goldstone report is a good example where the UN was able to establish a discourse on Israeli international criminality. But it couldn't follow the recommendations of the report, including reference to the International Criminal Court, because the US was able to block that kind of follow through. And so it's important to understand what the UN can do and what it can't do and try to change that balance a little bit through public opinion and other forces. It also was possible in my role to introduce both the language of colonialism and the language of apartheid to describe the occupation and also to anticipate the annexation debate. In other words, it was clear that Israel was de facto annexing large portions of the West Bank. And it only has become a kind of international issue when they tried to extend their de jure sovereignty to ratify what they had done factually for many years. So there are many things that can be done, but not the things that in the end count the most for the people on the ground who are suffering from this status quo that has gone on far too long. Thank you for that. Thank you Richard. And I ask about that I asked about the UN because I feel like even even me before I started doing more digging and more research, you know, we assume that you know the International Criminal Justice Court, all these, all these institutions work for us and they should protect all of us. But in fact, by meeting you and everybody else at ISKI at Queen Mary, we've become more enlightened with how geopolitics actually work. And you mentioned public opinion, you know, and I wanted to get because it's all linked to theater, I believe, that in order to change public opinion in order to make sure that things are changed at a higher level in law, we need people to form solidarity. And I wanted to open it up to Ashtar and to Mojizola about the solidarity that we can create through political theater. I know that for us that, you know, we're a small company, but whenever we get responses from people, we see that we've managed, you know, even if two or three people write to us or talk to us afterwards, we realize that, you know, solidarity happens at the grassroots. And I was wondering what your experience was with this piece, because I know you've toured it quite a lot. Yeah, perhaps I could reflect a bit and I'll be really interested to hear Eduardo Neman's memories as well of different responses to the piece in terms of solidarity. I suppose one thing to say is that the creation of this work is in itself an act of solidarity. We are in solidarity with each other and that works in many directions. So, you know, we can think about, you know, the occupation of Palestine and the history that Richard Neman have so eloquently described, also in terms of racism. And so this for me, the creation of this piece is absolutely an act of solidarity as a black woman with Palestinian people. And there is, it also works both ways with Palestinian solidarity with black people with Black Lives Matter, for example, the movement at the moment and the last demonstration, a demonstration I was on in Berlin in fact, of all places. There was a beautiful rally there of Palestinians at the Black Lives Matter demonstration. And I would encourage also black folk to also stand in solidarity with Palestinians that we have much in common and the roots that Richard described in terms of colonialism, the roots are the same. So the same powers that, you know, put millions of us on slave ships and colonised lands, colonised the Palestinians is exactly the same. And I suppose as people were here for my accent, I'm British, I carry a British passport. And so it felt really important to me to be making this work. Because although my own family, my Nigerian family were colonised by the British. I still, I carry that passport so I carry the unwanted privileges of that passport so it's my, I feel it's my, my duty to use the power of that passport, the access that that passport gives me to reflect the question back to Britain. And to, to, you know, to use the piece as a kind of, as an active, you know, as an educational kind of piece as well. Most British people that I know, you know, that I deal with and I didn't realise Richard were colleagues, I also work at Queen Mary. When I'm not in Berlin, I'm a lecturer in the theatre department, drama department at Queen Mary University of London. But most people that I would interact with, students and, you know, mature and educated people, don't know that, you know, the history of the Balfour Declaration, or a friend of mine, an actor that's worked a lot with the Ashtar Theatre, showed me his mother's passport and his mother's passport. He's a Palestinian woman, it's the same as my passport, it's the same crest, it's the same lettering, the same everything. I'm taking pictures in Jerusalem of post boxes, there are still red post boxes that you get exactly the same as you get in London and people saying to me, how come they've got English postboxes? Like, yeah, because I was a British, you know, I was under the British, you know, but people don't, you know, I mean, talk about educated people who don't know that kind of history. So I think, you know, just to create this piece of work and to collaborate across nations and across cultures is extremely important for theatre makers to just be in the room with each other and understand each other, learn from each other. I'm not the only person that's done that, Ashtar have collaborated with many people. Connell Morrison is a very well known theatre director from the North of Ireland. Really fascinating collaboration in terms of thinking about the North of Ireland and Palestine and those experiences coming together in his face and strategising together creatively. And I just want to publicly thank Ashtar as well for saying yes to an idea that I had. Because of that British passport, when I work internationally, I only go where I'm invited. I work a lot internationally, but I only go where I'm invited and I try not to stay too long. Because what the British did is they went where they weren't invited and they stayed too long and they left a mess behind usually. So I don't generally say to a theatre company, I've got an idea, do you want to work with me? But because I'd had this kind of longer relationship with Ashtar, I said, hey, I have this idea, do you want to try it? And Edward and Iman and the company that Iman mentioned with some of the other artists involved, very important artists on this project said yes. And that was incredibly generous of them to say to a British person, yeah, come over here and make a show with us about occupation. I don't have a right, but they allowed me that space. Because the purpose of this piece really is to try and educate people in Britain and in the United States and the rest of the world about what occupation means in reality in a very embodied kind of way. So thank you, Iman and Edward and everyone, Ashtar. Well, if I may add, first, thank you. Of course, I mean, you are, what we feel that you are a part of the Ashtar family, so that goes without any question. But I wanted to say that Ashtar Theatre, since its establishment in 1991, we had this idea of creating bridges with the world, with the theatre world. Because we feel that we are part of one big family, which is the art family. We feel connected to every theatre maker that has a vision, that has a message of life and of humanity to present. So we've been working with Manjusola, with Michael Walling, with Barbara Santos, with many, many big, great, wonderful artists from UK, from Berlin, from Ireland, from the US, from Germany. And we feel that this relationship is really building an insight to us and to them, to our people and to the people from where they are, as well as it creates great empathy of our human essence. Because at the end of the day, we are all human beings, and we are working for the best of what humanity should be. So we have a responsibility towards our students, because we are a theatre school as well. We have a responsibility towards the new generation, to make them aware of the history and of the atrocities that is happening in Palestine, but also the atrocities that is happening to Black people, for example, with Black life matter, to people under different occupation and oppression. But to go back to what this particular play has done, everywhere we have taken this play, it generated a big discussion. People were really touched by it. People accepted what we've been presenting. Of course, some people were skeptical as well, or some asked questions and some said, but this is not the full reality, etc. But they accepted what we have presented, they respected what we have presented, because it resonated with them, because it doesn't only show the Palestinian, Israeli conflict and the occupation. It also presents a conflict between gender. And it is a very big issue there, because colonialism is a man-made politics. It's not a woman-made politics. So we want to say that oppressed are mostly women and Palestinians and other people around the world. So there is a duty on our shoulder as artists to raise our voices right and to say what is right and what is wrong in this life. On the other hand, we do want the international artists and communities and people of empathy towards sensitive issues to back us up. Because we are continuously attacked and sometimes we are physically attacked or we are shot at, we are imprisoned, but sometimes we are even more attacked when we are attacked with our narrative. Because that destroys the history, because that changes the nature of life, because as much as the religions have done to pre-religion and to mythologies around our world and in the world in general, politics of today is doing the same thing towards native people of native places. Thank you so much. Very much is very much needed between the people. Absolutely. Your words ring so true and I completely agree. I think we can all agree that that is exactly what we need and that it is our duty as artists. We need to know exactly the same way. This is part of why good exists to spark these conversations and to show people what political theater could be and what it could achieve. We shouldn't be ashamed that we are doing political theater because that's also one more thing that is being fought against. I mean, we're not really doing cheap or bad quality theater. We're doing theater with good quality, but we have political messages and we're proud of putting our politics on stage as well. Absolutely. It's not a compromise. It's not a compromise at all. I am really sorry, but it's been such an incredible conversation that we haven't actually got to all of the questions that I had prepared, not to mention having time for audience questions. So unfortunately, I'm going to have to ask if anyone wants to say any final remarks just before we end. I would congratulate those that made this theater work possible and hope that they will continue with this way of resisting terrible crimes done to the Palestinian people. And thank you for moderating, Cezana. Thank you, Richard. I want to say thank you for everyone who invited us to perform this show around the world because this show was played about 200 times already in 2010. And I want to just say something in our last show in New Mexico. One of the audiences came to me after the show and he told me, you are a great actor, but I hate you. And he started to cry and he said, I am very sorry. I understood every movement that you have done, but we cannot help you because our government is against you Palestinians. And he was crying. Besides saying thank you to you, Cezana, Claire, and Angel, and all the people who were with us today, Mojicola and Richard, of course. I would really would like, this is like an open invitation for whoever is hearing us tonight or today, it depends on the hour. But come to Palestine, our doors are open. We at Ashtar Theatre, we would like to create cultural bridges because that's the only way we can create justice in the world. Thank you. I highly recommend that trip. I first went to work with Ashtar, I think it was 1997. And yeah, I have to look back. It was a huge education for me and continues to be an education, not just in politics, but in art. And an absolutely life changing experience. And yeah, just to absolutely support what Iman says, you know, and what I, you know, the sentiment of these discussions that you've created. And thank you so much for setting this up as well. That it's, you know, art, culture, theater, music. And a few ways we can, we can cross those bridges and and and understand conflict and understand war and understand injustice and understand occupation and educate ourselves without picking up a weapon. You know, it's extremely powerful and if it wasn't so powerful governments wouldn't try to repress the media governments wouldn't try to repress the arts. Governments try to repress and curtail the arts and media and news. So it's, it's powerful work we're doing here. And yeah, so, so, you know, get to Palestine might struggle getting in, you might struggle getting out, but it's absolutely worth the experience. And thank you so much for this discussion has been completely inspirational and and empowering. Thank you. And thank you. Thank you to everyone. Thank you, Richard. Thank you, Iman. Thank you, Edward. Thank you, Mochisola. And also thank you to the people watching. I want to remind you that if you want to support ashtar you can by donating there will be a link that pops up and it will be in the event. I really suggest that you do because they're making incredible work in incredible circumstances so they really need the support and your love. And I want to end by inviting everyone to join us in two weeks time for the next event, which will be revenge by Laura Uribe from Mexico. It is a play about the micro aggressions and the micro violence in our family that turn into macro violences on a societal level. It's an incredible piece of work that I really recommend you come back and watch and for the discussion afterwards as you are used to buy now. Thank you so much, everyone, and see you on the 14th of September, hopefully, if you can make it. Bye. Thank you very much. We're no longer live.