For immediate release
The Freedom Theatre
Jenin, West Bank, Occupied Palestine
September 9, 2012

Zakaria Zubeidi, co-founder of The Freedom Theatre and former leader of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, has been imprisoned by the Palestinian Authority for almost four months. No charges have been made against him, no evidence presented and throughout his imprisonment his rights has been severely violated, as described by among others Human Rights Watch*.
Today Zakaria's release was yet again postponed for 8 days pending additional investigations. As a response Zakaria announced he will embark on a hunger and fluid strike to death which effectively means that unless the Palestinian Authority releases Zakaria he will not make it through the week.

*http://www.hrw.org/news/2012/07/27/israelpalestinian-authority-theater-group-hit-both-sides

For more information: info@thefreedomtheatre.org

Previous press releases, background and updates:
Zakaria Zubeidi remains in prison (02092012)
http://www.thefreedomtheatre.org/news.php?id=275
Zakaria Zubeidi's release postponed (27082012)
http://www.thefreedomtheatre.org/news.php?id=274
Zakaria Zubeidi to be released on bail (22082012)
http://www.thefreedomtheatre.org/news.php?id=272
Zakaria Zubeidi temporarily released (19082012)
http://www.thefreedomtheatre.org/news.php?id=271
Human Rights Watch calls for end to harassment of The Freedom Theatre (28072012)
http://www.thefreedomtheatre.org/news.php?id=263
New information on Nabil and Zakaria (11072012)
http://www.thefreedomtheatre.org/news.php?id=257
Nabil and Zakaria on hunger strike (05072012)
http://www.thefreedomtheatre.org/news.php?id=256
Latest news on Nabil and Zakaria (01072012)
http://www.thefreedomtheatre.org/news.php?id=251
Action Alert: Free Nabil Al-Raee and Zakaria Zubeidi (07062012)
http://www.thefreedomtheatre.org/news.php?id=239

Playwright Howard Brenton on how it's time to stop the harassment and detention of members of Jenin's Freedom theatre – and it isn't just Israel

What price the freedom to put on plays? The odd bad review in the Daily Telegraph (if you're me)? Or protesters at Shakespeare's Globe (if you're performing in Habima theatre's Israeli version of The Merchant of Venice)?

Or how about being picked up at a checkpoint because you're an actor, or made to stand by a theatre wall in the middle of the night with your trousers down because you're a theatre technician? Or being taken off to a detention centre and denied a lawyer or family visit ? Or being shot in the head with your baby son in your lap because you're an artistic director?

All these are part of the price being paid by the staff of the Freedom theatre in the Jenin Refugee Camp on the West Bank. On 3 April last year, its artistic director and co-founder, the Arab-Israeli actor and peace activist Juliano Mer Khamis, got into his car outside the theatre with his son Jay and a babysitter. Reports vary as to the exact details, but it appears that 100 yards from the theatre he was waved down, then shot five times in the head by a masked gunman, who fled into the maze of the camp's alleys. Jay was uninjured, the babysitter hit in the arm. No one has yet been apprehended for Mer Khamis's murder. From that shocking day there has been what can only be seen as a systematic harassment of the Freedom theatre by the Israeli army.

On 27 July last year, masked Israeli soldiers attacked the theatre in the middle of the night. They hurled blocks of stone, smashing their way into the auditorium. Adnan Naghnaghiye, the theatre's head technician, and Bilal Saadi, its chairperson, were taken away. Then in August Rami Awni Hwayel, a 20 year-old student at the theatre's film school who was about to perform in the theatre's adaptation of Alice in Wonderland – an extraordinary project for the West Bank, typical of the Freedom theatre's élan – was stopped at a checkpoint, singled out from among other students and taken away handcuffed and blindfolded.

And just last week the theatre's present artistic director, Nabil Al-Raee, was abducted in the middle of the night by the Israeli army. His wife, Micaela Miranda, described the scene in testimony published by the theatre: "The dog started barking so I went outside and saw soldiers jumping over the gate and come into the yard of the house. They asked for my husband and I asked what for, for it's my right to know and it's my house. The soldiers replied they were not going to tell me. They then took Nabil, brought him to an army jeep and drove off." Al-Raee is now reported to be in the Jalameh detention centre, north of Jenin, inside Israel. According to the theatre, interrogations at Jalameh commonly involve sleep deprivation, psychological pressure, binding in painful positions.

Now the intimidation of the theatre's staff and their families is ever more frequent – and it's not just the Israeli army. The Palestinian Authority has also joined in the attacks. On 13 May Zakaria Zubeidi, a co-founder of the theatre, was arrested by them and taken to Jericho prison. He has not been allowed visits by a lawyer or his family.

The Freedom theatre began as a community project for young people of both sexes. It has expanded into an arts project for the West Bank that also entertains an enthusiastic adult audience; it has started an acting school, and recently launched a film school to train young people for the growing Palestinian film industry. It is a small pool of enlightenment and joy in a dark place.

Israel: many of us defended your National Theatre's right to perform recently at the Globe in London. From the same argument, stop your attacks on the Freedom theatre and release its artists from your prisons.

• For more information please contact info@thefreedomtheatre.org

EXCLUSIVE ONLINE CONTENT in ABOUT THEATER:

Waiting for Freedom

Erin Mee

The Freedom Theatre of Jenin's While Waiting

Juliano Mer Khamis and his colleagues Jonatan Stancyk and Zakaria Zubeidi opened The Freedom Theatre in 2006 under unusually difficult circumstances. The Jenin Refugee Camp has a population of 16,000 people who were expelled from their homes in and around Haifa during the 1948 Nakba (in Arabic, “catastrophe”) and in 1967 after the Six-Day War. Mer Khamis estimated that 70% of the population in the camp is unemployed. During the 2002 Battle of Jenin 1,400 homes were destroyed or partially demolished, 1 in 3 people were again rendered homeless, curfews were imposed, and homes were invaded by Israeli soldiers. Residents suffer from a lack of secure housing and from rampant malnutrition.

“The Freedom Theatre,” declared Mer Khamis, who ran the theatre until he was assasinated on April 4, 2011, “is a venue to join the Palestinian people in their struggle for liberation with poetry, music, theatre, cameras. The Israelis succeeded [in destroying] our identity, our social structures, political [and] economical. Our duty as artists is to rebuild or reconstruct this destruction. Who we are, why we are, where we are going, who we want to be.” In a 2009 interview with the BBC, he said: “To be free is to be able to criticize. To be free is to be able to express yourself freely. To be free is to be free first of all [from the] chains of tradition, religion, [and] nationalism (in a dark way I mean). Then you can start to free yourself from others.”

“We believe that the third intifada, the coming intifada, should be cultural, with poetry, music, theatre, cameras, and magazines” declared Mer Khamis. His goal was for The Freedom Theatre to “generate a political artistic movement of artists who are going to raise their voices against women’s discrimination, against children’s discrimination, against violence.” To this end, The Freedom Theatre teaches courses in film, photography, creative writing, and drama therapy. the company offers a three-year theater training program and it has produced original adaptations of the famous Palestinian writer Ghassan Kanafani’s Men in the Sun,[i] George Orwell’s Animal Farm, and Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

In fall 2011 the first class of graduates from the theatre’s training program toured universities in the Northeastern United States, speaking to students, training with professionals, and performing While Waiting, their culminating project with the Freedom Theatre (directed by Udi Aloni in the wake of Mer Khamis’s murder). As a supporter of the group and an organizer of the tour, I had an opportunity to see this extraordinary production several times.

An adaptation of Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, While Waiting begins with a comedy routine about what it’s like to tour a production from Palestine: “Palestinians suffer from a lot of discrimination,” a performer informs the audience. “Not only at the checkpoints. Most people arrive at the airport three hours before their flight. But we, the Freedom Theatre, when we booked our flight we booked fifteen days in New York, and three nights in the airport. The airport stay was like a spa: it was hot, I was naked, and I got a special Security massage…And then, when we got on the flight, I saw that the bathroom says ‘Occupied.’ Occupied! You have been occupying my bathroom for 63 years!” This comic monologue, delivered by Adi Khalefa, specifically locates the production in occupied Palestine, centering the production as a whole on what Didi (Maryam Abu Khaled) and Gogo (Batoul Taleb) do while waiting for freedom, while waiting for a state. This production asks who and what one becomes while waiting, how to behave toward those who share the wait, and how to live a semblance of a normal life without normalizing the Occupation, without giving in to it or giving up on the notion of freedom.

This production asks what happens to the humanity of those who are waiting. It is also examines the ways in which Did and Gogo fill their time with endless acts of creativity in order to survive; in this sense it is also about the power of theatre. Freedom seems like it will never appear. A young girl (played by Milay Mer, Mer Khamis’ daughter) seems to know Godot is out there somewhere, but she has never met him directly, and has no information to offer about what he is like. Freedom, like Godot, is a remote and vague concept, more rumor than reality.

Didi and Gogo are both played by women here. Gogo is not tortured by stones in his boots, but by high heels: by fashion, by socially determined notions of beauty and normative definitions of appropriate behavior for women. For her Godot also represents freedom from gender discrimination.

Pozzo (Rami al-Awni) is extremely wealthy: he wears a crisp white suit with a dashing tie, and carries a basket of appetizing chicken, which Gogo pounces on as if she has not eaten in days. Pozzo has two servants, (Moemen Switat and Eyad Hourani) both dressed poorly, and suffering under the weight of luggage they carry on their shoulders like refugees from the Nakba.

During rehearsals cast members were continuously harassed by the Israeli army: al-Awni was held for three weeks without access to a lawyer, and Switat was forced to attend interrogation sessions daily both before and after rehearsals. As a result, the company decided to cast three people in the role of Lucky so that one would always be able to rehearse; in New York there were only two actors playing the role because the third did not obtain a U.S. visa.

In a post-performance discussion at Columbia University’s Miller Theatre, the young actors talked about what the play means to them. For Abu Khaled the drama is about her personal situation after Mer Khamis’ death: “We are waiting for Godot, waiting for some
thing, waiting for our future.” For Taleb, Beckett’s tragicomedy is about “waiting for freedom.” Hourani said: “I’m waiting for all of us to be human.” For Mustafa Staiti, who created the video clips used in the production, “it’s not only about sitting and waiting, it’s about doing something, and start[ing] to take responsibility, because all the Palestinian people have been waiting for a leader. It’s about: stop waiting and start doing something. This is what this play means to me.”

in  ABOUT THEATER

Theater, an international journal of criticism, plays, and reporting on contemporary performance, is edited by the Yale School of Drama/Yale Repertory Theatre and published three times a year by Duke University Press.

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