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Rocky horror show
02410
October 18, 2002

Rocky horror show

PC(USA) officials take in play about shelling of Palestinian village

by Alexa Smith

BEIT JALA, West Bank - Raeda Ghazaleh says the play she helped write hit too
close to home to easily find its way back home.

The Palestinian writer says the drama her troupe wrote about living in Beit
Jala during an Israeli bombardment in 2000 - already staged in Switzerland,
Jordan and Egypt, and slated for production next year in England and France -
couldn't immediately find an audience in its home country.
	
A year and seven months after it was written, the play, "Until When ... ?!"
opened here finally on Oct. 10, in the bombed-out building still occupied by
the seven-member troupe called the Inad Theatre.

Finally, an audience was invited to watch its own story.

"This was very hard," says Khalid Massou, a school chum of Ghazaleh's and one
of the organizers of the Inad troupe, the only professional theater company
in the southern part of the West Bank - whose name, appropriately, means
"stubborn" theater in Palestinian. "It was like looking at slides,
remembering the most difficult moments of this experience."
	
"We did it all over, but not here," Ghazaleh says of the play. "It just
wasn't time; we were still living in the situation. (Now) it is time to see
that this was something we went through, that this was part of how human
beings live."
	
While the nightly bombing may have stopped, she says, the conflict between
Palestinians in the Occupied Territories and the Israeli army continues.
	
One touching scene in the play takes place at a moment when the sounds of
explosions stop briefly, and the actors creep out onstage amid piles of
rubble, stammering to each other, "Where are you? Where? Where?" and "Is it
over?" and "Why? Why is he gone? Of what was he guilty?"
	
In another scene, a woman in labor tries to persuade her unborn child to stay
in the safety of her womb rather than enter such a wretched world. "I wish I
could stay pregnant for 12 months," she cries. "These are not good days. I
know you want to come into the world ... but don't hurry."
	
The play is a tale of civilians trying to cling to normal life in the middle
of a military assault.
	
"I feel as if I am living in a toothpaste tube ... and one day I will be
squeezed out," one actors says. Another shouts at a hovering Apache
helicopter, "Can you fly by later? My baby needs to sleep." Another complains
that one cannot have a bath, because the shelling may resume at any time.
	
One story recounted in the play is that of a real-life Beit Jala man who died
in his shower when his house was blown up.
	
"I remember getting up from the table ... and rushing behind a wall for
cover, while (others) continued to eat," says Douglas Dicks, a Presbyterian
Church (USA) mission worker in who lives in nearby Bethlehem and was caught
up in the shelling. "You would know they were firing on Beit Jala, but you
weren't always sure from where. Americans just didn't see this."
	
The bombardment began in October 2000 after snipers in Beit Jala fired at
people in Gilo, an Israeli settlement on a hilltop nearby that was founded in
1948 and is still expanding today. 
	
Israel shelled Beit Jala randomly through the following winter, and was
criticized for using what many international observers considered
disproportionate force. As Israeli tanks and helicopters fired on the town,
its residents were hemmed in by Israeli checkpoints and could not leave
without Israeli permission.
	
"Day after day this went on, all winter long," recalls Sandy Olwine, a United
Methodist missionary who lives in Bethlehem. "Some of it was covered by the
news. The cameras were up in Gilo covering what was fired down into Beit
Jala. But nobody was seeing ... what it was like for real people who were
living daily with tank and helicopter (assaults.) People were running back
and forth, trying to get away from the shelling, trying to stay away from the
windows."
	
That's how Ghazaleh's play opens.
	
The audience enters in a crouch, moving along a dark tunnel, where hands on
all sides reach out and voices cry for help. News footage runs continually,
showing the familiar faces of Yassar Arafat, Colin Powell, Ariel Sharon and a
gaggle of news commentators. Their lips are moving, but the only sounds are
those of explosions and sirens.
	
"We were surprised by our own reactions when we made the tunnel and recorded
the sound," says sound technician Issam Rishmawi. "The sound was so strong,
we started to feel afraid. ... It felt real."
	
Inad has a reputation for community outreach and for performing for and with
local children. During the shelling it put on 203 performances. Even after
its theater was razed, it continued, using a flatbed truck for a stage.
	
The final moments of the play show children laughing, jumping, dancing -
living - in spite of the violence. Then actors pass out chunks of bread to
members of the audience, who leave the theater walking erect and partaking of
the bread of life.
	
"We don't just want to be actors," says Massou, 31. "We want to create
change."
	
Massou's own house was destroyed, but he can live with that. "My house, OK,"
he says. "But most importantly, my (infant) daughter, Daniella, was safe,
thank God. ... But when my theatre was destroyed, I cried."
	
The theme of occupation pervades the short drama. When it opens, the only
props are stones. When it ends, there are stones, too - rubble - but there is
dancing amidst it. 
In one scene, actors visit their old family homes, confiscated by the
Israelis in 1948, and return to Beit Jala to find their current houses
demolished. "That's his house, your house, my house," they say, kicking at
the bits of rock
	
"Stones are the only thing we have, the only thing we see," says Ghazaleh,
30. "Each morning, the main thing we see is a sea of stones."

In "Until When ?!" children use stones to grind olives, to make music, to
serve as monuments. 
	
Ghazaleh notes that pieces of the rubble also have been used as weapons in
two uprisings against the Israelis.
	
Dicks says the play communicates an important message. "There was a lot of
destruction here," he says, "but for the most part, people did not leave
their homes like in 1948 or in 1967. The message is: We're here to stay.
We'll continue in spite of everything."
	
A PC(USA) delegation - including the Rev. Fahed Abu-Akel, a
Palestinian-American pastor from Atlanta serving as moderator of the 214th
General Assembly; the Rev. Victor Makari, coordinator for the Middle East in
the Worldwide Ministries Division; and Sara Lisherness, coordinator of the
Presbyterian Peacemaking Program (PPP) - attended the opening-night
performance.
	
Marina Barham, who manages the theater, is a former international peacemaker
for the PPP. 

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