Palestinian refugees pass on power of culture

Oct 27 2009 The Journal

Peter Mortimer reflects on the recent historic theatre visit to the North East of a special group of Palestinian refugees

NOTHING it seemed, could faze the 10 12-13-year-old girls.

Suddenly removed from their squalid, suffocating world of Shatila Refugee Camp in Beirut and plonked down in the relative affluence of Tyneside, removed from everything they had known 3,000 miles away, they were called upon to perform, in a foreign language, and at such world-famously prestigious venues as The Sage Gateshead, a 30-minute play. They did so eight times, without recourse to a prompter, with scarcely a line or movement fluffed, their young voices projecting out like true professionals.

The power and passion of their acting left many of the audience in tears. And after each performance, they concluded with the traditional Palestinian dance, the Dabka. There were standing ovations. At The Sage, no-one wanted to leave, neither the audience nor the actors, as harassed officials, mumbling about safety regulations, tried to clear the auditorium.

I had worried about the girls’ punishing eight- day schedule; four venues, eight performances, a timetable crammed with activity – everyone wanted to meet the Palestinian refugee thespians, from council bigwigs to local theatre groups. How would the youngsters handle it, mentally, physically?

They handled it. Theatre brought them alive, as it brought their audiences alive, and ironically the day I most felt fatigue setting in was their only ‘rest’ day, no performance, but a round of official functions.

I spent two months last year living on Shatila Camp. For those instinctive reasons writers come to trust, I was strongly moved to write a book about the huge culture shock I knew such an experience would bring. While on camp, I blagged my way into the school, persuading the authorities (UNRWA – United Nations Relief and Work Agency, which runs most of the camp’s meagre amenities) to let me work with a group of children to create a play.

I wrote the play on camp, based on my fable Croak The King & A Change in the Weather, about the downfall of a greedy monarch believing in his omnipotence. Though the girls’ grasp of English was rudimentary, and they had no cultural concept of theatre, the head Samiha Yazbeck Shadaheh requested they performed it in this, the language of Shakespeare.