With the arrival in the North East of a group of Palestinian refugee youngsters, Tyneside writer PETER MORTIMER examines a remarkable relationship
A DOZEN Palestinian youngsters and their four teachers arrive on Tyneside today in the latest chapter of a story that in the last few years has changed my life, and – I suspect – many other people's lives too.
The youngsters face 10 days as far removed from their day-to-day experience as could be imagined.
These are the children of Shatila refugee camp in West Beirut in Lebanon. Shatila is a place of cramped squalor, a forgotten and often claustrophobic slum in existence since the creation of the state of Israel in 1948.
A few weeks ago, a six-strong production team from Tyneside spent 16 days in Shatila preparing the play, Croak The King and a Change in the Weather –- based on one of my fables – for the youngsters to perform on stage. Living on a refugee camp had a profound effect on us all, and the people of Shatila took us to their hearts.
The first performance was at Theatre Monnot in the well-to-do mainly Christian East Beirut. Although in the same city as Shatila, this area culturally and economically is as distant as Mars.
Now the play travels 3,000 miles to Tyneside, and the Palestinians also perform in Edinburgh and Liverpool. In Liverpool the audience will include children from a Jewish school.
Following an article on the trip in The Jewish Chronicle the school requested both to see the play and meet the cast. Hard to imagine from the humble beginnings in December 2008, how much things would move on.
I lived in Shatila for two months, the main objective being to write a book on the culture shock of such an experience. The final act on camp was staging the rough-and-ready version of the fable I’d written for the children during my stay.
At this stage, I never envisaged the piece travelling beyond the confines of the camp
The youngsters had only a limited grasp of English, yet almost miraculously performed the play in this, the language of Shakespeare. Theatre was an unknown experience to these young actors.
But somehow, on a makeshift stage, using scrounged sound equipment, with props and set cobbled together by the school arts teacher, in this impoverished unlikely place, against the constant background noise of the camp, the play was performed.
In 2009, after a year of fund-raising, the same children brought the play to Tyneside and gave eight performances to great acclaim.
Then last month at the Theatre Monnot, on a replica set built in Beirut, with new choreography, and new music, the new cast of Shatila children performed to a first night audience which included Barbara Hewitt, director of the British Council Beirut, and Frances Guy, the British Ambassador to Lebanon.
For the young Palestinians, it was an opportunity most professional actors would envy – performing a play in five venues in three countries. How many professional actors perform in a foreign language? How many young Brits would attempt to perform a play in Arabic?
For all concerned the Shatila project has been an emotional and cultural rollercoaster. Palestinians are a stateless people denied many basic human rights.
We have now established the Shatila Theatre Trust, an official charity looking to broaden cultural links between the camp and this region's artists. Wild ideas already abound.
A Shatila orchestra? North Tyneside Steel Band helping to create a unique Arabic version of their music? Watch this space.
Croak, The King and a Change in the Weather plays at The Sage, Gateshead, on Saturday, at 4pm and 7pm (0191 443 4661), and at the Saville Exchange, North Shields, April 4-5, 7.30pm, (0191 643 7093)
