The ongoing condition of the war was given powerful expression yesterday by exiled Egyptian satirist Bassam Youssef who used comic rhetoric to take command of a conversation with political commentator Piers Morgan on TalkTV. The video has had millions of hits already - and thanks to my Egyptian friend for our conversation about it. I'd like to share some notes two recent Palestinian plays in the light of Youssef's argument.
Bassam was excessively affirmative when asked if he condemned Hamas for terrorism and hostage-taking, and then shifted the framework Piers wanted to follow, using the unforgiving logic of comedy to interrogate the logic of Israel's threatened revenge. He succeeded in making Piers seem unusually uptight as he reeled off the statistics of death on both sides. Stated in terms of a currency exchange the tragedy sounds so absurd that we laugh, right? What other response can there be to such a dark situation?
Piers Morgan asked Bassam Youssef what it would take to start talking about peace, and at this point Bassam's impressive schtick was understandably derailed. His high-octane comedy seems justifiably fuelled by his outrage at a situation in which humanity is desperately out of kilter. Solutions have to wait for more sober thinking, and less contempt. An inspired polemicist like Youssef is not ready for that.
In contrast, as pointed out by an Egyptian friend, footballer Mo Salah's appeal for humanitarian aid was uncontroversial. "It's not always easy to speak in times like this", he recited, sounding unusually stiff while scorn is still echoing all around.
Two Palestinian plays staged in the last 6 months explore the dynamics of the Israel-Palestine relationship in a calmer space away from TV and social media. In Landmine (الألغام الأرضية Illagham Ilardia) written by Elie Kamal and presented by Theatre Al-Kasabah, for the Jordan International Festival of Liberal Theatre, director George Ibrahim's simple staging makes use of a powerful metaphor: a couple in an unspecified time and place have convinced themselves that a bomb could go off under their feet at any moment. I saw it in Amman in June, where actor Ghassen Al-Achbar won the prize for Best Actor - it's a show that now seems ironically prescient.
Amira Habach and Ghassen Al-Achbar in Landmine by Elie Kamal. Facebook and photos JIFTF, 2023
The couple want to speak about their relationship, but they imagine that they will set off a bomb whenever they approach the boundaries of their roles as a couple. The bomb seems imaginary but there is a circular border on the stage that the actors can't cross physically. So to pass the time, to escape depression, and to put the 'bomb' out of mind, they begin to speculate. Some of the ideas they explore are more volatile and provocative than others, depending on where they are situated on the stage, or how close they are physically. There is some comedy around this intimate relationship but they discover that the scope of their thinking is conditioned by an assumed risk that things will always "blow up".
In Pedro & The Captain (1979) by Mario Bendetti, presented at the theater in the Jesuit Culture Centre at the Alexandria International Theatre Festival on 24/9/23, Palestinian performers Ra'id El-Showky and Mohammed El-Tyti jointly took the prize for best actor, for a play written about the dictatorship in Uruguay in 1973. The play's dialogue, directed Ehab Zahada who also won the Best Director prize, explores a Stockholm Syndrome relationship between a Captain, full of invective about a prisoner that he is torturing. The prisoner is either in a box or hanging from the rafters. His head is hooded or masked, reminiscent of those placed on prisoners in Abu Ghraib. The translation of the play in English in 2009 uses the word 'waterboarding' to update the text and focus on how the US Army and CIA broke the Geneva Convention in the treatment of prisoners following 9/11.
In 2023 it was performed a week before this latest war erupted. Monica Hunken, a jury member at the Alexandria International Theatre Festival arrived on 22nd September from Rafah and told me that only hours before she had been taking cover from live fire. During the week of the festival I didn't realise the full significance of the restaging of Benedetti's play 50 years after its debut, 50 years after the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. The relationship between Pedro and The Captain echoes again with the relationships between regional players.
Bassam Youssef's view of the relationship uses comic irony and he doesn't hold back: "it's like being in a relationship with a narcisstic psychopath: he f*cks you up and then he makes you think it's your fault" (op cit 22':22"). In Benedetti's play though, the victim remains largely silent, his presence forcing the captain to become introspective. The design for the show at the Jesuit Centre Theatre used plastic sheeting and a series of magnifying windows to show not only how the captain's perspective is obscured but how his own facial expressions are distorted as he peers in slowly becoming aware of the unintended consequences of his choices.
The relationship between agents in the current conflict can be understood as a warped co-dependency like the couple in Landmine, but also as the consequences of a twisted self-justification as in Pedro and The Captain.
"By humanizing these two characters, rather than dehumanizing them, as the torturer does, Benedetti brings them onto common ground" (Rendón, C. pg75).
The historical period is different, the balance of power is arguably different. Hamas have their prisoners now and I sincerely hope they are released soon. Youssef argues that Israel always presents itself as the victim. But slowly the Captain is forced to look at the impact of the revenge he exacts and the toll it takes on his own family.
I saw Landmine on 24/6/23 during the Jordan International Liberal Theatre Festival. I had seen a brilliant post-show discussion at Carthage Theatre Festival - Journées théâtrales de Carthages, Tunis, in December 2022, with Ali Elayan. Many to him and to Amal Dabbas for their subsequent invitation to Amman. Thanks to Dr Gamal Yakout for the invitation to the jury of the Alexandria International Theatre Festival.
References:
Youtube. Mazen. Canada باسم يوسف أفحم بيرس مورجان (أكبر مذيع بريطاني) عن القضية الفلسطينية [مترجم], Talk TV 19/10/23
Youtube Sky news online 19/10/22 Liverpool forward Mohamed Salah has pleaded for peace and humanitarian aid for the people of Gaza.
Rendón, C. Pedro and the Captain: A Play in Four Parts. in World Literature Today; Norman Vol. 83, Iss. 6, (Nov/Dec 2009): 75).