WEST BANK: "The Freedom Theatre" in the Palestinian Jenin refugee camp is a cultural and theatrical training centre inspired by the work of an Israeli peace activist.

Record ID: 495144

  • Title: WEST BANK: "The Freedom Theatre" in the Palestinian Jenin refugee camp is a cultural and theatrical training centre inspired by the work of an Israeli peace activist.
  • Date: 16th January 2007
  • Summary: VARIOUS OF YOUNG FEMALE ACTORS FROM JENIN REFUGEE CAMP REHEARSING A DANCE SEQUENCE
  • Embargoed: 31st January 2007 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: International Relations,Arts / Culture / Entertainment / Showbiz
  • Reuters ID: LVA2NM7IH81LK8OCS10A0YWRIHZ9
  • Story Text: A theatre founded and managed by a part-Israeli, part-Palestinian director continues to provide an arena for self-expression and give hope to children and young men and women in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank.
    The Freedom Theatre, managed by theatre and film director Juliano Mer-Khamis, is a continuation of an initiative launched by Mer-Khamis's mother, Arna Mer-Khamis.
    Arna Mer-Khamis, a Jewish Israeli, married a Palestinian and led a number of prominent human-rights campaigns. She set up a number of learning and cultural initiatives in the West Bank and Gaza Strip during the first Palestinian uprising -- or "Intifada" -- of the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Israel closed most Palestinian schools for a while.
    The initiative included Arna's House, a children's theatre run by Israeli volunteers in Jenin.
    "The (Freedom) Theatre is inspired by my mother Arna's work in 1988 during the beginning of the 'Intifada of the stones.' She established a theatre and other educational centres in the camp," Juliano Mer-Khamis explained.
    Juliano Mer-Khamis founded the Freedom Theatre to replace Arna's House which was destroyed by Israeli troops during the infamous 2002 Israeli attack on the Jenin refugee camp that killed more than 50 Palestinians and 20 Israeli soldiers.
    Juliano Mer-Khamis also directed the award-winning documentary film "Arna's Children" which follows the fate of young boys from the Jenin refugee camp who once participated in Arna's House productions and who grew up to become armed fighters, and, in one case, a suicide attacker.
    The new theatre aims to provide the camp's youth -- who are mostly barred by Israel from travelling outside Jenin and the immediate neighbouring area -- with a platform through which to engage in artistic dialogue with the outside world.
    "We have a theatre group for young men and two groups for young women, and an acting group for children. We also have a psycho-drama group, which offers psychological therapy though drama. We also bring in plays from the outside, and this is part of Adnan's (the theatre's stage designer's) work -- we bring in plays from Ramallah, Haifa, Nazareth, and Nablus, in order to provide a way for the refugee camp to get its voice across to the world."
    The young actors say they have begun feeling the benefits of participating in the theatre's productions.
    "Since I started acting I have started feeling free. I have started to feel like a bird coming out of a cage, as they say. We feel free, they (at The Freedom Theatre) have given us a lot and they have taught us a lot," said Muhannad Jaber, a teenage member of the young men's group.
    The Freedom Theatre has ambitious plans to perform internationally.
    "Our aim to to create an acting troupe on an international level, and hopefully to take it as soon as possible to the West Bank, to the Gaza Strip and to Palestine of '48 (Palestinians who became Israeli citizens in during the foundation of the state of Israel in 1948 and who continued to live on their land, now part of Israel). I also promised these young men to go to Berlin, to Germany, and to London. But we still have to work hard, there is still a long road ahead of us," Mer-Khamis explained.
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