A silent Palestinian play turns absence into testimony

The signifier level is laid retired arsenic a fragile ellipse of oranges and stones. From this quiescent geometry emerges a self-contained world—a Palestinian woman’s home, her beingness rooted successful the tending of orangish orchards. She is alone, and she is content. The soundlessness is calm, astir sacred. Then the disruption comes—without warning.

A antheral enters, dragging a large, bare suitcase. He is dishevelled, exhausted, and unsettlingly persistent. The pistillate hesitates, past offers him water. He wants more. Slowly, deliberately, helium begins to unpack. What follows is not a large invasion, but a gradual takeover—initially resisted, past enforced. Her location is nary longer hers.

This is Oranges & Stones, a wordless play by Palestine’s Ashtar Theatre, performed astatine the International Theatre Festival of Kerala connected Tuesday. Told wholly done carnal enactment and archetypal music, the accumulation traverses much than 75 years of occupation, displacement and nonaccomplishment successful Palestine—without uttering a azygous word. Accalimed theatre idiosyncratic Prof. Mojisola Adebayo is the manager of the play.

“Sometimes soundlessness is louder,” says Iman Aoun, co-founder of Ashtar Theatre and the play’s sole performer, speaking to The Hindu. “In those 50 minutes, we archer the full communicative of Palestine—from the Balfour Declaration successful 1917 till today.”

For Aoun, theatre is not creation removed from reality. It is survival.

Cultural resistance

“Theatre and the arts are portion of our taste absorption and resilience,” she says. “We person been nether concern for 77 years. We cannot combat with the aforesaid exertion oregon weapons. We combat by preserving our stories, our history, our narratives—and by telling them to the world.”

Founded successful 1991, Ashtar Theatre has consistently positioned governmental theatre arsenic a instrumentality for empowerment. Its enactment reaches young radical successful cities, villages and exile camps crossed Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza, placing theatre astatine the bosom of societal transformation.

“Right now, we cannot speech astir peace,” Aoun says bluntly. “You cannot speech astir knowing erstwhile 1 is nether the footwear of the other. This is simply a assemblage regime—like what Britain did successful India. But we judge alteration volition come.”

She speaks of erasure connected aggregate levels—human, taste and environmental. “Along with genocide, determination is ecocide and culturalcide,” she says. “They destroyed theatres, museums, monuments and churches. They stole our land, our h2o sources, our plantations. Palestine was erstwhile 1 of the largest exporters of oranges successful the world.”

She besides reminds america that Palestine is the birthplace of Christianity. “Christians and Muslims person been systematically erased. Many were killed; galore were forced to leave. The Zionist question wanted everyone other to flee.”

Yet, contempt the despair, Aoun insists connected hope. “They privation america distressed, frustrated, violent—so they tin statement america terrorists and erase us. That is wherefore we indispensable stay. That is wherefore we indispensable springiness young radical courageousness and hope.”

On stage, the oranges rotation away. The stones remain. And what lingers agelong aft the show ends is not dialogue, but an unshakable truth: this soundlessness speaks for a radical who garbage to disappear.