The Daily Clarity

Shakespeare in the West Bank

There are far better things to send to the Middle East than arms, politicians, missionaries threats or ambassadors that will foster integration and cross cultural understanding, Horatio

It was, said the director, an Elizabethan atmosphere. People came and went throughout the play. There was chatter and laughter and crying babies. One boy kicked a football, another swung from an overhead metal bar near the stage.

Yet this was not the Globe theatre on the south bank of the Thames, but an open-air performance in the shadow of Israel’s concrete wall separating Bethlehem from Jerusalem. One of the defining symbols of the occupation, here the wall towers over a Palestinian refugee camp, making it perhaps an appropriate setting for a Shakespeare play with themes of exile, injustice, resistance and – ultimately – freedom and forgiveness.

Overlooked by Israeli military watchtowers, and against a backdrop of graffiti (“One day the sun will rise on a free Palestine”), the British troupe struggled at times to hold the attention of the mainly young audience, nearly all of whom were seeing a Shakespeare play for the first time.

via Shakespeare in the West Bank: British troupe savour ‘Elizabethan’ crowd | World news | The Guardian.