Conference Papers
"Go hence, to have more talks of these sad things"
Eran Baniel
| Eran Baniel, |
The Palestinian-Israeli "Romeo & Juliet" died a final death in Norway on the 27th of May, 1995. In November of the same year Rabin was assassinated, in February and March 1996 suicide explosions shook Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem, in May Benjamin Netanyahu was elected --" A glooming peace this morning with it brings; The sun for sorrow will not show his head, Go hence, to have more talk of these sad things; Some shall be pardoned and some punished:" Since that sad spring of 1996 the money for the next Israeli Palestinian CO-production has been waiting in an East Jerusalem Bank for the right moment to search further and deeper for the yet to be discovered cultural riches that lie between us and them as -"Poor sacrifices of our enmity" Did Romeo & Juliet play a role in the peace process? No. Not directly, not concretely. Should this production have played such a role through the Oslo negotiations? No.
If so, then was it really important enough to justify the seven years I have been nourishing this dream, the considerable investment of talent and money? Oh yes, very much so.
Time is too short to go into details of the many valuable experiences, changes, discoveries, friendships, moments of shared artistic joys and passions, of personal excitement as we brought these poetic fruits of our enmity to audiences in our region as well as in Europe. Yet all these tangible advantages where not as significant and as powerful as was the hope that this artistic endeavour somehow brought to the most cumbersome situations in the worst moments of these memorable months. And the effect of our shared endeavour of hope was just as powerful when we played to mixed Moslem-Christian high school students in Lille or Paris, as it was in the beautiful, yet tortured Jerusalem.
The role of culture is similar even though the conflicts maybe 50 different in nature. I needed 400 pages to tell the sometimes hallucinating story of this dream - of this hope. I will only limit myself today to three incidents that may come handy in trying to bring across to you my humble answer to the question;
So what the hell is the role of cultural CO-productions in conflict areas such as the Middle East?
"Two households, both alike in dignity, in fair Jerusalem, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean ---"
Two families, two languages, two cultures - one conflict.
No, art has no role to play in the negotiations, it should never even attempt to have such a role--On the contrary, it should stay out and away, in it's own Poetic statements, dragging both audiences and Politicians back to the human essentials, reminding us again and again of the horrible alternative - the painful price we pay for conflict. Our Romeo & Juliet was more about the anatomy of hate than about love. And yet it expired having only marginally materialised the possibilities encompassed in it. We never got to play in Gaza, nor in Tel-Aviv, nor in Amman or Cairo. We were a dream for some, a nightmare for many, a danger for others and, and ---
Although culture can not directly influence a peace process, it is definitely directly affected by it's up and downs. Not only in the morale of the participants, but in it's actual legitimacy - it's actual existence. Actors were smuggled past check-points so as to make sure they can come to rehearsals, they were insulted, intimidated, endangered--To minimise this, and to encourage further co-production, I would like to propose that participants in shared artistic endeavours would be thought of as diplomats of peace and enjoy the same freedom of movement that Diplomats of War have.
"Now that you have achieved that which you have worked and lived for over eight years you can finally feel free to get on with just doing Your Theatre - our normal theatre", family and colleagues kept saying to me.
"We would rather concentrate on our own Palestinian independent cultural identity", said my Palestinian friends, "we do not want to exist only when, or because we work with you, Israelis. The world should first recognise us for who we are, regardless of you.”
Respecting this, I tried to go back in time and look for theatre away from "them" deep in the West End and Paris and Berlin. I searched for a creative passion which would neither be dependent on those who wish to be independent nor on politics, which looked gloomier from day to day. But I failed. There was no true way to get away for me, and the harder I sweated to find one the more homesick I became to the experiences of those Palestinian Montegues and the Israeli Capulets.
"You Israelis are just as stuck with us as we are with you", a Palestinian poet told me when I shared my feelings with him. "You think you are grabbing us by the neck pressing us against the wall, but you are scared to let go as we may hit you, or stab you in the back, so you keep holding us and that makes you just as much a prisoner of ours as we are yours", he said.
Something about this observation felt so true to my sense of cultural loss and to the efforts of my Palestinian colleagues that I thought it might be yet another starting point to the understanding of the role of the artistic creation in troubled areas. Both Montegues and Capulets are there to stay - same as us.
Just as we are entangled militarily, economically, geographically - just as our sources of water, our resources and our weather conditions are linked - so is our history, past and recent, so are our cultures.
Can we dissociate ourselves from each other?
Is a rehearsal after an unpleasant encounter at an army check-point the same as it would be otherwise?
And if not, why should we pretend and make an effort to achieve an uninteresting impossibility?
When one goes to see a Tel-Aviv West End remake bearing no reflection of our Middle East problematic, is one not searched at the entrance for explosives? And when sitting in a theatre during performance, when at some stage we hear sirens filter in from the street outside, do we not wander away from the West End? Are there more hopes for Palestinian independence in the refusals of Arab artists' unions to work with Israeli colleagues?
On the other hand, is it not, as some claim, rather tactless to work together for entertainment, serious as it may be, when the guns are still firing?
Or maybe it is just the right time, as it is for diplomacy? And here again culture is in a way - diplomacy of peace.
Since our experience of Romeo & Juliet, I have come to the conclusion that I must not waste time on an independence from those I do not wish to and indeed I can't cut away from me.
It is not only my duty, but judging from past experiences - it is my privilege. Working alone is for me only an interim preparation for the next chance to work together. There is no other meaning to peace, even if there may be many ways to achieve it.
Only give artists diplomatic immunity, and you will see. . .
Eran Baniel