Semites

A new verbatim piece of theatre distilling 70 hours of interviews with Israeli Jews, Israeli Arabs and Palestinians into a 70 minute show exploring Israel and Palestine from the point of view of ordinary people on different sides of the conflict. Based on interviews in Israel and Gaza and the West Bank carried out by Ben Nathan, a Jewish actor who realised that maybe he wasn’t getting the full picture here in the UK, Semites is a search for connection, humanity, and hope, as well as an interrogation into empathy, storytelling, and truth when it comes to constructing political narratives – how we experience these, how we fail to connect, and how we might begin to bridge the gap.

Cast

Ben Nathan, Lara Sawalha

Creative Team

Daniel Goldman (Director), Tanushka Marah (Dramaturg), Richard Williamson (Lighting Designer), Benjamin Winter (Sound Design), Rosie Morgan (Stage Manager) Ben Nathan (Producer/Interviewer), Arsalan Sattari (Producer)

When you think about making a show about Israel and Palestine, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. It’s a complicated issue, everyone has strong views about it, it’s easy to feel like you’re not going to do it (or the people involved) justice, and every decision you make is a choice, and a political choice at that.

Making a 70 minute show out of 70 hours of interviews meant that everything we chose to do was political. Deciding which interviewees we were going to re-present was a political choice. Deciding which parts of their interview was a political choice. Yes, the piece was verbatim and yes, every line, apart from some of Ben’s backstory, was a word for word transcription of something a real person with a real involvement in the conflict said, and yet, we had to choose who and what and how much and which viewpoints.

Putting together a team with different viewpoints, agendas and feelings about the conflict became really important. Having Lara Sawahla and Tanushka Marah and Rosie Morgan join Ben and myself was key to making this show. We weren’t always in agreement or on the same page in terms of what we brought into the room and differing viewpoints led to strong emotions but I do believe that we made in the room was a truly shared endeavour, shaped by every single one of us, into something we were all collectively proud of.

In the end, the performance we made was about communication, connection, division and empathy, as much as it was about Israel and Palestine. The show was as much about Rwanda, Trump and Brexit as it was about Israel and Palestine, and the divisions that exist between people that are built on ignorance and bias first, and any sort of historical fact second.

After almost every performance, we ran post show talks or spoke to members of the audience about what they’d experienced.

We knew we’d done a good show when people wanted to talk about their emotions and feelings and hopes – big picture stuff – rather than the politics and history of Israel and Palestine.

The resounding image of the play ended up being the idea that in order to understand someone else’s point of view, you have to put yourself in their shoes. But in order to put yourself in someone else’s shoes, you have to take of your own. It was a process where we lived that idea and it was a beautiful one to communicate to audiences.