Staging Reconciliation: The Arab-Hebrew Theater of Jaffa Makes a Model

In March 2000, the Arab-Hebrew Theater of Jaffa staged a model Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) hearing on the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. Alisa Solomon discussed the project with director Igal Ezraty.

ALISA SOLOMON Let's start by talking about the theater itself. It's located in Jaffa, a mostly Arab area on the southern, coastal edge of Tel Aviv and, specifically, right in the heart of the ancient, beautifully restored, tourist-friendly Old Jaffa. Winding, golden, stone streets spill onto a little plaza, and there, not far from the old Franciscan monastery and the ruins of a third-century B.C.E. catacomb, next to the antiquities museum, is the theater, with its arched doorways and pale stone walls. How did you get this place, and what's the theater's mission?

IGAL EZRATY We founded the theater two years ago. We call it the Arab-Hebrew Theater of Jaffa, and from the name you can see the ideology: to have a theater in two languages, the two formal languages of Israel. As you know, Israel is not only a Jewish state. Twenty percent of Israel's population is Arab. Supposedly they are full citizens, but in reality not enough. This theater is a collaboration between two separate groups, one Hebrew and one Arab. I'm a director with the Hebrew-language group, Local Theater, which has been working for ten years making political theater. Our plays mostly deal with the Arab-Jewish or Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and some shows were about Jaffa--Let's Dance, a piece without words that evokes the history of the Jaffa Café and Dance Hall from the early days of the Zionist immigration to the present, and The Lane of White Chairs, the story of one house in Jaffa. Two years ago we made a connection with a new group in Jaffa called El Serayah Theater, a company that is building a professional Arab theater. We got the building, which is four hundred years old, from the city of Tel Aviv, and we are working there together. We do collaborations, but each of the groups also does its own shows. In a way, that represents part of the ideology of the conflict: We want to work together and are sharing some of the productions and the running of the place at the same time that each group wants to keep its freedom and autonomy.

In March there was a performance at the theater based on the idea of a Truth and Reconciliation Commission. How did that come about, and who was the audience?

We took the idea from South Africa, and we tried to apply that model to the occupation, although in South Africa they did it only after they finished apartheid, and here the occupation is not yet over. But until there is peace and two states, until both nations are ready to make a real Truth and Reconciliation process, we are saying that the theater can offer a model for the future. The idea came from the Committee Against Torture in Israel, which brought us testimonies about house demolitions, roadblocks, administrative detention, torture, and so on. The audience for this evening in March was mostly supporters or friends of the committee, people who are engaged in politics--though we expect to have a much wider audience when we do it at the Akko Festival in October. We presented it in Hebrew. About a third of the audience was Palestinian, and there were some translators for them.

Torture is a dicey subject in Israel, no?

The Committee Against Torture has been working for the past ten years and has had a lot to do with changing public opinion. Most Jewish Israelis didn't believe that Israelis were torturing people. They were saying, "It's impossible. Jews cannot do this sort of thing." Only because of...