Staging Reconciliation: Update

Several months after this interview was conducted, a new Palestinian uprising broke out. Just as we were going to press, Solomon asked Ezraty for an update.

The Akko Festival was scheduled for October--shortly after the Al Aqsa Intifada began. Did you incorporate new material? How was the performance received?

The Akko Festival was delayed to the beginning of November because of what was happening. We did the piece there and we did it again just last week [January 2001] at a meeting of the heads of Israel's four hundred community cultural centers, many of which now want to invite us to do it at their centers. We added new testimony, for example, from an Arab mother--a citizen of Israel--who lost a child, shot by Israeli policemen, and testimony from a Palestinian man in charge of the police station in Ramallan, telling how he tried to save the Israeli soldiers killed there. The audience was more organic this time--not only people who are already engaged. Some complained, of course, that it wasn't "balanced" but of course the situation itself is not balanced. Still, those people came. The festival was pretty empty because Akko was a dangerous place at the time; ours was the only presentation that was full every time. We had to put video monitors outside the hall for people who couldn't get in.

How are things in Jaffa?

Israeli Jews are still afraid to come generally, but we are performing. Every week we do a coffeehouse with performances of small pieces, music, stand-up comedy, and lots of Jews and Arabs are coming together and talking and eating and enjoying the evening. It's one of the contradictions we live in. The people in the streets and the newspapers say the gap between Jews and Arabs is bigger than ever. In a small way, we're seeing the opposite.

Has the new violence and the stalling of negotiations changed your sense of whether a TRC will be possible?

It is more urgent than ever.

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