Nemashim Arab-Jewish Theater Community

 

Nemashim report for 2006-2007

Or Shai , Translation: Mia Tamarin

 

Nemashim is a Jewish- Arab commune of the “Friendship village” association in which the members volunteer in poor areas of east Haifa.

 

The commune is located in the Tel-Ammal neighborhood and works in it as well as in the Halissa, Neve-Yossef and Neve-Paz neighborhoods. The purpose of the commune is to bring theatre into the poor areas by guiding groups from different ages and through productions of the commune itself that are offered to the neighborhood locals.

The Nemashim commune is a group of theatre leaders as well as a theatre group for itself. The theatre, in our opinion, is a tool for a nonviolent expression for the youth in these neighborhoods, a tool for a Jewish-Arab dialogue within each neighborhood, between the neighborhoods and likewise a tool for community unification.

 

This report will conclude the work of our last year which was the second Nemashim commune. The group finished its work and cleared its place for the new commune - the third in its number.

 

The main productions of the commune

 

Throughout the year the commune, as a theatre group, produced three big shows; “Hadi and Tami”, “Shatof” and “Memories From the return to Haifa”. We did this with the help of our directors, Uri Shani and Shadi Faher ad Din.

 

Hadi and Tami  -  is a children play on which we worked for the first three months of the commune. The show is based on the known children story by the Grim brothers that is originally called “Hansel and Gretel” (and in Hebrew “Ami and Tami”, in Arabic “Hadi and Hadiya”). The show was in Hebrew, Arabic and English and is produced in such way that allowed both Jewish and Arab kids to understand what goes on, through acting and through the repeating of the lines in the different languages. The show was performed in the “Giborim” club in Halissa, in the Neve-Yossef centre, in the youth centre “Pe’er” in the Tal-Amal neighborhood, in Kibbutz Dalia, in the children department of the Rambam hospital, in the Kibbutz Ma’abarot, in the “Narkissim” school in Kiryat Tivon, in the democratic high school of Jaffa and in the Hebrew-arabic elementary school of the Neve-Shalom/Whata as-Salam.

The show had much popularity and the kids, for most of whom this was their first theatre experience, enjoyed it very much.

More on this in the show’s web page at:

www.mideastweb.org/nemashim/hadi-tami.htm (hebrew and arabic, but you can reach the youtubes of the show from there)

 

Shatof- is a performance of movement theatre. The show takes place in a museum in which six statues from different periods and cultures. At night, after the guarder leaves, the statues spring to life. The show describes the way in which the statues discover themselves and their friends; the way they discover what happens between them and the way they discover the existence of the Shatof - a big red cloth that each one of the characters claims as her own and on which a war develops. The show is from the movement theatre genre - it has no words, has a bit of Gibberish and has numbers in several languages. Shatof was first preformed in the Neve-Yossef centre, then preformed twice in the international pantomimmy festival in Shfa’amr and one last forth time in the Neve-Yossef centre again during the Neve-Yossef festival for community theatre which took place in June.

More about the show in the show’s web page at: www.mideastweb.org/nemashim/shatof.htm (hebrew and arabic, but you can reach the youtubes of the show from there)

 

 

Memories from the return to Haifa: this is a bilingual show in Arabic and Hebrew that is based on the novel “the Return to Haifa” by the Palestinian author Ghassan Kanafani. The original adoption for the play was by the playwright Ali Jalali, however the commune changed it completely.

Summery of plot:

Dov, David and Miriam’s adopted son is Khaldoon, the biological son of Said and Safia. After the ‘67 war Said and Safia return to the house they left twenty years before during the Nakba, and find in it the Holocaust survivor and widow Miriam who adopted the son they left behind during the war and who today is an IDF soldier. The show describes, in addition to the story of the two families, the Israeli-Palestinian nightmare as we see it. The show was the final tone of our commune: we worked on it in the last month of the year and we preformed it twice in the “El Midan” theatre in Haifa on the 17th and 18th of August. After the show we went back to the commune, cleared our belongings and returned each one to his home.

More about the show: www.mideastweb.org/nemashim/return.htm

           

 

 

 

 

Guiding of groups and individual tutoring

 

Each of the members of the commune was involved during the year in several community projects. The main part of out community work was guiding theatre groups, as well as other kinds of groups and tutoring projects.

 

This year the Nemashim commune worked on the community work to a great extend with two other projects that are active in the neighborhood:

·        “Open apartments” – a project by the University of Haifa that gives students full scholarship as well as a free apartment in a poor area as a return for volunteering hours in the community.

·        Shalman” – the culture department crew of the Neve-Yossef centre. These are volunteers for the Israeli civil service of whom two out of the three (Michael Geller and Hila Lev) were members of the Nemashim commune in the previous year.

 

“Hagesher” (:”the Bridge”) after-school child care facility- the first commune member who started to lead there was Amina. She led together with Michael Geller (from the previous commune) in this facility in Halissa. In it were 20 Muslim Arab kids in the ages of 2-6. The meetings with the kids took plave once a week starting from November 2006 until June 2007.

 

                           

The “Kat-Gan” after-school child care facility- in addition to their volunteering work in the “Hagesher” facility, Amina and Michael also volunteered in the Kat-Gan facility which is located in the Neve-Paz neighborhood. In this facility were 20 kids from Ethiopian ethnic origin from the ages of 2-3. the meeting took place once a week from January 2007 until June 2007.

 

English through theatre in the “Kishon” school- the third group which Amina led was a group of ten kids in the ages of 8-12. The classes were a part of the ‘enriching studies’ of the elementary school “Kishon” which is located in the Neve-Paz neighborhood. The children were given a choice to choose between several options, and English through theatre was one of them. Amina led this group together with Daniel Barkai (from the Shalman group) from January 2007 until June 2007.

 

The after-school child care facility for Ethiopian female teenagers-

Another project that Amina led was an after-school facility for Ethiopian girls of the young woman’s care unit in the welfare department. This facility is located in an empty class in the “Kishon” elementary school and to it arrive 15 girls in the ages of 13-16 everyday in the after school hours. Amina led there together with the commune member Or Shai theatre classes once a week between March 2007 and June 2007.

 

 

Pe’er theatre- this is another group for the Ethiopian community that was led by Or. In this group were ten students from the Ethiopian community from 2nd to 5th grade. This group was created by the community unit of the welfare department of East Haifa and took place in the Pe’er youth centre in the Tel-Amal neighborhood. Or led this group together with Hila Srir, a student from the “Open Apartments” project.

 

Arab girls from Halissa group- this is the third group which Or led; it is a group of teenage Arab girls in the ages of 12-13 from the Halissa neighborhood. This group was created by the community unit in the welfare department of East Haifa with which Or met weekly in a shelter of the department in Halissa.

 

Arab-Jewish youth theatre in the “Ganim” centre- Renana did not want to limit herself to volunteering only with kids and together with the commune member Ahmad she established a Jewish-Arab theatre group in the youth centre “Ganim” for teenagers in junior high school.

 

Theatre group for boys and girls in Halissa- the commune member Khaled decided to be pioneer and to establish the first group of the Nemashim commune for generations in Halissa. Together with Daniel Barkai (from the Shelman group) he opened a theatre group activity for Arab kids in 3rd and 4th grades from the Halissa neighborhood. This group was open between the months of January 2007 to May 2007.

 

Pictures from the community work: http://www.flickr.com/photos/9370585@N07/sets/72157600594125413/

 

 

 

 

The life of the commune

 

It is hard to conclude a whole year in a few words; a year of volunteering, of shared life, of social change and of a lot of learning and development- both ours and of our students. One of the people who witnessed the three main productions of the commune said at the end of the third one that “it seems as if you’ve grown up in ten years in this last year”. There is no better way to conclude the experiences we’ve gone through, the difficulties we’ve faced and how we coped.

 

We lived for a year in a multi-cultural commune. Two Arabs, three Jews and one German living in a small apartment between Halissa and Tel Amal, trying to make a difference. A difference within ourselves and within the community around us.

 

Life has not always been sweet. The fact that we are all actors has caused a lot of drama in the commune. There were ups and downs, moments of crisis and moments of peak, moments of laughter and moments of tears. We learned a great deal about each other as human beings, as well as about the different cultures in the commune.

 

Since our project has no sponsoring, we had to work in order to fund “luxuries” such as water, electricity and food for the commune. Ahmad worked as a dishwasher in the German Colony neighborhood, Or worked in the organization “Greenpeace”, Renana cleaned houses, Daniel did storytelling with Ortal Cohen (one of the members from the previous commune), Amina worked as a translator for the Kfar Re'ut-Sadaka association and Khaled was economically supported by his parents. We hope that as the project goes on there will be enough funding for it so that the members of the following communes will not have to work since this hurts our community work as well as the commune’s existence. As for now the financial situation is even worse! We need desperately money!

 

To conclude, we wish lots of good luck to the third commune, whose members are settling in these days at the apartment in Yarden St. It excites us to see Eyad, Sapir, Elad, Marwan, Yael and Einav continuing the path which we and the previous commune started. For us this year was an experience of maturation, learning about theatre and multi-culturalism and a great contribution to society. We hope that this will be their volunteering year too, that they will learn from past mistakes and that they will be able to lead the project to places it never reached before.

 

An “image” movie about the commune on YOUTUBE:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-UM6ewY4inE

 

This is the summary of the report. For the full report in Hebrew:

www.mideastweb.org/nemashim/final_report_2007.doc

 

 

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