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An audience member wrote:

The show was great and powerful. The twins really made a good an very accurate statement that helped understanding. My husband as a Palestinian has a lot of pain about the whole issue and it was healing for him in some ways. The truth about things the average American and especially Jew don't know was presented gently and the Jewish perspective was put forth. The panel discussion further was healing to hear the Israelis say the truth, say they hadn't known, say that we tend to not know, and to take action when they did know. The courage of the troupe and role modeling is also very hopeful as they care about each other in spite of difficulties and make progress with effort but still make it, as do many of our peace groups and discussion groups.

From the Philadelpha Inquirer 

Palestinian and Jew seek insight on stage

By Melissa Dribben
Inquirer Staff Writer

http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/news/magazine/daily/15719494.htm

Muhammad Ahmed Zaher is a Palestinian Muslim playwright from Jerusalem. Billy Yalowitz is a Jewish stage director and choreographer from Mount Airy. Together they have written a play exploring the wrenching, frustrating, and so far irreconcilable relationship between Jews and Palestinians.

That play, Six Actors in Search of a Plot, which has been performed in Israel and New York, opens in Philadelphia tonight at Temple University's Conwell Dance Theater.

Yalowitz will be there.

Zaher will not.

His application for a visa was snagged in red tape for so long that, at the end of September, he gave up trying to get here in time to see his play performed before an American audience.

More than just a personal disappointment for the playwright, Zaher's absence will diminish one of the play's critical functions. That is, Yalowitz explains, to promote a civil, thoughtful dialogue among members of the audience and the play's cast and producers. Each performance ends with a discussion session moderated by a psychologist or conflict-resolution expert.

The subject of Jewish-Palestinian relations is rarely the stuff of polite dinnertime conversation. With its volatile chemistry of politics, religion and history, discussions easily erupt in anger and frustration before any thoughts are truly exchanged. "People talk past one another," Yalowitz said.

So one of the play's objectives, he says, is to illustrate how both sides use their respective histories as weapons, and that as long as they wield these stories of how their people have suffered to justify their claims to the land, they will remain at an impasse.

One of the characters observes: "We've seen history, limping along, dragged by a prostitute. It won't lead us anywhere."

The play's title makes reference to Italian playwright Luigi Pirandello's Six Characters in Search of an Author. That piece, which was controversial when it was staged in the 1920s, has six characters show up for a rehearsal and demand to tell their individual stories and be heard. In Zaher and Yalowitz's production, the characters are similarly trying to be heard as individuals, but also to agree on a plot that does not put them at odds with one another.

Six Actors Searching for a Plot was originally written in Arabic and Hebrew for the nonprofit group Peace Child Israel, which uses theater to promote nonviolence and encourage communication among teenagers in the Middle East.

"The notion of six actors trying to find a common human story had an authenticity, a great honesty and courage," Yalowitz says, explaining his initial reaction when he read Zaher's first version of the play last year.

The writing was so authentic, in fact, that it created a problem for the actors.

The cast of three Israeli Jews and three Palestinian Muslims was given such realistic lines that during rehearsals, the actors found themselves not only playing the parts, but also living them - arguing both on and off stage about guilt and entitlement, suffering and bigotry

The Jewish actors said that Zaher's early versions of the play seemed skewed toward the Palestinian point of view.

"My people had no voice in the first play," Efrat Unguru said during a rehearsal in the basement of Summit Presbyterian Church in Mount Airy last month.

Yalowitz agreed, but last winter, when he was invited to direct the play in Israel, he was reluctant to say anything about it. "I'm an American Jew. I thought, what right did I have to suggest changes?"

He had heard there was no peace in the cast even after the play had been performed several times. "The actors were arguing about every line in the play, as they do in the script."

So he suggested to Zaher that they add a secondary story line to give the actors more common ground, something more hopeful and forward-looking. He introduced the theme of birth and a subplot about unborn twins who suffer a medical complication that locks them in competition for survival over the distribution of their mother's blood supply.

"I brought in an Israeli midwife, who worked with the cast showing them the movements of birth," said Yalowitz, 47, an assistant professor and codirector of the community arts program at Temple University's Tyler School of Art. "We showed the footage of childbirth and interviewed each of them about their own birth." To everyone's surprise, he said, once the actors engaged in this discussion and practiced some movements he choreographed, the atmosphere changed.

"They got quiet," he recalled.

"Near Birth" scene from "Six Actors in Search of a Plot"

In the months that followed, the cast has continued the debate, but with significantly less rancor.

During rehearsals last month, the cast seemed genuinely fond of one another. Asked during an interview whether any had lost friends or relatives in the recent fighting, one of the Jewish actors paused for a long moment, then said, "My step-brother." He was killed over the summer in Lebanon.

The group fell silent as a Palestinian actor put her arm around his shoulder and comforted him.

In its current version, the play still does not satisfy all the actors. It is now too evenhanded, said Hanin Tarabiya, one of the Palestinian cast members.

In Israel today, she said, "one side has power and control, the other is under occupation. We need to reach an equality."

During the post-performance discussion on opening night in New York, Tarabiya said that she sometimes has felt that the situation in Israel is hopeless. "I used to feel stuck," she said.

But she said the experience of being in the play has made her more optimistic. "I feel as if I am doing something small to move in a positive direction."

One of the many poignant moments in the play occurs when an old Palestinian man, dying of cancer, holds up a rusted key to a home he was forced to leave and says, "This is my life."

A young Israeli woman responds by opening a box of similar rusted keys belonging to Jewish family homes that the characters were forced to leave in Europe.

The metaphor of the twins' fighting each other for survival is presented by one Jewish woman and one Palestinian woman dressed in white. They curl up against one another, spin apart, undulate and spin, and it is only when the other characters focus on this birth story that they are able to look forward with any hope.

The actors, who are staying with Philadelphia families during the play's run here (through Sunday), said they hope the play will give American audiences insight into the subtleties of the conflict.

"From the outside, they see Palestinians and Israelis as enemies," Tarabiya said. "But it's not all black and white. We have to see each other every day and work with each other. We have discussions all the time, and we don't agree about everything. But we want to do something together. It's good. It's healthy."

After the opening-night performance in New York, one of the audience members, Jerry Goodman, said he had one problem with the play. "There's a little naivete," he said. "The tragedy of the Middle East is that there are no simple answers."

"But they're talking," said his wife, Susan, senior curator of the Jewish Museum.

If You Go

"Six Actors in Search of a plot" will be performed:

At 8 tonight at Temple University's Conwell Dance Theater, Conwell Hall, Broad Street and Montgomery Avenue. Seating is limited; donations will be taken at the door.

At noon Thursday (for school groups) at the National Museum of American Jewish History, 55 N. Fifth St. Information: 215-760-0230 or janestojak@aol.com.

At 8 p.m. Friday to Sunday, and at 3 p.m. Sunday, at the Painted Bride Art Center, 230 Vine St. Tickets: $25. Information: 215-925-9914 or www.paintedbride.org.


Contact staff writer Melissa Dribben at 215-854-2590 or mdribben@phillynews.com. Theater Six Actors in Search of a Plot Tonight to Sunday at various locations.

 

 

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