On the 17 February, people will be travelling from across the country to join one of the biggest demonstrations in London, calling for a “ceasefire” in Gaza and to “stop the genocide.”
That evening had been scheduled for the final performance at the Chickenshed theatre of the short, gentle Palestinian-connected play Conversation with My Father written and performed by Gemilla Shamrock, a British woman of Palestinian heritage. Its first public performance on the 7 February was reviewed positively in British Theatre Guide.
However, Chickenshed decided to pull the play, vaguely citing the possibility it might offend and affect their funding. They haven’t yet explained in what way this sensitive piece could offend anyone or why any sponsor or funding body could feel in any way negative towards what felt like the most important and dramatically effective piece of that evening’s compilation of ten short plays.
It centres on the difficulties of a woman in Britain trying to speak with her father in Israel. When she phones, he says he is afraid to speak. Later, she travels to see him in Israel and is detained at the airport waiting over eight hours to get into the country.
There is no mention of Jewish or Israeli people. It is left to the audience to decide why her father is afraid to speak, though, in a flashback to an earlier visit, she is told about a relative being martyred, a term used to indicate someone murdered by an aggressor whom we assume is Israel.
The play opens with a woman wearing a long, black, loose-fitting jilbab praying in a language unfamiliar to most in the audience. She removes the jilbab and asks us what thoughts went across our minds when we first saw her. “Did they include the word terrorist?”
All of this seems to be very much in the positive historical tradition of theatre being the humanising storytellers of a troubling, chaotic world. But Chickenshed asked if the review section referring to the Palestine play could be removed. Officially it would no longer have existed.
Earlier this year, an episode of the BBC Radio 4 comedy program The News Quiz began with the claim that the government had decided to replace the entire judicial system with ITV’s drama department.
The joke testified to how ITV’s four-part television series Mr Bates vs The Post Office seemed to have a greater public impact than politicians and the legal system in righting a terrible injustice.
Theatre tells stories we need to hear. It is a pity Chickenshed decided for vague reasons to bury this tiny glimpse of an important story about Palestine.