Ahmed lives in the Jenin refugee camp on the West Bank. He has grown up under occupation, likes football, falls in love with a girl he spots on the street, and discovers an unexpected taste for the limelight when he accidentally walks into the local Stone theatre. However, he is also fascinated by the balaclava that he finds hidden in his parents’ bedroom, a legacy of his father’s time as a resistance fighter.
Part of the Shubbak festival of Arab culture, Ahmed Tobasi performs his own story, written for the stage by Hassan Abdulrazzak, which charts his journey from Jihadist to actor. Along the way he asks if the stage really can be as powerful as an AK-47. The enthusiasm with which the audience claps at the end suggests that it can be, even if it’s not entirely clear whether we are clapping the show itself or Tobasi’s remarkable personal voyage of transformation that saw him imprisoned for four years at the age of 17 before coming under the influence of Juliano Mer Khamis, one of the leaders of the Jenin Freedom Theatre.
Mer Khamis was a stern taskmaster, and a man who believed that “theatre can be as violent as the gun”. He was gunned down outside the theatre in 2011.
This is pretty rough and ready theatre, and often quite literal. When Tobasi takes a bath he stands in a bucket of water, and when he is taken to a prison in the desert sand is poured over the stage. But what it lacks in sophistication it makes up for with brio and wry humour. Jenin, we are told, is very beautiful with ”glorious bags of garbage everywhere.” Tobasi plays a number of characters with a sharp eye for the comic, including the leaders of the warring factions in the prison, and also family and friends.
During the performance images of the dead – including Mer Khamis and Tobasi’s childhood friend killed during the Intifada – are pasted to the wall as a reminder of how raw grief remains and why the cycle of violence continues from one generation to the next. Tobasi is one of the lucky ones: he found refuge in Norway. But, he is still finding new weapons to tell his own and his people’s story.
- At the Arcola, until 8 July, then touring. Box office: 0207 503 1646.
