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The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil,    but because of the people who don't do anything about it    
Occupation magazine - Commentary

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From the West Bank
Mark Fisher
Tron theatre, Glasgow
The Guardian
May 10, 2010

http://www.guardian.co.uk/stage/2010/may/10/from-the-west-bank-review

After blanket coverage of the intricacies of the British political system, how refreshing to be reminded of the wider world. And how invigorating, in this opening salvo of Mayfesto, a two-week programme of politically inspired drama, to see it done so consummately.

In three short and substantial plays, actor-directors Cora Bissett and Ewan Donald – joined on stage by an equally authoritative Benny Young – take us to a Palestine where righteous anger vies with philosophical resignation as the only workable response to an unjust occupation. Performed with grace and clarity, these vignettes capture the rage, bewilderment and hope-against-hope that is born out of oppression.

It opens with An Imagined Sarha, a new adaptation by David Greig of a memoir by Raja Shehadeh, whose When the Bulbul Stopped Singing he adapted for Edinburgh`s Traverse in 2004. As in that play, Shehadeh comes across as the wise and urbane Palestinian, this time bridging a seemingly impossible cultural divide as he joins a hashish-smoking Israeli settler in the Ramallah hills and, transcending prejudice, discovers a common humanity.

In contrast to Shehadeh`s guru-like patience, the Bedouin refugee in Franca Rame`s An Arab Woman Speaks is a fiery activist with no tolerance for injustice. Superbly played by Bissett, she tells a distressing and inspirational true story that makes the link between the oppression of women and the subjugation of a people.

It is a story that ranges from domestic violence to political assassination, a narrative arc that is hard for the outsider to contemplate. It is this sense of disconnection that Greig captures in the third play, Ramallah, a wry sketch in which a playwright finds himself incapable of communicating his tourist`s eye view of the Middle East to his wife. In her indifference and his effusiveness we see our own conflicted response to the region.

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