A collection of nine short plays by Palestinian playwrights, poets and artists, Tomorrow Will Be a Palestinian Day demonstrates that theatre can endure even under the most extreme conditions. Directed by Ahmed Masoud and Micaela Miranda, the production was rapidly assembled with just one week of rehearsals, featuring works from writers currently in Gaza and former political prisoners.
Absurdism and Haunting Realities
An extract from The Martyrs Return to Ramallah (translated by Julia Choucair Vizoso) blends absurdism with haunting imagery, depicting the dead bodies of prisoners stored in Israeli prisons who begin to converse. Similarly, The Last Letter by Mohammed Al Qudwa (translated by Mona Al-Khatib) follows a bewildered character in the last standing house on a devastated Gazan street, receiving letters filled with existential questions and stark lyricism.
The agile cast of eight actors, mostly of Palestinian heritage, performs on a stripped stage. Produced by Joel Samuels, co-artistic director of Bet’n Lev Theatre, along with the White Kite Collective and PalArt Collective, the plays capture the urgency of real-time drama and tragedy, akin to Nicolas Kent’s recent Ukraine Unbroken at the Arcola theatre.
Lived Experience Meets Political Theatre
The narratives traverse hospitals, morgues, and refugee camps. In an extract from We Are… Doctors by Dareen Tatour (imprisoned by Israel for her poetry), a Palestinian medic is warned that words of sympathy towards injured Palestinians “can be crimes.” Jehad Abu Dayya’s Ruins (translated by Hassan Abdulrazzak) is a harrowing piece about a family trapped under rubble forced to perform an improvised amputation.
Five Minutes by Motasem Abu Hasan brings levity as its narrator recounts the arrest of a brother and son in Nablus with exaggerated comic urgency (“I don’t have long. London just gave me five minutes”). It powerfully depicts a mother begging an Israeli soldier for a last hug with her son, which she is denied.
Satire and Children’s Plays
The Cage by Ali Abu Yassin (translated by Abdulrazzak) is a satire filled with unspoken rage, featuring a girl paralysed by a bomb who refuses to speak despite becoming a media cause célèbre. Her sustained silence conveys anger at a world making empty promises of safety.
Several children’s plays are included: Dr Hope and the Lantern of Miracles by Imad Wahba, The Piper by Hossam Al-Madhoun, and Santa Claus on Holiday by Nahil Mohana. The latter, translated by Katharine Halls, depicts Santa visiting Gaza’s bombed terrain with an empty sack but emphasising the importance of laughter and hope.
Hope persists alongside horror in these dramas, set in “a city of zombies” and “the most absurd of wars,” as one character in Ruins states. At Theatre503, London, until 6 June.
