In Their Own Words
"We thought some years ago, let's go to the children, work with them, for them and maybe after a couple of years we'll have our audience, someone that we're going to show our theatre. So we are creating some stories, some subjects. [We] go to the schools, we are [performing] and [...] they began to get used to seeing us and to seeing theatre."
Jamal Alrozzi, In Place of War workshop
"Because of the [first] Intifada they were closing all the roads at 7 o'clock. So all the time we had to run from work at 2 or 3 o'clock in the afternoon to go and [do theatre] training and rehearsals and to run back home before 7 o'clock because it was curfew. Nobody was allowed to leave [their] home after 7 o'clock."
Jamal Alrozzi, Interview
"[During the second Intifada ] we started to develop our techniques for doing dramatherapy for the children who were totally affected by the situation, by the invasion, by the shelling in the night, by all the closures and the borders and all of this tension was starting to take a place in our community. We found ourselves driven [...] to make this kind of dramatherapy, we believe really that this was the best thing to do at the right time and we believe that it was like a magical technique to do with the children who were affected by the situation."
Jamal Alrozzi, interview
"[We do theatre because] it is kind of a belief, you believe in something and you do it in spite of everything [...] for us [it's] theatre, for other people chemistry, for another, whatever, but every single human being has a belief in something that he wants to achieve or wants to do and that's why [...] we want to do it whatever the cost."
Hossam Madhoun, interview
"[In the play Checkpoint ] we showed a man in his car waiting 17 hours to pass the checkpoint. He has a bicycle for his son as a birthday present, and his son is waiting at home, just waiting, and finally the father could not get through. It was closed. And [he] called his son at 12 o'clock at night to say, "Son, I am unable to come today. Maybe I will come tomorrow. I will have a bicycle. Happy birthday." This is how to represent war on stage. [...] You don't have to represent a real fight or blood or whatever, you represent the real consequences, the influence of the war, what it means for the people, what it takes from them, what it brings them, what it destroyed in them, what it deprives them of and all of these things."
Jamal Alrozzi, interview
"[For Blue Gold ] we made this scene and it was a fantasy about three, as you saw three people and they have no water left and they are killing one another to survive. And then [one character] realises that he cannot survive if he doesn't give back the right to the oppressed and they share equally to survive. This is what we wanted to say, that implementing justice and equality between human beings will help everyone to live in peace."
Hossam Madhoun, In Place of War workshop
