Bringing Palestinian and Shropshire Teenagers Together in Performance

A snapshot of the workshop. Photo: Angel Reid.

On Saturday 27^th September, Pentabus brought together young people from Palestine and Shropshire for a creative workshop on what it means to be a teenager, culminating in a live performance in Ludlow.

This collaborative event connected Pentabus Youth Theatre members (aged 11 – 18) with Palestinian teenagers from the West Bank and Jerusalem. The Palestinian group were participating in the Beyond The Checkpoints youth visit to the UK, organised by Camden Abu Dis Friendship Association (CADFA), a charitable initiative that has been taking place since 2006.

I sat down with Joanna Freeman, Head of Engagement at Pentabus, who facilitated the workshop and performance, to hear more about the experience.

Can you tell us what the day involved?

We began with a really beautiful clay-making workshop led by local artist Hamish Dolphin at Gather. Our participants all created small clay sculptures that represented something meaningful to them, with the aim of these becoming a point of conversation and connection. The results included sun emblems, family, images of Palestine, and a mixture of words inscribed on clay in English and Arabic.

Everybody then got up on their feet for a 2-hour youth theatre workshop. We started off playing fun games and connecting the young people through play. There was a lot of laughter and joking around. Then we began to creatively explore the experience of teenhood for young people in the space using drama, visual aides and conversation that was supported by translators.

An incredible buffet of food was kindly provided for all the participants and support workers by the Ludlow Quakers, which contributed to a real sense of big-hearted community around the whole event.

We ended our time together with a public sharing of everything that we’d been working on throughout the day. During this sharing, the teens all spoke about what teenhood means for them, and the Palestine teens told the audience of their personal experiences, including human rights issues in Palestine, and what they experience on a regular basis.

“We never get this chance, to say what we think and feel.”
– Participant.

What do you think it is about theatre that means it can connect people from different cultures and places?

I think the beauty of theatre in this particular instance was its connecting power. It gives that permission to play, to be creatively free, and to share an inclusive and welcoming space with new people. Everybody has an opportunity to share their own story and their own experience. It’s innately an art form where there’s a speaker, and there’s a listener - you can’t have theatre without those two key roles - and so it was the perfect art from to facilitate conversation and exchange ideas, and to support connection between these two groups of teenagers with really different life experiences.

In our case, I think the fact that we had Arabic speakers and English speakers in a room where that exchange had to be filtered through translators really emphasized those two key roles. There was a lot of good listening, because there needed to be, and as a result the workshop felt very impactful.

“CADFA exists to promote awareness of the human rights situation in Palestine. It was a joy collaborating with Pentabus to unite young voices from Shropshire and Palestine. Watching them share stories, build trust, and create theatre together was a powerful reminder of how art transcends borders and builds bridges.“
- Nandita Dowson, Director of CADFA.

What struck you about both sets of participants’ experiences of being a teenager?

I think a couple of things. The first thing that struck us was that teenagers are so similar the world over, regardless of circumstance. We talked about feeling misunderstood. We talked about wanting to fit in. We talked about awkwardness. We talked about music being such a key vehicle for self-expression.

But we also talked about freedom, and identity, and what that meant in their different circumstances.

The Palestinian teens talked about just wanting to have the freedom to be who they really feel they are. There are echoes of that from the English teens as well, but their circumstances are very different.

Both groups held each other with such consideration and empathy, and a lot of compassion.

Can you tell me a little bit about the performance?

At the end of the workshop, the participants shared what we’d been working on throughout the day to an audience of about 50 people.

We tried to integrate English teenagers with Palestinian teenagers as much as possible, so that they were standing side by side on stage, and the audience heard the teens speak in English and Arabic with a translator, so that all the young people could really communicate to the audience in their own voice.

“All we want is to be able to move freely and live a life without oppression.”
– Participant.

What was the response like?

We had the most compassionate and warm reception from the audience in the room. It was a really intergenerational crowd - the people attending were also people who the CADFA group had worked with prior to our workshop, as part of their exchange.

They were really moved, really moved, by these young people from the UK and from Palestine talking about their experience of teenhood, which can be a really vulnerable thing for anyone young to discuss in-front of adults, but it felt really important to provide a platform for them to do so.

I think we all finished the day feeling better connected, and better informed about the experiences of our friends from Palestine.

The workshop in progress. Photo: Angel Reid.

What surprised you about the day?

I’m always blown away by this generation’s wisdom and ability for acceptance and inclusion. I feel attitudes have really moved on from the years when I was a teenager, and it’s heartwarming and inspiring to see that in young people.

To observe young people from rural parts of the UK really embodying these things, despite a lot of stigma and misconception about attitudes that people hold in this part of the world, and really modelling this so beautifully, made me incredibly proud.

CADFA is a registered charity. More information on the organisation and options to support it are available here.

Pentabus have recently launched a youth theatre, the first in their 50-year history, comprising of groups for school years 7 - 9 and 10 - 13, which takes place weekly during term time at Ludlow Assembly Rooms.

Upcoming events include Storytelling Through Movement with Ibrahim Ibrahim on Wednesday 22^nd October.

Further information on Pentabus Youth Theatre.

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