DUBAI: The crossing between the occupied West Bank and Jordan is barely 180 meters long, but it can take 12 hours, three checkpoints and several failed attempts. For Palestinian comedian and theater maker Alaa Shehada, it has provided the makings of a show.
Shehada performed “The Bridge” at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe this month, one of three productions staged by the Palestine Comedy Club, the company he founded to put Palestinian stand-up on stage. He performs in two of the shows; the third is performed by a friend.
“It’s driving everyone mad,” he said of the journey that inspired the piece. “I was there just two weeks ago, and it’s unbelievable. It’s a very simple right to have, which is traveling from your house to Jordan. Why does it take all of that?”
He described families leaving home at 3 a.m. or 4 a.m. to reach a bridge that sometimes closes before their turn, sending them back to try again the next day. “You have children, old people, families crossing, and it’s a suffering,” he said.
Shehada trained for four years at the Freedom Theatre at Jenin refugee camp, the first theater in the north of the West Bank.
He said: “When you study theater, with time you try to shape yourself as an artist. You need to know what you’re really good at.”
He immersed himself in clowning, stand-up, storytelling, masks and commedia dell’arte.
“I got to know that I’m more into the comedy side,” he said. “Comedy allows us to say way more.”
Doing theater in Jenin was unusual, he said, and the difficulty shaped him. He added: “The challenges we had in order for us to do theater were a lot, and that created a persona of who we are as artists.”
The Palestine Comedy Club grew out of a UK stand-up tour he took with a British comedian after graduating.
“I said, ‘Why don’t we have a comedy club in Palestine?’ We’ve got the humor, we’ve got the people. We are a culture of storytelling,” he said. “Every conversation starts with a joke and ends with a joke.”
In the West Bank, where “you can’t make one journey without obstacles,” he said laughter was a way of coping, and added: “Comedy supports people, empowers them to move on with their lives instead of being down.”
That approach came together in “The Horse of Jenin,” which won a Fringe First and was named among Rolling Stone’s top shows last year. Asked what the recognition had changed, he joked: “My ego got bigger.”
He said that each production taught him something, and the show — which blends masks, clowns, storytelling and stand-up — taught how comedy and tragedy can sit together. “I understood how much people are willing to hear the Palestinian story internationally,” he said. “That’s why I wanted to bring more and more stories.”
The third show features Palestinian comedian Hanna Shammas, from Haifa, whose life inside the 1948 territories differs from Shehada’s in the West Bank.
“The story of Hanna is the story of 2 million Palestinians who live in the ’48 areas,” he said, adding that many people, including in the Arab world, would not be aware that some Palestinians hold Israeli passports and live alongside Israelis.
Shehada expects this year to perform close to 30 shows in a month. “That’s the rhythm of my life. I have no space to think how I do it, otherwise maybe I wouldn’t,” he said. “I understand my responsibility as an artist, as a Palestinian, and the importance of telling the story nowadays.”
Among the festival’s tens of thousands of productions, he said, the Palestinian voice mattered.
He said: “People still need to hear more about Palestine and the Palestinians through comedy, through theater, because it allows people to see us as humans.
“We also have life, dreams, and a future. The only different thing is that we’ve got this occupation that is trying to scratch your life down.”
“The Bridge” is at the Assembly Roxy until Aug. 16; “The Horse of Jenin” runs at The Pleasance from Aug. 18 to 30; and “Hanna Shammas Takes to Heart” is at Underbelly at George Square from Aug. 24 to 30.
