Rashi Mirsha
The FreedomTheatre
Palestinian Territory
Written in May 2018
I am a graduate student pursuing masters in performance studies from the Tisch School of Arts. As a theater practitioner and scholar, I’ve always been interested in exploring the potentiality of theater as a form of resistance against social and political oppression.
The first time I heard about The Freedom Theatre (TFT) was at a theater festival in India, where one of the speakers was discussing TFT’s work and their plays, and how TFT is building a cultural framework for the Palestinian liberation struggle. I remember being so impressed by this idea of cultural resistance through theater that I came back home and started looking for more information about the theater group on the internet. I learned how TFT was started in 2006 by Juliano Mer Khamis and how he envisioned TFT as a space where the youth of Jenin Refugee Camp could imagine and hope to live in a free Palestine one day. With this aim, TFT uses poetry, theater, film, and other arts media as tools for the youth to fight for their rights and seek justice.
I was more than excited when I got accepted for the Gallatin Global Fellowship in Human Rights in the winter of 2017 and when TFT accepted my request to be the host organization for this fellowship. As part of the summer project for the fellowship, I will be interning with the group in Jenin Refugee Camp, where TFT is based.
The internship will give me the opportunity to work with TFT and learn how they approach theater as a form of intervention in a place with perpetual violence and oppression. What is the process of making a play in such a context? How do these performances stand against the massive infrastructure of occupation that violates the social, economic, political, and cultural rights of the Palestinian population and impacts their psychological and physical well-being?
Being an outsider unfamiliar with Palestinians’ native language or their culture, struggles, or the extreme trauma they have faced and continue to face on a regular basis, my only intention is to go there and listen to what they have to say. I hope to listen with intent, in detail, to their stories and their narratives, and to use my own work (my writing and theater) to take their voices forward.