THRISSUR : With the play ‘How to Make Revolution’ — based on Israeli aggression on Palestine — receiving huge applause at the 14th International Theatre Festival of Kerala, director Einat Weizman, an Israeli national by birth, had a few pertinent questions to ask on the raging conflict and genocide in Gaza Strip.
“How can I remain silent when my friends suffer and are in perpetual agony,” Weizman asked. An independent artist from Tel Aviv, she considers art as a tool to resist oppression and communicate with people.
“When Israel creates barriers all over Gaza, I take to art to cross all these barriers and share the stories of my friends at the other end,” Weizman told TNIE on the sidelines of the festival in Thrissur. ‘How to Make Revolution’ conveys to the audience the unknown side of the military court of Israel.
“What made me feel bad is the fact that while Israeli people can go to civil court to settle issues according to the existing law of the country, Palestinians are forced to undergo trial in military courts, which in most cases would ensure their conviction. Before coming up with the play, I attended the military court and its proceedings daily, taking note of every procedure, document etc. At first, the proceedings were transparent, but when the officials realised that I was documenting them, they barred me from entering the court. But it helped me a lot in coming up with the play,” Weizman said.
The play depicts the trial of noted Palestinian human rights activist, Issan Amro. His experiences were presented as a conversation between him and Weizman while the court trial is shown in between.
“To make our point clearer, we used the real videos from West Bank so that people could understand what is happening there,” she added. Asked how the people of Israel respond to the war situation, Weizman made it clear that most of the content in Israel media was not about the real situation in Gaza, rather they were still explaining the Hamas attack on October 7, citing it as the trigger.
“But the Hamas attack happened after a very long series of violence by Israel, most of it remains hidden from the world,” she said. Sharing that the acceptance at ITFoK was a huge break for them from the kind of suppression and hatred they had been facing for a long time, the director said she last posted something on social media on October 7. “My social media post was about the context in which the Hamas attack happened. But my daughters were bullied at their schools as I was speaking for Palestine. It is not going to stop me as the sufferings of people in Palestine is such a huge one,” said Weizman, a mother of two, who considers resistance through art as her call of duty.