Safdar Hashmi of Jana Natya Manch (Janam) was killed in 1989 while performing the famous street play
Halla Bol
. Juliano Mer-Khamis of The Freedom Theatre (TFT) in the Jenin refugee
camp in the West Bank was gunned down in 2011 by a masked man outside
the theatre.
The two groups share a similarity not
just in the way their dynamic theatre-activist leaders died, but also in
their broad understanding of the role of culture and theatre as potent
weapons to bring about social and political change. Now, in a first-ever
India-Palestine theatrical collaboration, the two groups are presenting
a joint production in 11 cities across India, starting in Lucknow on
Thursday.
The festival, titled ‘Freedom Jatha’ will
travel between December 18 and January 25, and present shows in Bhopal,
Delhi, Mumbai, Talassery, Mallapuram, Kozhikode, Bengaluru, Hyderabad,
Kolkata and Patna.
The programme will include the
JNM-TFT play on the theme of occupation and resistance, a puppet
performance on Palestine by internationally acclaimed puppeteer Anurupa
Roy and her team Kat-katha, a photo exhibition on Palestine, the
traditional Palestinian Dapke dance and poetry, songs and short
performances by local artistes.
Janam describes this
collaboration a result of “a direct, people-to-people contacts,
unmediated by funding agencies or governments” at a point in time when
the Indian government is more pro-Israel than ever before.
Mala
Hashmi, a leading organiser of Janam, says the two groups have been in
touch ever since the slaying of Juliano Mer-Khamis, who believed that
oppression can be fought with plays, music, cinema.
Source: The Hindu, 18-Dec-2015
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