Palestine 2023 - Youth Engagement: Providing Mental Health Support through the Arts

This year, Bond Street Theatre collaborated with Fragments Theatre, a Palestinian cultural NGO, on a project in the occupied Palestinian city of Jenin in the West Bank. Together they completed an Arts for Psychosocial support training program engaging 10 youth from Fragments Theatre, the Youth Development Resources Centre in Jenin, the Youth Center in Aljalmeh Village, and Step Association in Arrabah. In Jenin, and the West Bank, life is marked by oppression of the Israeli regime and fear for their own lives or safety of their families. Youth in the city have no access to cultural spaces other than Fragments Theatre and have limited other ways of using their time as a positive outlet under the constant threat of violence. 

The program used theatre, arts and digital storytelling to give youth an outlet for self expression and support their mental health, foster social inclusion and address psychosocial issues identified by the youth themselves. Through a series of 14 short videos the youth reflected upon topical issues and their own  life experiences in Jenin and reached a much wider audience by sharing them on social media: ‘Fragments Theatre Speaks Out’. Afterward, they facilitated a series of 7 theatre workshops in Jenin to share what they had learned with other members of the community, bringing joy and creativity to the elderly, schoolchildren, and women's groups.

Why Theatre? 

“The beauty of this video series is that it was created organically and flowed with the process of our collaboration. Fragments Theatre Speaks Out (series) took inspiration from the immediate happenings in Jenin, Palestine. The series tackles the major theme of light and dark as it becomes manifest in the city.” – Rahma Ahmad, Program Participant, 26 years old

‘One of the powerful things about theatre is that it is so personal,

you put your whole body into it. You tell stories, you act out stories,

even in theatrical games you're telling a story in a sense.

You're not just saying it, but you're acting it’ - Tim, Program Teaching Artist 

Recounting the Healing Power of Theatre with Tim 

‘Theatre allows people to speak up even when they don't know what else to do.’ - Tim 

There was one day that I found was so powerful. Right in the middle of our stay in Jenin, a Palestinian activist and prisoner, Khadar Adnan, died in a hunger strike. He had spent 3 months not eating, because he was under administrative detention and out in jail without a trial. When he died, everything shut down. Nobody was out, and it was a weekday, it was as if Jenin was a ghost town. You could feel the tension in the air, almost as something you could grasp. We were continuing our workshop in the theatre, so people were coming in. Everybody’s body posture was just crunched in, it was as if everybody just felt small. One participant admitted that they were only here because they had to. What was the point even? What is going on? 

We started to think about ways we could respond.

What could we do to think about things in a new way? How

do we talk about the violence and tragedy that occurs every

day in Palestine in a symbolic way? How do we talk about

the hardship itself without directly talking about it? The idea

that came up was making a video to share on social media

about the hunger strike in the prison, but by using hands.

One hand would represent the prison guard and throw out a

piece of bread to the prisoners. The hands representing the

prisoners would grab the pieces of bread, but one hand

would refuse. This happened again and again, day after day.

The hand that refused to accept the bread would get slower

and weaker as time passed by until one day it just died.

The guard went to the prisoner, picked up the hand and slammed it on the table and dragged it away.

The other prisoners started banging their hands on the table. 

It was  a powerful moment. It was such a beautiful way to talk about our feelings in a very simple way that people are able to hear without repeating the same information over and over again. Once we made the video, the mood changed drastically. People were themselves again and were energetic. It was not because they had suddenly solved whatever issue was around them, but they were able to express and talk about it. They realized that they CAN say something and CAN post on social media even if it is a small thing. If they had not come to the theatre, they said, they would just be in their homes feeling powerless, like they cannot do anything about it. At least this was a way for them to push back a little bit and say ‘no’. 

Link: https://vimeo.com/823156333

Facing Bitter Reality: Leaving

It is heavy. It was bittersweet, because Palestine has been resisting the occupation since 1948. It's been over 70 years. As an American, you can leave and just be like ‘that was so tough’, but you get to go home and kind of look at that from afar.  However, these people are continuing to live this very intense experience that was even a lot for three weeks for a foreigner coming in. For the project itself, you could tell that there was energy going forward. They want to keep working with other youth, children, elders, and women in their community, they want to keep posting social media videos, and they have! There was a lot of energy towards the end.

Endnotes 

After the program completed, participants overwhelmingly felt that they had created a “safe space” where they could support each other both artistically and psychosocially, despite many of them having never met before. They expressed their desire to continue using theatre in their personal lives, as it helped improve confidence and mental health outcomes, as well as in their professional lives and work with vulnerable communities. Many were eager to continue collaborating with BST in the future, and to start their own new projects including a recycling education program using live theatrical performances.