From the Edinburgh festival to London, actors and writers are taking the theatre establishment to task for failing to spotlight the genocide and accepting funding from complicit companies
Edinburgh bursts at the seams in mid-August, with its theatre, film, book and deaf festivals running at once. Away from the bustle, a theatre in Morningside is staging Cutting the Tightrope, a four-night run of plays confronting the censorship and silence around Palestine in British theatre. Palestinians and their allies have accused theatres of failing to programme politically challenging work on the genocide – and of taking money from complicit companies – while institutions remain paralysed by fear of bad press and lost income.
Programmed as part of the Edinburgh International Festival (EIF) – the Fringe’s selective older sibling – the plays act as a reckoning for British theatre’s political sterility, with audiences cast as judges (sometimes literally). Between the short plays, up-to-date facts about the genocide flash on a screen above the stage as damning evidence.
British stages once reckoned with Section 28, Brexit and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Yet, two years into the genocide in Gaza, only three theatres have issued statements condemning it. “If every single theatre organisation or company said nothing about Ukraine, or Black Lives Matter, or queer rights – if the policy was always to never make statements about social justice, then you could say, well at least there’s consistency,” actress Sarah Agha, who is of Palestinian and Irish heritage, tells Dazed. “What’s upsetting is when there is a complete and utter double standard, and you definitely see that with respect to Palestine.” Despite growing British political consciousness on Palestine, works about Palestine or by Palestinian artists – especially work that explicitly addresses Israeli occupation and genocide in explicit terms – remain rare on British theatre stages.
Writers very moved by [the genocide] must be scribbling away about it all over the country, and you can’t find a single play to put on? It’s very strange
Actor and playwright Joel Samuels, who is Jewish, wrote and starred in one of the mini-plays which make up Cutting the Tightrope. He is also a member of the White Kite Collective, a group of cultural workers formed to respond to the genocide after Israel’s murder of Palestinian poet Refaat Alareer in Gaza in late 2023. Both as part of the collective and as an individual playwright, Samuels has spoken to theatre leadership, including artistic directors, at some of Britain’s biggest venues. “There is no appetite for explicitly political and unsanitised work. The fear of retribution, the fear of rebuke, the fear of being accused of ‘siding with terror’ or antisemitism or of ‘going too far’ is in every corner of establishment British theatre,” he says.
Advocates for more Palestinian voices in theatre are hitting an immovable roadblock when it comes to the UK’s biggest theatres. “There hasn’t been a single play about Palestine in any of the West End’s 30-odd theatres since the genocide started,” longtime theatre critic Keith McKenna tells Dazed. “This genocide has been going on for almost two years. Writers very moved by it must be scribbling away about it all over the country, and you can’t find a single play to put on? It’s very strange.”
McKenna notes that, even without new writing on Palestine, theatres could easily revive tried-and-tested shows that have previously drawn no political backlash. My Name is Rachel Corrie, for example, is based on the diary entries of the young Jewish-American activist killed when she was crushed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza more than two decades ago. Co-edited by the late Alan Rickman and Katharine Viner, now editor-in-chief at the Guardian, the play was staged at the Royal Court Theatre in 2005 and The Young Vic in 2017. Post-October 2023, the play has found home only at far smaller venues.
Dissenting voices are everywhere in British theatre. In the last few months alone, hundreds of theatre workers have signed petitions and open letters by groups like Cultural Workers Against Genocide and Artists for Palestine UK to call for an end to sponsorships by companies, like Barclays, that are profiting from the genocide. Playwrights have withdrawn work from theatres with ties to genocide-complicit companies. Prominent theatre critics, themselves a quiet demographic when it comes to the genocide, have called on theatres to take a stand and to program more Palestinian work.
While leadership at the West End theatres remain with their heads buried in the sand, venues elsewhere are more receptive. In London, smaller theatres, including the Bush and the Arcola, are putting on politically explicit shows by Palestinian artists, and fundraisers for Gaza by groups like the White Kite Collective. McKenna points to three non-West End but “world-class” theatres that do seem to be listening to demands for work by Palestinian artists: the Royal Court, which last year put on the acclaimed A Knock on the Roof, a play set in Gaza during Israeli bombardment; the Barbican in London, where Agha starred in A Grain of Sand; and in Edinburgh, the Traverse Theatre which put on Nowhere, a one-man performance by Khalid Abdalla in which Palestine figures prominently.
The current stasis on pro-Palestine expression is complicated by the shrinking available funds for theatres. Government funding for the arts sector has plummeted since 2010, and almost half of theatre venues in the UK face imminent closure. Major cultural institutions and events, including the EIF, are accepting corporate funding of all stripes to stop the gap, including from companies profiting off the Gaza genocide, leaving Palestinian artists to deliberate over whether or not to engage with them.
A breakthrough is happening on the margins of major theatre. The bigger breakthrough will come soon
“The idea that theatres need to represent us should be reflected both in the artistic side of things, and also their politics and investments and who they take their money from,” Cutting the Tightrope cast member Issam Al Ghussain, who is British-Palestinian, tells Dazed. “What would it mean for masses of audience members to invest more time, money and cultural capital into truly fringe theatre scenes, or truly radical theatre scenes? Money is the language of the leadership of these theatres, and if they were to see a drop in ticket sales, that would force them to acknowledge that there is something that needs to shift within them.”
This year’s Fringe festival might offer a glimpse of theatre without the constraints we currently see. Out in Portobello, the week-long Welcome to the Fringe, Palestine mini-festival celebrated Palestinian culture “free from censorship”. Solidarity with Palestinians spilt out across the festival. At a show at what was once the Edinburgh Police Club, a performer declares his support for Palestine Action; a performance of a different show with no ostensible link to Palestine ends in a cast member shouting “Free Palestine”. Messages written in chalk on the concrete path running through Middle Meadow Walk call for boycotts and condemn Keir Starmer for supporting the genocide. These messages are now weathered and worn out by footfall, but not erased.
“A breakthrough is happening on the margins of major theatre,” McKenna says. “The bigger breakthrough will come soon. Not every major theatre in the country is run by people who are thinking about grabbing their next million with companies supporting Israel in its genocide. One of these major theatres will break through and make a name for itself.”