The theatre of freedom in Jenin

George Orwell's Animal Farm gets a new twist in a West Bank refugee camp. Death threats add to the drama.

The young actors of Jenin's Freedom Theatre in a scene from the controversial Animal Farm.

JENIN, WEST BANK // By all accounts, George Orwell would be proud of a Palestinian stage version of Animal Farm, the satire he wrote more than 60 years ago. The play based on one of the world's best-loved English-language books is being staged at the Freedom Theatre in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. And, in the finest traditions of political allegory, it has stirred controversy, threats and even arson attempts in the town where real-life drama has often included gun battles and invasions by the Israeli army. "This play is a revolution," said Rabia Turkman, 23, one of the actors in the student group's first production. "We talk about the intifada, about corruption, about collaborators, about many things," said Mr Turkman, a former fighter. Orwell's fierce critique of Stalinist corruption and socialist ideals has been given a Middle Eastern twist for this production, which has been playing to cheering, packed houses. In it, the Russian Revolution is the intifada. And when the animals overthrow their oppressive human rulers, the pigs who take charge end up abusing their newly gained power by shooting informers, talking Hebrew and smoking cigars with Israeli officials.

"The play reflects the corruption of power and how power corrupts," said the Freedom Theatre's director, Juliano Mer-Khamis.

"We are criticising the process of corruption that happens when power loses its ideology, or its way, and becomes just a system or an apparatus of power. The pigs become authority - which authority is up to you to decide."

Some see the play as a scathing analysis of the Fatah-led Palestinian Authority (PA), in a society that is deeply divided between the old guard of Fatah, commonly accused of corruption, and the rising, conservative influence of the Islamic party, Hamas.

"That's what is beautiful about theatre, everyone can interpret it his own way," said Mr Mer-Khamis. "I don't agree that the PA are pigs. I think the PA is caught in a situation that affects all of us." He says PA officials have attended the play and enjoyed it. "Many of them are aware of the political situation they are in, and are open-minded about it." But such a blazing attack on power, collaboration and the idea that the intifada may not be a shibboleth, a distinguishing social practice, has clearly caused consternation in some quarters.

The directors have received phone calls and text messages threatening to damage the theatre and kick them out of Jenin. Days before the production opened, there was an attempt to burn down the theatre. "We were so lucky, we had a small pool of water at the doorway of the theatre," said Nabil al Raee, the director, explaining that the fortuitous stage prop stopped the fire creeping into the theatre and setting its hay-strewn wooden floors ablaze. "We are worried, it is true, you have to be worried," he said. "But you also have to continue. If we stop because of a fire, how can we face the occupation? We can't stop because of a fire." The directors also say that once they went public about being threatened, they received many more messages of support.

The Freedom Theatre is a reincarnation of a drama therapy and education project initiated in 1988 by the late Israeli peace campaigner, Arna Mer-Khamis.

Years later, after one of the biggest battles of an Israeli offensive in the area in 2002 in which the West Bank town's theatre was razed and many of its pupils killed, Arna's son, Juliano, returned to rebuild. By then a renowned Israeli actor, the half-Palestinian Juliano opened the theatre in 2006 with the support of one of his mother's former students, Zakaria Zubeida, once leader of the Jenin branch of the al Asqa Martyrs' Brigades.

"This society was under siege for several years," said Juliano Mer-Khamis, following a packed matinée performance of Animal Farm at the theatre. "It has a ghetto mentality, a fear of the other, of anything new - of theatre itself." Challenging the traditionalism and conservatism that prevails in this impoverished town where "nobody dares to challenge anything", he describes the role of theatre as "generating critical thinking, through art".

If the young audiences and actors are anything to go by, the theatre is certainly having this effect. "I live here in the camp and we started using the computer room next to the theatre," said Ahman al Rokh, 20, who plays the villainous pig Napoleon in the farmyard adaptation. "Then we discovered the drama classes, and what at first we thought was a silly thing became very important to us." Mr al Rokh sees the theatre as a continuation of daily political life in Jenin, surrounded by wire fences on all sides and patrolled by the Israeli army. "The message from theatre is much stronger than from any weapons," he said. "It can help us as Palestinians to send our message to everyone around the world."

He adds: "We can talk, we can criticise Palestinian society, but in a good way." Bisan Istatti, a 13-year-old theatregoer, agreed. "Theatre in general is a good tool for Palestinians to use to raise our voice in a way that is not otherwise possible," she said. "I was astonished by their courage. "They didn't talk only about the Israeli occupation; they spoke also about the Palestinian corruption. I think they used the cover of being animals to cross red lines here in Palestine."

Mr Mer-Khamis believes the theatre, which receives tens of thousands of Palestinian visitors each year, is helping generate a cultural intifada. "We came here to fight the Israeli occupation," he said. "We didn't know that the occupation was in the bones of our people ... this is our role: to free ourselves from our own chains." * The National