Last week, Palestinian director Faisal Abu Alhayjaa wrote on Facebook about his house being attacked by the Israeli army, his brother being arrested and dragged out in front of his children. Alhayjaa had just returned from an India tour of his Indo-Palestinian co-production,HameshaSaamida, co-directed with Sudhanva Deshpande. It was business as usual for the forces of occupation. Although his brother was later released, it cast in sharp relief the immediacy of conflict still collectively experienced in the West Bank. It feeds back into Alhayjaa’s work with The Freedom Theatre, a group trying to build a brand of stout-hearted cultural resistance, even with their backs to the wall. The Indian tour was a triumph of amity and concord. However, things haven’t gone down too well for another play, The Seige , about the 39-day seige of Bethlehem’s Church of Nativity in 2002. The production’s efforts to open at New York’s Public Theatre in May have been quashed; a decision unsurprisingly cloaked with tight-lipped reticence from the venue’s board.

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