Staging Resilience: Theatre as Resistance Under Occupation

In a region where narratives often clash, Iman Aoun's artistic voice resonates as a beacon of creative resilience. The award-winning Palestinian actress, director, and co-founder of Ashtar Theatre in Ramallah since 1991, Iman has harnessed the techniques of Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed. Her pioneering work sheds light on the suffering and plight of Palestinians under occupation and in exile through critically acclaimed projects such as The Gaza Monologues, the One Billion Rising Palestine campaign, and her current production, Oranges and Stones.

Iman joins us from Portugal to discuss her artistic journey, Oranges and Stones, and the role her art plays in fostering resistance and rebellion.

First staged in 2017 and now revived, Oranges and Stones is currently showing at the Almada Municipal Theatre in Almada, Portugal. This powerful play poignantly depicts Palestinian displacement through a wordless story of a refugee gradually expelling a local woman from her home and orange orchards after WWI, following the Balfour Declaration of 1917.

About this production, Peter Brook wrote:
It's an amazing, magnificent piece of work. In fact, it is all of a piece, as there is no way of separating conception, visualisation, staging, performing – and meaning. If there is any very positive and hopeful message, as some of the audience in the discussion were looking for – it is there in the fact that your work is an affirmation that unity – even for 48 minutes and encompassing the spectators – is real.

More information about Iman Aoun is available linkedin.com/in/iman-aoun-6779ab17. Ashtar Theatre's website can be found at ashtar-theatre.org. To never miss an Annotations Dialogue, subscribe to our Substack newsletter at annotations.art and our YouTube channel at youtube.com/@nnotationz. If you already are a free subscriber and like what we do, please consider upgrading.

Additional Information

Source: British Library. Originally published 9 November 1917 | ​Author: United Kingdom Government signed by Arthur Balfour