Theatre Responds to Genocide

Theatre Responds to Genocide
An Online Gathering of Artists in Solidarity with Palestine

As over 54,000 Palestinians have been killed—many of their final moments live-streamed to the world—theatre artists are grappling with how to respond to such immense loss, injustice, and the ongoing genocide in Gaza.

Theatre Responds to Genocide is an urgent online event that brings together theatre-makers who are using their voices, stages, and stories to confront the brutality and silence surrounding this atrocity. In a time when the truth is under attack and collective grief is met with political inaction, we ask:

• What can theatre offer in the face of genocide?

• How do we hold space for grief, rage, and resistance on stage?

• What stories need to be told—and who gets to tell them?

• What is our responsibility as artists when art alone is not enough?

This event is a space for dialogue, witness, and solidarity. Artists will share work, reflections, and practices that engage with Palestine's struggle for freedom and dignity. Together, we will explore the power and limitations of theatre in the face of mass atrocity—and the necessity of speaking out, now more than ever.

Join us in listening, learning, and standing with Palestinian people through the voices of artists who refuse to look away.

We will hear from:

Mustafa Sheta

Mustafa Sheta is a Palestinian cultural leader, researcher, and human rights advocate currently serving as the General Manager of The Freedom Theatre in Jenin Refugee Camp, occupied Palestine. With over two decades of experience in journalism, civil society, and cultural development, Sheta is a prominent voice in the movement for cultural resistance and artistic freedom in Palestine. The Freedom Theatre is a theatre and cultural centre who stage professional theatre productions, hold theatre workshops in the refugee camp, Jenin town and villages, offer training in acting, pedagogy and photography, and publish books, exhibitions and short films. The Theatre has created a generation of artists and leaders, who one day will be at the forefront of the Palestinian liberation movement.

Ben Rivers

Ben Rivers is a voice and applied theatre practitioner. He has taught and practised in Asia, Australia, Europe, the Middle East and North America, working extensively with communities impacted by political violence and collective trauma. Ben is the founder of Dawar Arts (Cairo, Egypt). He also lived and worked for several years in Jenin Refugee Camp, Occupied Palestine, where he co-founded The Freedom Theatre’s Freedom Bus project, an initiative that uses interactive theatre and cultural activism to bear witness, raise awareness and build alliances throughout occupied Palestine and beyond. Ben is of Jewish descent. He currently lives and works between Europe, Australia and the Middle East.

Sabrina Speranza

Sabrina Speranza is a Uruguayan actress, educator, and social activist who has practiced Theatre of the Oppressed (TO) since 2005. She studied with Augusto Boal at the Centro do Teatro do Oprimido in Rio de Janeiro and has trained with Jana Sanskriti in India. Her experience includes TO work with children and teens in vulnerable settings, as well as facilitating TO training for educators. Sabrina focuses on Newspaper Theatre, and she has toured an original play for over five years in Uruguay, Argentina, Brazil, Spain, and Portugal. Sabrina also teaches Drama History and Analysis and Theatre in Prisons at Uruguay’s Drama School of Montevideo.

Lou van Laake

Lou has been leading Dublin-based Full Circle Playback Theatre Company since 2015 and has brought it through the years of Covid to become an Ireland-wide group of performers that create creative, inclusive and explorative improvisational theatre both in person and online. Full Circle Playback Theatre Company is actively engaged in the process of enabling communities to share their stories. They do this by transforming personal stories into powerful, improvised performances that foster empathy, connection, and reflection. Their work spans diverse settings, from schools to corporate spaces, healing environments to public celebrations, offering a platform for shared experiences and meaningful dialogue. The theatre group have done two performances in aid of GazaGoBragh.

Julian Boal

Julian Boal is a teacher, researcher, and practitioner of Theatre of the Oppressed. He has facilitated workshops in more than 25 countries. He is co-founder (with Geo Britto) and pedagogical coordinator of Escola de Teatro Popular (ETP; The School of Popular Theatre, in Rio de Janeiro), a school run by social movements for social movements.

Cheraé Halley 

is an actor, lecturer, theatre maker and an applied theatre facilitator. As an expert in the field of Applied Drama and Theatre, Cheraé has worked across communities in South Africa building awareness and creating dialogue using theatre in addressing socio-political issues in education and both urban and rural community spaces. She has worked this way in fields such as HIV/AIDS, disability, sexual harassment, gender equity, LGBTI rights, human rights and oppression. As an education enthusiast, Cheraé has taught and offered training in various drama and theatre programmes and institutions, she is currently the Head of the Market Theatre Laboratory – an arts incubator with a reputation for facilitating the development of exceptional young actors and theatre-makers and for creating innovative and relevant new plays. Passionate about global networking, Cheraé serves as a board member on the International Playback Theatre Network (IPTN), representing Africa. Cheraé also chaired the steering committee for the IPTN Conference which took place in South Africa, December 2023.

This event is free, but during the event we will post a donation link if you would like to support the work of the Freedom theatre in Palestine. 

"In Palestine, theatre is not a luxury—it is a necessity for survival. Under Israeli military occupation, where curfews, airstrikes, imprisonment, and displacement disrupt daily life, theatre offers an urgent counter-narrative. It provides space for emotional processing, political truth-telling, and collective imagination." - Mustafa Sheta