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The People Behind the Headlines

Posted by DCA Theater on February 3, 2009 in January-June 2009 Season, The Arab-Israeli Cookbook

Written by Rob Chambers, Artistic Director, Theatre Mir

Two weeks before we started rehearsal for “The Arab-Israeli Cookbook,” the conflict between Israel and Hamas exploded in Gaza.  News reports from throughout the world recorded the invasion of Israeli forces into Gaza and the repeated launching of Hamas missiles into Israel as the war and casualties mounted.  On the first day of rehearsal, our cast and production team somberly noted that the play we were embarking on could not be more timely.

In 2003, playwright/actor Robin Soans traveled to Israel and the West Bank with directors Tim Roseman and Rimi Brihi - the one Jewish and the other Arab - to interview everyday people to learn how they were going about their lives amid the ongoing conflict.  As an ice breaker, they asked everyone they met with to share their favorite recipe or food as means of starting the conversation.  The ingredients, dishes and rituals of eating had much in common between the diverse groups of Christians, Jews and Muslims of the region.  While the people showed great pride and enthusiasm in the foods they prepared and shared in their homes, restaurants, shops and cafes, the events outside inevitably became part of the discussion.  It was impossible for these people to discuss their recipes without also talking about how difficult it is to get the ingredients during a siege, or the daily challenges of negotiating through checkpoints, or the terror when an unattended bag is discovered at a falafel shop, or how an ordinary trip to the supermarket was anything but ordinary when a suicide bomber attacked it.

As a playwright, Robin Soans concentrates on verbatim and documentary theater, and he wrote “The Arab-Israeli Cookbook” as a way to explore the commonalities between the more than seventy people he met on his trip.  The play is a tapestry of monologues and scenes, with real cooking on stage, in which no one ethnic, cultural or political voice dominates.  It is the words of these ordinary people trying to lead their lives on a day-to-day basis. We chose to produce the play because it does not take sides about the who is right or wrong in the conflict, but rather it gives a voice to the everyday people who are usually neglected in the news accounts.  These are not statistics or poltical positions; they are real people with real desires for peace. 

So when we heard about the latest conflict, we wondered what was happening to Naji, the administrator of a Palestinian refugee camp who tries to find employment for the men in the camp, and Idan, a young Israeli soldier who wanted to be an actor when he was released from the army, and Rose and Abdullah, a retired couple cooped up in their small apartment because it’s too dangerous to go outside very much, and Nadia, a grandmother whose garden gate was shattered by eighteen bullet when a father and his daughter were mistakenly shot by the Israeli police because they were driving in a similar car as a group of wanted Hamas members, and the many more people from the play who are so real to us even though we have never met them.  And we noted that while we are performing the show at its first matinee on Sunday, March 8, a mother, Fattiyah, will be grieving the loss of her young son in a bombing seven years ago to the day.

We must remember that behind all the news stories and articles about this and other conflicts, there are people like each of us, with families like ours, trying to go about their lives as we do - but they do not take for granted the daily rituals and meals as we sometimes do.

“The Arab-Israeli Cookbook” is presented by Theatre Mir in association with the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs, March 5 through April 5, at the Storefront Theater, 66 E. Randolph Street, Chicago.  Click here to purchase tickets.