A few weeks ago one of our productions, Grit, was due to head out to perform in Israel as part of an international festival of puppetry work. For those of you who’ve been kind enough to come and see the show, you’ll know that it’s a story very much based around the effects of war on children and young people. Our greatest hope for Grit as a production has always been that it leaves it’s audience asking questions (weve never been interested in creating didactic shows which batter audiences with our opinion). We know precious little about what it’s like to live in Israel, Gaza or the West Bank, but we hoped, probably rather dreamily, that we might play some very small part in the dialogue of a way to peace in a beautiful but bitterly divided part of the middle east. Events in Israel have unfortunately though rather dwarfed us. Two weeks ago Israeli local government postponed our trip and since then a conflict which has continued for decades has erupted in a fresh wave of violence. The average age of a resident in the Gaza strip is 17. Israeli law dictates mandatory military service from the age of 18, with few exceptions. It feels like a war based on generations of grievance, where a staggering number of casualties are being suffered and caused by people under the age of 25. We know opinions on the conflict run strong and deep and we’re not interested in hoisting ours upon you. But we feel very strongly that as a nation with intrinsic links to this conflict that the UK government carries a responsibility to help find a path to peace. So far for us, beyond the endless statements, the silence has been deafening. Weve tagged a link to a blog post by journalist John Snow which makes for difficult watching (discretion advised as strong images are involved) and weve also tagged a link in the comments that lets you know how you can contact your MP if you’d like to send them you thoughts. We’ll be writing about this more via our website soon but as always let us know what you think.
Posted on: Mon, 28 Jul 2014 12:21:47 +0000