Alaa Shehada – One People, Not Two: a Conversation About and Review of ‘The Bridge’

Just seven days before The Bridge officially opens at the Edinburgh Fringe, Alaa Shehada still isn’t convinced the show is ready.

‘I had the review last night,’ he tells me as he sips coffee in a garden and rolls tobacco between his lips, ‘but I need the audience to be there so I can understand more about the story.’

Shehada, a Palestinian actor, comedian, and writer from Jenin in the occupied West Bank, places his connection with the audience above all else. Throughout our chat, he refers to them as friends, as if collaborators in the play; apparently, they teach him something new in every performance.

‘You’ll see at the shows,’ he says proudly. ‘How much fun we have with the audience.’

‘Fun’ is a surprising promise coming from a playwright whose work centres on his heaviest experiences in the West Bank. Alaa does not entertain what he calls the ‘black and white stereotype of Palestine’ in his work, but rather prioritises depicting something more richly universal:

‘I want to bring the culture,’ he says. ‘The jokes, the fun, friends, relatives, community–that’s something they’re not used to.’

The Bridge follows a single character’s journey as he passes through Palestinian and Jordanian checkpoints on the 180-metre route to and from the West Bank. Despite it being performed as a one-man show, Shehada describes it as a collective story rather than an individual one.

‘What do I want to say as Alaa?’ he often asks himself. ‘How do I project my voice onto the world, but at the same time project community voices as well?’

This is what excites Shehada most in his writing process: discovering this unseemly relationship between his audience and the community he seeks to represent. He explains the joy of learning to find the comedic voice hidden within these difficult narratives while also retaining its cultural representation. Humour, to him, is an international language. The specifics of his plays may belong to Palestinian hardships, but family, hope, and resilience are understood by practically everyone.

‘If plays are comedic, stories are universal,’ he tells me. ‘If it’s a good story, it can go wherever without adaptation.’

Such a theatrical and comedic approach to depicting the suffering in the West Bank is not uncommon; yet, there is a lack of space for Palestinian comedians to receive the same opportunities as Shehada. He is undoubtedly passionate about establishing a Palestinian comedy circuit, but he acknowledges the work that remains.

‘It’s not easy,’ he admits. Of course, there are other Palestinian acts in the Fringe. Hanna Shammas Takes It To Heart, for example, as well as The Palestinian Circus, are two acts many festivalgoers anticipate this season. For Shehada, however, the most glaring obstacle is not inclusion, but rather finding stability. It is evident to him that comedy flourishes in a stable relationship between audience and theatre. In Palestine, this is not possible.

‘Things change every day. It’s not like here, where you know what you’ll be doing in six months. In Palestine, you don’t know if you’ll make it to work or not.’

Even so, he isn’t close to stopping. As he continues to tour internationally and write more productions, he is determined to contribute to Palestinian narratives through the arts.

When I ask what he ultimately hopes audiences leave The Bridge thinking about, his first answer is immediate.

‘Free Palestine, my friend.’

Then he explains, more than anything, he hopes viewers leave understanding that Palestinian life cannot be reduced to the media’s simplification of his people. He wants them to leave having seen the daily lives of parents, friends, lovers, and communities – to ‘see us as human’ rather than victims of war.

Just a week later, his beloved audience finally arrived to watch The Bridge on its opening night at the kickoff of Edinburgh’s Fringe Festival.

The hour-and-a-half production follows the chronological checkpoints and delays of a horribly normal journey across the bridge between the West Bank and Jordan. With nothing more than a bench, a microphone, sound effects, and a jug of olive oil, Shehada jumps between characters and situations to create a physical comedy about the obstacles commonly undergone on the trip.

His physicality completes his mission of humanising Palestinian struggles through comedy: he converts a wooden bench into a sweaty bus seat without air conditioning, and an array of outlandish characters is revealed in changes in Shehada’s voice and body language.

His olive oil carton becomes a running gag almost immediately. What begins as an annoying task to bring a taste of home with him (at one point, he must buy another ticket to ensure the oil isn’t crammed in with the rest of his luggage) transforms into a symbol of resistance and cultural longevity for his family’s culture in the midst of occupation. Similarly, the idea of a Palestinian international airport becomes another joke that re-emerges in the most difficult obstacles of The Bridge, ultimately becoming an imaginary manifestation of Palestinian hope: ‘One day we will have an airport.’

Most importantly, family becomes the centre of the production’s relatability. An annoying uncle calls constantly throughout Shehada’s journey, asking for anything that ‘smells of the homeland,’ which apparently includes size 44 flip-flops.

An old woman reminiscent of an old grandmother sits beside him on the cramped bus to the Israeli checkpoint, stealing his air conditioning and eventually becoming a companion throughout his journey. I recall our conversation when I asked what his family thinks about depictions in his work, where he often pokes fun at them for laughs.

‘When they like the jokes about them, they like it. When they don’t like the jokes, they really don’t.’

Still, family is the heart of The Bridge, and this comes to a head in a startling sequence of the production: passing through the Israeli checkpoint between Palestine and Jordan. White lights and medical-like security buzzing ring throughout the stage and audience. The jokes sprinkled throughout the scene fell flat against the weight of its atmosphere; I found myself unsure whether I was supposed to laugh.

After all, images of a student being arrested and taken to jail on his journey to his European university, or an old woman being escorted into a back room to be strip-searched, carry an immensely heavier experience than the visual gags of shifty-eyed Israeli guards and loudly sipping citrus-flavoured water. Ultimately, not every bit lands. Whether this is because of Shehada’s comedic timing or the inextricable context of the cruelty being depicted, I could not decide.

Only here, after the brutal white overheads and the dehumanisation of beloved recurring characters, does Shehada realise that his journey in The Bridge has perhaps very little to do with bringing the ‘best tasting olive oil’ to his family in Jordan. Rather, it becomes representative of the repeated Palestinian manifesto he has spent the entire production repeating: ‘We are one people, not two.’

And, both as himself and the character he represents in his one-man show, Alaa, continues his journey on the bridge and gestures towards an audience that has met characters across all types of accents and origins and families. Here, he poses a single question to us, blurring lines between punchline and plea: if you cannot create comedy in such a situation, what else are you to do?

★★★½

The Bridge Upstairs at Assembly Roxy, 10th till 16th August, 7:40pm