October 1989, Page 47

Theater

The Story of Kufur Shamma

By Andrew I. Killgore

The audience in the still-darkened theater knew that the powerful drama was over. But what theatrical device could break the tense expectation and bring it to a close?

Ka'wash, the village fool of the play, shambled to the front of the lighted stage. The hushed crowd watched him raise his hands above his head in the gesture of victory. He stood silently.

Suddenly Ka'wash shouted, "Tell it!" The audience at George Washington University's Lisner Auditorium on August 29 exploded in applause.

The story Ka'wash urged his hearers to tell is about Kufur Shamma, a fictitious village near Ben-Gurion Airport in Israel. It is also the story of 472 Palestinian towns and villages, some actually buried under the airport's runways, that now exist only in memory. Some 300 of the villages that "disappeared" are listed on the theater program.

The Kufur Shamma drama, presented by El-Hakawati, a Palestinian theater company from East Jerusalem, was written by a Palestinian, Francois Abu Salem, and an Israeli Jewish woman, Jackie Lubeck. Lubeck plays a Palestinian girl from a nearby village.

Scenes in the play, presented for the first time in English for El-Hakawati's North American tour, range from Kufur Shamma in 1945 to a poignant reunion in contemporary America of refugees from the village. In between are refugee camp scenes, a quarry where the refugees chip stones, and again Kufur Shamma, after one of the leading characters returns to the village only to realize, finally, that it has been destroyed.

Some of the scenes seem to hover between dream and reality. Part of the mood stems from what the audience so clearly understands while the actors, childlike, seem unable to grasp. Dramatically effective, too, is Ka'wash's gradual transformation from apparent village fool to sharp-eyed commentator on the fate of Kufur Shamma. The scene in America is especially poignant as the refugees agree in principle to return to Kufur Shamma, but eventually acknowledge that for practical reasons they cannot.

Before arriving in Washington, DC, it had already played to seven packed houses at the Dance Theater Workshop, off Broadway. It was moved there after Joseph Papp, producer of the New York Shakespeare Festival, withdrew an offer to schedule the Palestinian troupe in the Public Theater because of his concern about the reactions of Jewish theatergoers. The play was also performed in Philadelphia, Lexington, VA, Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Seattle and Woodstock, NY.

Its emotional impact derives from the universal theme of loss. In the case of the Palestinians it is loss of home, village and country. The play, however, blames no one.

Often blamed for their own fate, especially in America, the Palestinians of the El-Hakawati Theater state their own case in Kufur Shamma. As Dr. Edward Said of Colombia University, an eloquent Palestinian-American intellectual, has said, Palestinians cannot accept injustice nor a passive reaction to it. They must tell of their suffering, be heard sympathetically and have the justice of their complaint acknowledged.

This, perhaps, is why Ka'wash's shouted, "Tell it!" strikes such an emotional chord.

Andrew I. Killgore, a former ambassador to Qatar, is the publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.