Performing Palestine

Everyone knows their lines. “Genocide is wrong.” “Free Palestine.” The hashtags, the marches, the speeches — that’s the script. And yes, it matters. Performances shift the cultural weather. They put pressure on governments. They make injustice visible.

But when the curtain drops? When the lights cut off? Offstage, the theatre of everyday life goes on. We sip lattes from chains funding occupations. We buy bags, and chains. The outfit. The glory. The perfect image. The perfect moment. Everything becomes about you.

While the scales are obviously not the same, the scripts are similar. Reruns of pride, scarcity thinking, and fear. Selfishness sieging. Silence occupying dangerous territory. The checkpoints we build in our own lives— who counts, who doesn’t, who you use, who you discard — are the same checkpoints nations enforce with rifles.

Tiny tyrannies and small acts of domination. Sometimes we excuse these as ambition, survival, or, “just the way things are.” Think about how, if supplied with superfluous funding, small productions expand. The final scene looks like pulling children from rubble and splitting skulls under boots for fun. These bizarre, sadistic crimes against humanity are because some others decide that some others are expendable.

Toronto loves to boast its multicultural cast. A global stage where accents, costumes, and backstories collide. Could it be meaningful for us to ask: what does shared ethics look like in a city where subway cars carry dozens of different histories, traumas, gods?

We don’t need more statements. We don’t want more monologues. We need better habits. Armies drill for war. Why don’t we workshop decency? A renewal of heart— selflessness, equity and community care.

Should we define what we consider taboo (on a rolling basis) without excessive policing and surveillance? Could we decide together that no body is disposable, no dignity negotiable, no life up for auction? What could collaborating on a community agreement look like? What if we spent with forethought and never sold each other out? Putting protesting into practice. Burning the theatre house down.

Palestine doesn’t need more actors