Michael De Cock on the war in Gaza: “All this grief will find its way to the stage”

What can artists do besides flee, hide, wait for things to be over? Or is there still something art can accomplish, for those who stay behind? Theatre creators and critics sought answers to these questions at an international meeting in Pristina. Michael De Cock, artistic director of KVS, was among them.
 
Pristina, Kosovo. Heart of the Balkans. This peculiar city, at the edge of Europe, where they speak Albanian but pay in euros, is the backdrop to a meeting where an international group of theatre creators, critics, and programmers examine the question of what theatre can do in times of crisis.
 
The timing is rather on the nose, as is the location. Here in Kosovo, they know very well what a crisis is. Thirty years ago, a bloody war was fought here. And recently, only last September, the mass presence of Serbian soldiers at the Kosovan border terrified the local population. The war and its traumas have not been forgotten. The ghost of war still lingers, including in the theatre that is created here. 
 
Thirty years after the disintegration of Yugoslavia, war, death, and loss are still the dominant narratives in the theatre and the plays that are written here.
 
War trauma is a persistent intruder, one that is passed from generation to generation. Things were no different when I visited Georgia last year, at the invitation of Europalia, shortly after the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There, too, old demons came back to life.

Dialogue

This international gathering in Pristina had obviously been planned long before Hamas’ acts of terror on the seventh of October. But in the meantime, Israel keeps bombing Gaza amidst a conflict that, for countless geopolitical and religious reasons, divides the world. 
 
It’s no different here: we were meant to have a panel discussion about what art can mean in times of crisis. But whether we can go ahead is uncertain. Because in times of crisis, dialogue and art are also in crisis: the presence of Israeli professor and director Roy Horovitz is not appreciated by some panel members. All the more because there will be no Palestinian voices in the debate. The reason is simple: Palestinian producer Marina Barham, who was invited and set to come, can’t leave her country. On the other hand, Horovitz has been unable to get home for the past month. 
 
An Israeli voice without a Palestinian one? Unacceptable for some participants. “I’m afraid it is impossible for me to take part in a panel while Gazans are being slaughtered if no Palestinian voice can join the debate,” the Greek theatre programmer Aktina Stathaki announces via email. This had caused Roy Horovitz to burst out in anger one day earlier at lunch. He feels like he is being nudged out of the panel behind his back.
 
Barham herself also sends an angry message to author and host Jeton Neziraj. Jeton stays calm. His reasoning is clear: “It’s outside of my will and control that both parties cannot be present. I understand better than most how sensitive these things are. What do you think? I am Kosovan. But I believe in dialogue. I have always entered into dialogue with Serbian theatre creators and artists. We have kept programming Serbian theatre, even when that was only possible with police at the doors to prevent altercations. By the way, we also have a Ukrainian actor but no one from Russia. It’s important to understand that we all see the world from different perspectives. Entering into dialogue through literature and theatre is exactly our mission. This is no place for a boycott. I refuse to accept that.”
 
Horovitz stays on board. But Jeton does intervene in the way the evening’s proceedings are organised. The panel becomes a conversation with everyone present, the guests sat in a semi-circle in front of the audience. Anyone can speak up. 
 
This attempt at a solution turns out insufficient. The global conflict cuts too deep and from the start emotions run high. “How dare you try to boycott me behind my back,” an emotional Horovitz asks before the conversation has properly started. He doesn’t wait for an answer. He immediately follows up by saying how cowardly he believes that is. He yells “fuck you”, upon which Aktina Stathaki leaves the stage. She ends up following the conversation from the audience.
 
A few days later, the Palestinian Marina Barham is still livid about Roy Horovitz’ participation in the panel. “I am frankly staggered that they would let someone from a country committing war crimes speak. All while I am being obstructed from leaving my city and my country by the Israeli settlers. I live in Beit Jala near Bethlehem, and I have lost so many friends and family in Gaza. Last week, a family member died of a heart attack induced by stress. I can hardly breathe from anger when I think about how innocent children are slaughtered while the world simply watches. We are in shock that all those governments who so frequently talk about human rights are doing nothing. I am bitter. I have long believed that people from two parties who choose to enter into dialogue can make a difference. But not anymore, not with people from a country that kills innocent children and babies.”

Better people

Back to Kosovo. Aurela Kadriu, one of the Kosovan moderators, manages to keep the ship afloat. “This conversation cannot fail,” she says. “It’s simply not an option and I will make sure it succeeds. We will listen and talk to each other.”
 
“I came here to talk about how we, as a theatre, can respond in times of crisis. When I was a guest here last year, a Serbian play was performed. That gave me the impression that this was the right place, and that dialogue was possible,” Roy Horovitz says with shaking hands and voice.
 
“I do not speak for the regime or for the state of Israel. I am genuinely sorry that the Palestinian participant cannot be here. I would have hugged her, and we would have been able to show that we are better people than our leaders.”
 
So far so good. But it is hard to talk about this conflict without getting political. “We are fighting Hamas now, not Palestine.” He starts talking about the barbarian attacks of 7 October. About how it was the worst in decennia. A slaughter reminiscent of the Holocaust. 1400 people in one day. “Whoever thinks that such an act is legitimate, is on the wrong side of history,” he adds.
 
Kateryna Kisten, a Ukrainian actress, observes the scene. A month after the war in Ukraine broke out, she fled Kiev. She now lives and works in Sweden. Although she has mainly been a stage actress, she is most well-known for her role as the sister of Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky in the tv series Servant of the People.
 
Kisten chose a different path and left. “I could not stay in that war,” she confides in me. “I had to leave. I was afraid and I felt useless.” After fleeing, she and a number of actors from her company came together in Germany to create a play. “When the war broke out, we were working on a version of Hamlet. We had to stop. When we found each other again, we decided to scrap two letters and created HA*L*T. A play about what has happened to our lives since the war, and an attempt to honour all the plays that couldn’t be made. I still can’t fully grasp what the war has done to me. It uncovers what people are really like. You can no longer hide. It has taught me good and bad things about myself. I had to act and I had to live, so I had to leave. These are all things you don’t think about before.”

Puppeteer

Every now and then there’s a sparkle of hope during the conversation. A slight inkling of a silver lining. Henrietta Foster, a British documentary maker who used to work for the BBC and knows the Balkans through and through, tells the story of how she made a film about the last puppeteer in Sarajevo. It sounds like a fairy tale.
 
“Once there were eight puppeteers in Sarajevo, but the war forced most of them to leave. Only one stayed behind. He didn’t want to leave the city. Not even when his daughter asked him to come to Dubrovnik, where it was safer. He wanted to stay to perform for the children. In some little theatre he performed a puppetry show. It was wonderful. You could see the children become children again, the parents parents.”
 
Then she turns to Kateryna. “Can I ask you something? What do you think of all those artists who have been boycotted since the war started? Like Anna Netrebko and Valery Gergiev and the like?”
 
It brings up another important question that has been playing on minds in Europe for a long time: as a cultural institution, how do you deal with artists from Israel? The demand for a boycott grows. In this conversation, that demand is being sidestepped. 
 
“I’m against a boycott,” Kisten says. “Roy Horovitz was very emotional. I felt in his message that he wasn’t here to defend a single political vision. I want to keep talking and understanding and entering into dialogue as long as we can. A boycott is too generalised for me.”
 
“Of course, this war and all this grief will find their way to the stage,” Roy responds. “But not yet. Now is the time for graphic designers and the like to create posters to share on social media. Theatre and literature need more time. But I am sure that in a few months, theatre will be created about all that has happened. Dealing with these kinds of traumas takes time.”

Living witnesses

According to the German playwright Bertolt Brecht, you can only start talking about something once there are no more direct, living witnesses. It’s a stern stance, but it hides a kernel of truth. As long as the wound is wide open, it’s very difficult to soften the pain through art. Even this open and honest conversation, which started out with such intensity and emotion, avoids certain taboos. “Theatre is a way of processing and healing,” the German Eckhard Thiemann says. I agree with him. More than ever, the performing arts have been given this role, especially today, now that the romantic ideal of the genius artist has been permanently shattered. A new therapeutic, religious ritual, as it were. I witnessed this in countless performances in Georgia, when I was a guest there as part of a delegation invited by Europalia, and I see it here too, in Kosovo. The titles of the works of playwright Jeton Neziraj, our host and a rising star of the international stage, are telling: Negotiating Peace, Love in Times of War, … War trauma goes a long way in theatre. It becomes both fuel and hindrance. And after a while, you start wishing for some other things to be shown again. 
 
I recently had a conversation with theatre creator Lisaboa Houbrechts, who is thinking about staging Mother Courage, Brecht’s seminal war play. She wondered if she had legitimate cause to talk of war. Of course she does, was my first response – and it still is. War and peace, love and hate are themes we are all allowed to talk about – in fact, we’re all allowed to talk about everything. But it’s hard to ignore that in the case of war, the urgency and legitimacy are greater here in Pristina.
 
Roy Horovitz reads us a quote from Israeli author Leah Goldberg. “The poet is someone who, in times of war, cannot and should not forget the true values of life. The poet can only write love poems in times of war, but he has to, because even in times of war, the value of love is greater than that of murder. It’s not just the poet’s right to read his poem to nature, to blooming flowers, to the children who know how to smile – it’s his duty, the duty to remind humans that they are still human. And that at any given moment, at any hour, it’s not too late to become human again.”
 
“The biggest losers are those who hoped for a durable solution and peace. Because that hope has been lost forever,” he quietly adds. There are few here who disagree.
 
That night, while I walk through the streets of Pristina with my colleagues, an audio guide in my ears telling me the history of a war and of a city, explaining who was killed at which bar, and how every death leaves behind a crater of loss in those who are bereft, I am joined by Kateryna. “You know how I told you that I learned the good and bad things about myself? Well, one of the good things is certainly that every now and then I realise how much love is around me. That feeling can fill me up completely. And I have an endless hunger to collaborate. But at the same time, I feel empty, like I’m standing at the edge of a huge abyss. Empty. Like a gaping hole.”