power of acting

there was a documentary on german television this night. It was about a hebrew woman that married a palastinian man. She built a house for children in Dschenin, a refugee camp that is well known of the media.

The documentary was shot by her son, who was teaching theatre in this house. He recorded material when he started a group with the local schoolchildren. He spent 7 years with them. I do not remember why, but the jewish family left Dschenin and the mother died.

When he returned Dschenin was still a war torn place, just like in the time he started the project, but something changed. The kids of the theatre group had grown up - but when he arrived almost all of them were dead and when he left a few weeks later even the last one was killed in combat. Two of them did launch a suicide attack in Israel and killed four women.

The theatre teacher fought another fight long before. A fight for life. I saw these recordings of the boys acting. And I recognized this akward but brave behaviour when children try to be someone else, when they are acting.
I remember my students in Thailand. When I did invite them on stage, how some of them started to move and to make up a new world. It is like dreaming. It is amazing.

I saw all this amazement and this joy in those palastinian children's eyes. And when the teacher went back to the refugee camp Dschenin and showed the rest of the group a video tape of the performance, one says: "If we were still acting together, what joy we had. Look at us, we did laugh alot."

If we were still acting together ... and if my friend did not die in a suicide attack. Last week my friend Jan did ask me, how I wanted to change the people in the world. But I look at those boys that killed themselves and four women and I know that we do not need to change.
I see it when I look at them trying to be someone else. When they are in this play and as they are watching themselves. They have a good heart and they are martyr for a bad ideology.

There is both. Every actor knows how many things are hidden in our souls. It is not easy. But we have to accept it, that we do bad things although we are good. But I believe that there is no bad man or woman created by God.

Stop judging.