Palestinian actors bring real stories to Portugal

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A group of young Palestinians are leaving the West Bank for the first time and arriving in Portugal this week to perform a show based on real stories of violence and death in the Jenin Refugee Camp, under Israeli military occupation.

“15, 16 years old — Stories of children who never grow up” is the title of the show, produced by The Freedom Theatre, based in Jenin, in the West Bank, which will tour the stages of four Portuguese cities between the 19th and 27th of this month.

Directed by Mahmoud Aita and performed by Aws Abu Aita, Mohammed Toobasi, Mohammed Abu Alhayjaa, Nadim Lahlouh and Tareq Alhassan, the show is based on stories experienced by the young people themselves in the refugee camp , bearing witness to the transformation of fear, grief and daily violence into collective resistance through theater, said Portuguese director Diana Antunes in an interview with Lusa news agency. She has been following the work of The Freedom Theater since 2018 and this group in particular since 2023.

Over the past two years, the young people "have already performed three different shows, always within this '15, 16-year-old' format, and they're working on stories. Each show always portrays different stories of real situations that happened in the camp ," he explained.

Although The Freedom Theatre is a professional theater company with international experience, this is a group of young students just starting out in theater, and Diana Antunes wanted to bring them on tour to Portugal, mainly to give them "the opportunity to leave Palestine for the first time."

The goal of this project "is to give visibility to the work of the Freedom Theatre, but, above all, to also give the young people and children of Jenin the opportunity to observe a different reality, one that is not about violence, and to give them a little time away from this daily brutality," said the director, in a telephone conversation from the West Bank.

"The Jenin refugee camp is a square kilometer with about 20,000 inhabitants. Since January 2025, the camp has been completely evacuated and occupied by Israeli military forces. Therefore, about 20,000 people were forced to leave, including the group of young actors performing in this play, and since then the camp has been closed. The theater has now been transformed into a military base, and these young people are literally living scattered in family homes or makeshift shelters," he said.

Since 2018, Diana Antunes has been almost permanently in that occupied Palestinian territory, developing an independent documentary about different forms of cultural resistance within the Jenin refugee camp, established in 1953 and which has been the scene of "significant suffering," in the words of the United Nations.

It was in this context that he learned about and became interested in The Freedom Theatre project, which he began to follow between 2018 and 2019, at a time when the camp was going through a fairly calm period, without episodes of violence — although there was still resentment regarding the Israeli army's incursion into the camp in 2002, which resulted in hundreds of deaths and the destruction of 80% of the camp.

Meanwhile, during the COVID-19 pandemic, "Israel closed its borders and for a year significantly intensified attacks on the Jenin refugee camp. They took advantage of the lack of media in the territory to intensify the attacks, and the camp once again created armed resistance to defend itself, and the situation began to escalate significantly," he recalled, noting that 2022 and 2023 were "the most difficult years in terms of deaths" in the camp up to that point.

In October 2023, the director was able to return to Jenin, where she remained permanently until the end of 2024, to make her documentary feature film, during which she followed the rehearsals, the construction of the play and the daily lives of the young people, which allowed her to portray the situation in the camp.

Alongside the documentary, he began producing this tour in Portugal, which also emerged independently, with the main objective now being "to cover the costs of the initiative," already counting on some partners and support, namely from municipalities and theaters that are providing venues and ticket revenue.

"But the goal is also to raise profits, to cover expenses, but to raise profits, to be able to support the group, mainly, because all of them, at the moment, are homeless. [In total] there are six students, but only one of them attends school at the moment, because the others [five who will travel] are living far from Jenin and don't have a car and don't have money for transportation, to attend school."

In December 2024, Diana Antunes left the West Bank, leaving behind a camp plunged into extreme violence “with daily deaths, daily invasions, constant destruction, weekly bombings,” with “the Palestinian Authority’s siege of the camp, at Israel’s behest,” with the mission of overwhelming the armed resistance and taking the camp.

This conflict between Palestinians lasted until January 2025, when “the State of Israel decided to end the mission”: it took “two days to attack, to invade, and then they gave people about half an hour to leave the camp,” and they had to leave everything behind.

Since then, the camp has been closed and entry is prohibited, but every now and then, some of these 20,000 people left with nothing try to enter to retrieve their belongings. Some succeed, others are killed.

“Last week, we had a very sad day, because in the morning someone managed to enter the camp, they didn't see any soldiers, so the word spread and there was a group of people who entered the camp and two 13-year-old children were killed and several people were arrested or attacked,” he reported.

This is part of the reality that the stories on stage will tell, always centered on “ young people between 14 and 17 years old, who are killed by the Israeli occupation, during several raids on the camp ”.

In addition to the Israeli army's invasions, there are those carried out by "special forces," which include groups of Israelis who appear dressed as Palestinians, posing as fruit and food vendors, in a van where they transport, hidden, army members.

"In other words, out of nowhere, we're inside the camp and suddenly we start hearing gunshots and a raid begins. And there are many children, many stories about children who died in these moments. There are also stories of children, for example, who are just walking inside the camp and are killed," he added.

Diana Antunes emphasizes, however, that the version of the show coming to Portugal is not like the previous ones – composed of “shorter testimonies of stories of deaths that happened” – it is rather a play that “portrays an invasion, one of the stories is a longer play, which portrays a night of invasion in the countryside”.

"The truth is that what happens in the West Bank daily, and it really does happen daily, is very violent, and it's not just the Israeli army. Every day, the settlers [Israeli settlers] invade, groups of kids aged 14 to 20, invading villages, invading cities in Palestine, beating people, completely destroying homes, gratuitously. It's a very, very prevalent violence, which unfortunately isn't widely reported, which is why it's important to me, and also urgent, to take this initiative, to bring this group together, to be able to share this story, because it's a somewhat hushed reality."

“15,16 years old” premieres on the 19th at Teatro Miguel Franco, in Leiria, then moves on to O Teatrão, in Coimbra, where it will be shown on the 22nd, and to Clube Fenianos Portuenses, in Porto, on the 23rd, before finishing in Lisbon, with performances at Teatro da Barraca, on the 26th and 27th.