Bethlehem Calling creative team appeals to Home Office to reconsider its rejection of visa applications by Palestinian performers

An international collaboration between Scottish and Palestinian musicians and theatre-makers may need to be staged without key Palestinian performers after three visa applications were rejected by the Home Office earlier this week.

Bethlehem Calling – at Tramway, Glasgow, on 25 January as part of Celtic Connections – explores the devastating impact of war on young people through diaries written by teenage girls growing up in the West Bank of Palestine during the second Intifada (2000-2005), alongside present-day testimony from current students, two decades on. The show is set to feature 16 performers on stage: nine from Palestine and seven from Scotland.

The show’s creative team includes Palestinian actors plus members of the Palestinian Arab Orthodox Scout pipers of Beit Jala, whose connection to Scotland dates back to the group’s formation in 1924 when they were taught how to play Scottish pipes by Scots Guards. However, at least three Palestinian performers will now be unable to travel to Scotland after having visa applications rejected.

The Bethlehem Calling creative team have issued the following statement in response to the Home Office’s decision …

“We learned this week that three of our Palestinian performers have had their UK visa applications rejected. We are now concerned that more rejections will follow and urge the Home Office to reconsider. This is a high profile and hugely positive cultural exchange supported by Creative Scotland and Celtic Connections, bringing together a diverse group of theatre-makers and musicians from Palestine and Scotland at a time when it feels more important than ever to support Palestinian artists and amplify their voices and stories. While the show will very much go on as planned, we are disappointed that an ambitious and timely collaboration between Palestinian and Scottish artists has been impacted by decisions that seem frustratingly harsh.”

The Beit Jala pipers’ unique sound and style draws from both the music of the region and from Scotland, to create something uniquely Palestinian and new to most Scottish audiences. Bethlehem Calling producer Zoë Hunter said: “The project has the ethos of Celtic Connections at its heart, providing a rich learning opportunity for all the musicians and actors, drawing on the diaspora of traditional and modern Scottish/Palestinian music and sounds and exploring how this has changed over time across oceans through a collaborative new composition and final performance.”

Bethlehem Calling’s creative team includes musician Paul Thomson (formerly of Franz Ferdinand); Ben Harrison of Grid Iron; acclaimed international director Raeda Ghazaleh; theatre maker Zoë Hunter; audio visual designer Dav Bernard, in addition to the Palestinian Arab Orthodox Scout pipers of Beit Jala. In total, around 40 people are involved in the project.

In 2000, a group of Palestinian teenagers living in Bethlehem were asked to record their experiences by their English teacher, Suzy Atallah, at The Terra Sancta School for Girls Sisters of St Joseph. The diaries the girls wrote are a vivid and remarkable historical document, mixing everyday observations about teenage friendship and Backstreet Boys fandom with accounts of homes being destroyed and family members being killed.

Raeda Ghazaleh worked with the girls to put their diaries on stage in 2002. Later, she took the girls’ writing to be performed as a verbatim theatre piece on stage in London. The Bethlehem Diaries was staged by Ghazaleh as a reading at the Royal Court Theatre and then as a production in the London International Festival of Theatre (LIFT) with four different international actresses including current collaborator Zoë Hunter.

In winter 2023, Zoë Hunter reconnected with Raeda Ghazaleh with the aim of revisiting and updating the project, working with a team of musicians to bring the diaries back to the stage and adding leading Scottish theatre director Ben Harrison who has previously worked in Palestine. “Lots of arts organisations are not touching anything Palestinian because they’re worried about being criticised for it,” explains Hunter. “But the music industry has been doing fundraisers and speaking out and is not afraid to call out the obvious. I thought, why not do something that mixes these young women’s testimony with something that’s musical?”

Bethlehem Calling will incorporate verbatim performance into a music gig to tell of the first-hand experiences of teenage Palestinian girls navigating life during the Second Intifada (2000-2005) and also life in Bethlehem for young people right now. The music is being created by Paul Thomson and some of Scotland’s finest emerging musicians, Lewis Cook (Free Love), Chizu Anucha, and Firas Khnaisser. Far from being a concert with verbatim theatre tagged on, Bethlehem Calling promises a polyphony of musical and theatrical artistic exchange embodying the recent life stories of young Palestinian women. The result is a giant international jigsaw puzzle with the creative leads, actors and musicians based in Scotland, Ireland and Palestine all working remotely on their various parts before coming together to piece the puzzle together for the performance on 25 January at Tramway.

Bethlehem Calling is a project driven by hope, connection, and solidarity. The hope is that it will be the start of a journey of international collaboration for these talented young artists, and that they can continue making work together in the future.

GIGnotes :: Bethlehem Calling, Tramway 1, Glasgow, 7.30 pm, 25 January 2025. (Part of the Celtic Connections festival). Tickets @
https://www.celticconnections.com/event/1/bethlehem-calling-an-evening-of-stories-music-and-pipers-from-palestine/

~~~~~~~~~~~

We are delighted to have the Scottish Music Centre as a sponsor of the
MUSIC NEWS Scotland ‘Latest News’ Blog – please click on the link to view their website and see the vast array of services they can offer Scottish musicians –
http://www.scottishmusiccentre.com