Artist-Led Citizen Journalism at the Frontlines

Ash Marinaccio: Hey friends, it’s Ash, your host for the Nonfiction Theatre Forum podcast produced for HowlRound, a free and open platform for theatremakers worldwide. The Nonfiction Theatre Forum brings together artists, documentarians, journalists, scholars, and theatremakers to explore the wide world of nonfiction performance, from documentary and autobiographical work to ethnographic, verbatim, and tribunal theatre, and everything in between. Together, we’ll dive into how these forms intersect with community, collaboration, ethics, staging, and more. On this episode, I’m joined by Zoe Lafferty, a director, theatremaker, writer, and creative producer whose practice intersects with activism, civil disobedience, politics, and community organizing. 

She collaborates with some of the world’s most radical theatremakers. Together they use culture to fight for social and political change, building spaces where complex, radical, and often censored stories can be told. Zoe is the founder of Artists on the Frontline, a creative space for radical artists working at the forefront of social and political change, particularly at the intersection of arts, activism, politics, and community organizing. Their projects bring together agents of change who are challenging the unjust systems we live in and finding ways to disrupt the status quo. Let’s have a listen to one of their projects called Snapshots of Childhood from Jenin Refugee Camp. 

This is [by] Ahmed, who is fourteen years old, in a piece called “To Die and to Not Be Remembered.”

Amir Abularab: [reading To Die and to Not Be Remembered by Ahmed, age fourteen] On the second day of the invasion, me, my father, and my brother had to leave the house as we had to take our relatives to area outside the camp to make sure of their safety. When we left the house and looked around, there were fire and snipers. If they had told any of us were a fighter, they would definitely have killed us on the spot and ended any dream we had. We arrived at an area very close to the camp. It was very dangerous to go through it all. We were worried that we would die. There were tanks, planes, and many drones, but we managed to get our relatives out. At that time, yes, I was afraid. We tried to make jokes so we could release and calm the stress. At these moments, this is something we do as Palestinians: joke and laugh with each other.

Ash: Zoe, I am so excited to talk with you. I have been following your work for years, and it’s such an honor to have you on this podcast and to be—

Zoe Lafferty: Oh, thank you.

Ash: ... here. Can you tell me a little bit about your background and how you became involved in this work? And then we’ll talk about Artists on the Frontline.

Zoe: I think that things really have a domino effect, and for me, I trained at drama school in London as a director, and in general, it was very much Stanislavski and Meyerhold, Shakespeare, Chekhov, in lots of ways, quite traditional arts practices. And I think in many ways it was an excellent training, and at the same time I felt this huge frustration where in many ways I was seeing the things that I had grown up around somehow being replicated. And the arts for me was always going to be like the escape from that, and then suddenly I was like, “Oh, it’s going to be the same type of system.” Anyway, so actually I was in the final year of graduating, and I had an opportunity to assistant direct in New York, and I was maybe a little bit naive because I thought, “Okay, the USA, that’s going to solve all the problems.”

Ash: Oh, no.

Zoe: Yeah, exactly. That’s what the Hollywood movies and the TV programs tell us. I went to assistant direct, and for sure the USA was not going to necessarily take me on a different path or was necessarily different from these systems that I was trying to find a way out of. But within that, I met Juliano Mer-Khamis, who was the founder and artistic director of TheFreedom Theatre in Jenin refugee camp in Palestine, and he was like Che Guevara of theatre, and everything he said blew my mind. And I accidentally bumped into him a few times when he was in New York, and subsequently got up the courage to say, “I want to come to the theatre in Palestine. What do you think?” And he said, “Absolutely come.” And in many ways, that just began a path of really understanding and learning about the way that arts and culture can be used to fight and change the things that you think are wrong or believe in.

And of course, within what he was doing was this idea of culture as a form of resistance, which I think interestingly is now becoming quite a used and accepted term. But back then, if you said “cultural resistance,” people would freak out. It was really pushing what the arts could be and what you could use culture to do, which I still think is the same. But I often think we’re hearing this term “cultural resistance” a lot now, and I think, “is it really resistant?”

Ash: That is a term now that it gets used a lot. Same with “social justice theatre.” It’s become what we call grant language, like 501(c)(3) language, jargon. And you really have to look underneath the surface of what do you mean by this? And also, what systems? Because if you’re still participating in the system, you’re not practicing resistance necessarily.

Zoe: Yeah, exactly. And also, it doesn’t mean that what you do is different. And for sure, for so long we were fighting for that term to be okay, and accepted, and not to freak everyone out. But then suddenly when you see it used all the time you’re like, “Okay, maybe we need to find a new word, a new term to scare everyone.”

Ash: So, how did you start Artists on the Frontline?

Zoe: So that was, to be honest, it was quite a few years later, I would say a decade later. And I had this, I could say my whole adult or working life, these incredible experiences of being able to meet people in different places, countries, cultures, contexts, and learn what they were doing, learn how they were fighting for change, really just all sorts of different places. And maybe it was around 2019 was really getting quite involved in climate activism. And this was in London. It was in the UK. And at the same time, I felt very apprehensive about the ways that that was often taking place within what I would say was within the context that I was in was a very white, middle-class framework of approaching that. And on the one hand, I was like, “Okay, this is amazing,” that this big mobilization and movement of people who maybe you aren’t always seeing so much in activism, and at the same time feeling that a lot of the ways and approaches didn’t fit right.

And actually what happens is I made, with a friend, where we started to make a piece called I Don’t Know What to Do. And in the making of that piece, I came to the conclusion: I do, because I’ve got to be around all of these incredible people from all around the world who have all of these different ways, and methodologies, and experiences in fighting for change. Both now but across the ten years I had met them, but also across decades. And I realized to a certain extent that I had maybe been departmentalizing, and actually when I was thinking about climate crisis, actually anyone fighting for rights in Palestine is a climate activist, is an environmentalist. Because it’s, of course it’s to do with the land. And you could look at that in lots of different ways. And therefore, I wanted to break that within myself but also find a way of having a space that we could work on projects, didn’t get shoved into these boxes, which often will happen maybe in the UK or the West, but break out of that and find those interconnections.

And so, for example, if you’re considering climate crisis, be working with, hearing from people who are doing environmental activism but would never ever label it that but have so many of the most important ideas and ways forward. That’s one part of that. And I also wanted to build a space where we can jump into different formats, be it virtual reality, or citizen journalism, or audio, that in terms of art forms but also where who is an artist is not, again, that very tight box. Because for me, some of the most incredible artists and some of the most powerful uses of culture is maybe from people who are, for example, citizen journalists, or armed resistance fighters, or human rights lawyers. So, I suppose it was a way of having an umbrella to consider all of these things.

Ash: I love it, I love it. It’s so important and necessary. And because this podcast is about nonfiction theatre, and nonfiction art, and documentary theatre, I’ve been really curious about your use of citizen journalists and the connections that you draw between theatre and journalism. If you could talk a little bit about that, because the citizen journalists from Jenin, which followed now for a couple of years, have been some of the only voices. I think, or for a while, some of the only voices that a lot of folks in the US were getting from Palestine from Jenin, from that area. So it’s really important, and I’ve always, I’ve made note that, “Oh, this is like a company that’s doing theatre.” Is there an arts company that’s bringing these voices? Can you tell me more about that part of your work?
 

Zoe: Yeah, I think the most specific example of that is the Mayday project, although I would say different projects will touch around citizen journalism. But firstly, I would say my relationship to journalism is very fraught and complicated. When Juliano was murdered, Juliano Mer-Khamis, the artistic director of the Freedom Theatre, was murdered in 2011, 4 April, it was my first and an incredibly intensive experience both inside of that and also outside of that to media—and how violating, and exploitative, and dangerous it could be. And with the narratives that they came out with who murdered him, which blamed someone in Jenin camp and played off like Islamophobia and racism, and that put in danger the people in the theatre and also could have ruptured the relationship with Jenin camp. Even the people in the theatre are from Jenin camp.

And that happened without evidence, without facts, as they pointed fingers. And at the same time, this hugely traumatic event and how people were violated, and captured in this moment that was so horrifying without a feeling that there was control over what was happening, or consent, and all of these things. That, to me, both on a personal level but on a bigger level, opened up a question both around the role of media and also then the role of theatre, which can do all of those things, especially, let’s say, more documentary, or debate and testimonial. It can do all of the same terrible things that media does. And at the same time, I would not have been able to have gone to certain places without some of these incredible journalists that I got to work with, and who I really have a lot of respect for and risk their own lives. 

Back to citizen journalism—during the Syrian revolution, that was very prevalent and impactful. I met citizen journalists and interviewed them, but also in terms of access to information that was happening there. And mobilization that was a very important way of working.

I went back, and I was writing about that, to be honest, just for myself, just to try and find the lessons of that and learn from that. And then I also did a project where I worked with Veronika Skliarova who’s from Kahrkiv in Ukraine, (who I think you’ll also interview) and she introduced me to citizen journalists in Crimea. And again, I started to see what they were doing, the systems that they were working in, and also under a huge amount of oppression and censorship that actually is very similar to systems of oppression and censorship that Israel does towards Palestinians and, actually, comes a lot from what the British did to Palestinians. So anyway, that was all there. Then, it’s a long answer. What happened is I wasn’t allowed back to Palestine. The Israelis stopped me going back to Palestine. And in July 2023, there was a very bad invasion of Jenin refugee camp.

And to a certain extent, we’d all started to try and figure out or prepare what to do when the Israelis were invading, because they were invading more, and it was getting worse and worse. But this one was really particularly bad. And what I realized is that I was receiving a lot of updates, voice notes, pieces of information from all the artists and colleagues in Jenin camp and Jenin city, who I’d worked with for many years because I was just going, “What’s happening? Are you okay?” Blah, blah, blah. And I realized that in a way I had a very clear, or a very, let’s say, important insight into what was going on in that period of time in those days. And then, I was also looking at the mainstream news and going, “And that’s how they edited, or grabbed one line, or wedged in a thirty-second interview with that artist between two minutes of Netanyahu doing his propaganda bullshit.” And so I thought, “Okay, how can we make all of this insight with the consent, for sure, of everyone into a system?”

And then I was like, “Okay, this is how they did it in Syria. This is how they’re doing it in Crimea. How do we recreate something similar?” And that’s how that Mayday project really came about. And again, that goes—okay, you have the theatre format in one hand, which is from, I’d say, from the beginning of an idea through to the putting it on stage—minimum one year, minimum. And I really believe in that process and not always having to rush in urgency. And at the same time, it was going to be very clear that when invasions were happening in Jenin camp or Jenin in general, it was not making a theatre piece about it, if that was the desire, would be happening much, much further down the line. And so, this became a way of being able to urgently in the moment respond and get that information out.

And we call it artist-led citizen journalism, which sounded very, to be honest, maybe a bit pretentious, but actually it really is just artists reporting or responding to whatever they see to the experiences. And I didn’t really realize it in the moment, or none of us, I think, really considered this or realized this in the moment, but then suddenly we’ve now got two years of records. And that will, I think we will at some point build that into something else.

Ash: I was in Lebanon in 2006. This is when I was an undergrad student. I was studying Arabic and Middle Eastern history at Lebanese American University. They have a SINARC, called the SINARC program, and 2006 was when the war happened. I was on the evacuation ships, and I remember when I got to Cyprus all of CNN was there. Anderson Cooper and Soledad O’Brien, and so many of the characters that Americans see on CNN every day. And I was in a car with a news anchor, I’m not going to drop names. I had a little camera with me, and I was, at that time, especially at that age, I wanted to be a journalist, and I specifically wanted to be a war correspondent.

I remember saying to the journalist that I was with, “Hey, I have all of this footage. I have all of this information.” I had, when I was still in Lebanon, gone back to Beirut to pick up my suitcase because we had to evacuate quickly to the north. So we were on a separate campus in the north, and I had all of my stuff still in Beirut, and there was, I don’t want to say a ceasefire, but there was a moment where they weren’t bombing and we could go back and get our stuff if we wanted to, because we knew that we were going to be leaving the country. I went back, and I was in a cab with someone who was a resident, who was like, “Hey, because you’re American,” and this was at this time this belief that the Americans see what’s going on, then maybe this will stop, “Let me take you to some of these sites that had been bombed, and you can see that they’re using white phosphorus bombs. They’re using weapons that are against the Geneva Convention.” And they were, and it came out years later that yes, this was happening, on the official reports, but we knew this while we were there.

Some of the most incredible artists and some of the most powerful uses of culture is maybe from people who are, for example, citizen journalists, or armed resistance fighters, or human rights lawyers.

So, he took me to sites that had been destroyed and sites that were actively smoking. I took photos and videos, and by the time I met the CNN journalist I was like, “Hey, I have all of this footage. Can you show this? Look, this is happening. They’re using chemical weapons. They’re doing things that are against the Geneva Convention, and you can break this story, and then maybe it’ll stop.” I was twenty-one and kept this belief that this was possible. This is my first and last war correspondent experience, because after that I was like, “No.” But I’ll explain why.

And they looked at me with such pity. I will never forget the look in their eyes from these senior journalists. “Oh yeah, we’re told what we need to report from New York. We’re just here for the background. We don’t actually share news. We are given what we need to report and nobody’s ever going to show what’s really going on.” And they all knew it.

And that was for me, the moment where I thought if I could be an artist, at least I can tell the truth. You can tell the truth as an artist in a way that so much of mainstream journalism is just censored.

Zoe: Yeah, but censored also, as I’ve known it for a long time, but it was so obvious to me, because to be honest it was often when something had maybe happened before, I’d either been there or I would go to Jenin. But this is really the first time I felt I was completely on the outside. And I’m always, to a certain extent, on the outside because I’m not from Jenin and not Palestinian, but I could really feel that. And then feel like or know what I had been told or updated just from a perspective of people kindly letting me know they’re okay or they’re not okay because this is happening. Or I remember with Tobasi, the messages got quite tricky, and it was, “The Internet’s going down. I don’t have electricity, and I don’t know if we’re going to be okay,” kind of thing. And so, I could feel what that felt like.

And then, afterwards, there really was an electricity and the internet. I could see how they had wedged some kind of quote in between their own political agenda, and that seemed so manipulated or unfair. And to be honest, it also for sure sits within a kind of racism and Islamophobia and all of the things that we are fighting and wanting to find an alternative to that. And that feeling of the best people to tell the story are the people who are in the middle of the experience, and are from the place, and know it. That, for me, is always the person I want to go to when I want to learn or understand. And I’ll also be totally honest, it gives me something to do rather than just sit there feeling totally panicked and powerless. And I don’t know how much impact it really has. And I’m not sure you should ever do a project to facilitate your complete anxiety during the moment, but somehow it also gave me something that I could do and respond in the best way I could find with theatre skills and being on the outside.

Ash: I remember sharing the videos, and everybody was sharing the videos, and it was some of the only—as I said before—some of the only voices we were getting from Jenin. 

Zoe: And just to add to that, so the audio and the written texts are from the people I know and work with, but actually often the video footage is coming from the telegram groups. And there’s, let’s say, different groups, maybe some community groups, maybe some just people who have their own telegram channels and are uploading the videos of what’s happening in order that people know within the area, but also for other people outside of that to be sharing. And that is stuff that news channels will not share. It’s a very local, very personalized footage. So it’s often, it depends what the piece is, but often it is also using some of those videos and putting that together also with the audio.

Ash: You touch on the local and the personal, and I think that’s something that is important, especially in this type of storytelling, in nonfiction theatre and documentary theatre. When I teach this to students, I always focus: tell local stories, tell personal stories, tell stories that are important to your community. They’re very tired of hearing me say, “What is important to your community? What represents your community? What is local?” Because I think there is a lot of emphasis in trying to reach the broadest audiences, and that’s often done by being very specific and being local.

Zoe: One hundred percent, and also what the expert knowledge is. Someone who is, it is their lives, it is their fight, it is their experiences and the things that they might have faced both positive and negative are de facto the best person to be speaking about that. And for me, for sure we have it in British theatre, for sure it’s in British media, but we can widen that probably just to say Western in general, it’s this idea that the outsider knows best, or the outsider has a—I don’t even know how the thought is—but rational, or look at the bigger picture. This totally enrages me, and I find it so colonial and imperial and all of those things. I am a person who’s been so lucky to have met people who are not on the outside, who are completely on the inside, and learn through them.

And so, I suppose in whatever project, whether it is theatre, or audio, or citizen journalism, or virtual reality, that’s what I want to try and represent as directly, let’s say, as possible. And at the same time, it’s that push and pull of us going, “But I am often an outsider.” And you want to get yourself out the way and also be an acknowledgement that you are part of the process and that will influence it however much you don’t want to. So, just be honest with yourself with that. I often hear this thing with verbatim data, or I used to hear it a lot. It’s the real words, it’s the true words, and yes, but it’s highly edited. And whoever did that will have influenced that, or it’s directed on a stage. And you go, “If I’m involved and I’m an outsider, that will have an effect.”

Ash: Artists on the Frontline has done a couple of shows that are touring?

Zoe: Oh, we have lots of projects. 

Ash: Well, tell us. Tell us about the projects.

Zoe: I’d have to check to keep my mind. So, first of all, Artists on the Frontline [has a project called And Here I Am], and I think you’ll talk to Tobasi, and that is based on his life, and it is performed by him and came out of a huge process of interviews. But it is also written by a writer, Hassan Abdulrazzak, who—I think it’d be good to talk to Tobasi about what his take on it is—but I would say we both feel very strongly is a 100 percent and Tobasi and Tobasi’s words, and 100 percent a writer’s words and his dramaturgy, and his shaping, and his dialogue. And so, it’s a very interesting coming together of those two people. So, that’s actually been on tour for eight years now. And what else? The Mayday project is ongoing.

I would say that we probably aren’t quite doing as many updates since Jenin refugee camp, everyone was forcibly displaced. And so, it’s not that the situation is not ongoing, but it has changed since it was the end of January, beginning of February 2025. All twenty thousand plus residents were forced out. So, in a way we’re finding the next stages and the new ways of how to speak about the situation. But still, occasionally we are doing updates, because for sure, Jenin is very much still under attack by the Israelis. So, Mayday.

We have In A Thousand Silences, which is a virtual reality film. Again, it’s based on testimonies, and that screening, working with lots of youth and they write brilliant pieces that are about their experiences, but also somehow creative writing.

Ash: Where are the youth from?

Zoe: In this project, Palestine.

Ash: Oh, great.

Zoe: All different places. And there’s various different projects with them. And that comes out of very much, like, a training and the idea starting as an artist by speaking about your personal story, and is something I think embedded in my practice and many of the artists I work with in something when we work with youth, that we are often is the starting point so then they also write lots of pieces that you’ll be able to see online.

There’s another project called Defiance, which is just very simple, but it’s a monthly update from a citizens journalist in Crimea. And so, sometimes the projects are, let’s say, a relatively, I want to say, a small approach, but actually Sia, who’s the journalist, what she is facing and what she is doing is epic. And this is maybe just a tiny way to shed some light on what she’s facing, both in her own battles of censorship, but also the whole Crimea, I don’t know that you can say community, it’s many people. So, that’s another one.

I’m trying to think. We have The Revolution’s Promise, which is testimonies from Palestinian artists. This project’s been ongoing for five years. And that’s very much an invitation to anyone around the world to take those testimonies, and read them and share them with their own communities to talk about the censorship that Palestinian artists are facing. But also in a way through that it’s opened up the basic history of Palestine and various different structures of apartheid, and occupation, and oppression, and cultural genocide, which is of course intertwined with genocide, full stop. So yeah, I don’t know. I think that’s some of them.

Ash: How do you keep them all going? Do you have a staff? How do you make that work?

Zoe: No, no. As Artists on the Frontline, it is project-by-project funded. We have no core funding. Yeah, who knows? I shouldn’t say who knows—that’s the answer. It’s project-by-project funded. And at the same time, I am, and I think we should all be, a believer in paying artists, certainly in the bigger projects. It’s very much like applying for grants because certainly artists on the frontline are vulnerable in every single way, and including needing money, as everyone does, but in particular it’s… you’re being physically displaced or facing big legal battles or all of these things. So in the bigger projects, yes, absolutely applying for funding and all of these things, but then in a project like Mayday, it’s completely voluntary, and each person sends through what they can, when they can, if they want, and then I’ll grab the computer and put it up.

Maybe if we go on to look at that whole archive in a bigger way, then yeah, we need to apply for funds to do that. And then, also trying to navigate on ethical funding.

Ash: That’s a big issue right now for some of the Palestinian theatre companies I’ve collaborated with, talking about ethical funding and getting funding that’s not connected to government ties, funds that are being used essentially to annihilate their communities.

The best people to tell the story are the people who are in the middle of the experience, and are from the place, and know it.

Zoe: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I actually don’t know if we could ever say that there is something called ethical money. And at the same time, for sure there’s very specific boycotts of certain funds from certain places, certain organizations, certain cultural spaces that have crossed lines that are completely unacceptable or unethical, maybe in who they are taking money from, but also maybe in the way that they’ve treated artists or censored artists. I just think it would be a lie to say, “Oh, we only take ethical money.” There’s no such thing; money is unethical. But making sure that it’s in line with those strategies of boycott, divestment, and sanctions and not crossing like those picket lines, let’s say.

Yeah. Oh, that’s what I wanted to say. Also, for me, both as artists on the frontline and as a person, and to be honest, everyone I love to work with, we also, we work in intuition and impulse and, therefore, also within, let’s say, the UK funding structure of trying to core fund an organization, you can never not have a three-year plan. I genuinely, I can sketch out what’s going to happen with the work and the projects for the next three months, but I leave continually time, try and leave time just to deal with a crisis or something that no one expected and therefore wanting to not be tied down to this three-year plan, for sure. Also, trying to think what is coming in terms of all of the awful things that governments, corporations, blah, blah, blah, are all doing and moving towards. And at the same time, for me, we have to be responsive to the world we live in and what’s going on. And therefore, how is it possible to say in three years this is what the year of projects would look like? For me, that’s totally absurd. It’s another form of censorship.

And then, I think the other huge challenge around funding is this, especially let’s say within the UK, which is not really, to be honest, a place I actually work in that much, almost not at all these days, because it is just so heavily censored in every single way. I’d love to, but it’s impossible. Everything gets canceled, or it’s impossible to get visas, or the money gets pulled. But also in the same time, UK, we so reject anything that is international, or we so have such a colonial lens and scope on that, that you can’t really do anything or get funding on a long term if that’s the type of work you’re doing. And at the same time, for me it’s so absurd because, not to state the absolute obvious, you have Britain, I mean, both historically and currently is so deeply involved in all the awful ways in many places in the world.

I actually want to say in all places in the world, but then someone once pointed out to me that that was actually quite narcissistic to think your country is the problem, the catalyst for all world issues. It is for a lot. But so it’s that very bizarre and fractured, in the one sense we can absolutely be a country that is government and corporations are completely implicit in the genocide. Or in Palestine, we’re not even implicit, it is—we are doing that. We did do that as a country. We are doing that. We make money from that; we invented the structure of that settler colonialism and continue to drive it. And at the same time the arts world, it’s, “Oh, but what’s that? That’s not really something to do with us.” And the arts funding. “Oh, but that’s just somewhere else.” It’s “Okay, factually, that’s completely incorrect.” So yeah, it’s its own difficulty to navigate the funding. It is part of the system of obstacles.

Ash: Oh yeah, absolutely. And I think that’s the biggest, one of the biggest obstacles right now in the US. There’s so many. But the funding for the arts is essentially dried up unless you are independently wealthy or connected in some way. And theatre is expensive, and that’s where we’re at right now, is it’s become very expensive to make theatre. Back in my day, which I totally am aging myself, back in the day when I was first starting out as an emerging artist in New York, in my early twenties you could rent a space for five hundred dollars downtown and put on a show, and people would come and you’d break even, and nobody was getting paid, but you’d do it with your friends and it was fun. And that doesn’t exist anymore. All those spaces are closed.

So, we’ve lost all the spaces, it’s now at least five grand for a week, and you’ll never make that back in ticket sales, and you have to apply for a lot of grants. And the grants are giving twelve hundred dollars, so you have to piece things together, and all of the money ends up going to space, and insurance, and rehearsal space. So, it becomes very hard to pay artists. So, the only people who are really able to do it are people who already come from wealth. And so, you have an entire ecosystem of stories being told from perspectives of very privileged people. It is privileged to be able to do this kind of work in many ways. So, that’s something that I think is being navigated all over the place.

Zoe: Yeah, and I think it’s one of the reasons I love theatre, and also it doesn’t make sense to only be doing theatre. And for example, with the virtual reality film In A Thousand Silences, there’s many creative things that I think that virtual reality opened up. For example, just a small example, you now cannot go into Jenin refugee camp. You can if you’re an Israeli or an Israeli soldier, but in general that’s not possible. But we have this film where you can put on the headset, and you can be in Jenin refugee camp. And for me, that’s something incredibly powerful, but not the main point in connection to your thought that I want to make, which is borders were really becoming harder and harder. So in international, so go into Palestine and Palestinians to go out, and often the visa processes were expensive, and difficult, and complicated, and I just wanted to make something that all you need is a headset.

All you need is a headset and your audience can put that on, and they can actually both be in Palestine, but watch and listen to different Palestinian artists and performances, and therefore yeah, ideally to tour a huge production, but if that is not possible for all of the practical obstacles and also the financial obstacles, then this option of a VR headset: Put it on, and you’re still finding that connection. And virtual reality is not cheap to make, but once it’s done it’s really brilliant in how it achieves something that you couldn’t both creatively in a theatre production, but the level of obstacles will stop you. Ironically, what I find quite interesting about that is often when we’re speaking to theatres and being like, “You could have it in your lobby or in your bar, and it’s so easy, it’s so cheap, no excuses.”

And then they’re like, “Yeah, but we’re a theatre. We don’t do virtual reality.” Then you’re trying to break this conservative mindset around art formats, and you’re like, “Oh, wow. We went through everything, everything to make sure a venue can have no excuses.” And then it’s like the conservative arts format, especially in the UK, everything has to be in boxes. Even to be a director and a writer is breaking out a bit too much. I think we’ve moved on from that a little bit.

Ash: But still in the US, with union rules, you’re still not allowed to record performances. I guess some of the Broadway shows do now for the Lincoln Center library. But to record performances, to stream performances, that’s still taboo.

Zoe: Even with the consent of artist? Even if the artists consent?

Ash: Yeah, independent artists do it. But for the commercial theatres, there’s still a lot of taboo around that, even though it’s been proven that that gets more audiences. I think there are ideas that people won’t come to see the theatre.

Zoe: Yeah. And I think it’s interesting because for sure I’m part of a union, and the rights of artists is so important. And actually within that sort of, I know we discussed trying to name this area of theatre always feels uncomfortable somehow, especially, let’s say, within this area of theatre, rights are often very exploited because it’s like for the good or the bigger cause, and it’s okay, but if the rights of the people involved are not being considered, then how is something bigger going to be shifted? Or it’s easier to believe you’re going to shift something so big that it’s intangible. But actually paying someone and respecting their rights in front of you is something actually very real you have to do and therefore somehow weirdly gets sidetracked.

So, I believe in unions, and I believe in the rights of artists, and at the same time it’s that question of who is this for, and how can it make sure that it is advancing and working with arts and the artists rather than becoming another thing that slows down and is an obstacle? And I suppose there’s no big way of solving that if I’m picking things on every level.

Ash: I think we’re at a moment where the landscape is changing, where there’s a lot of the old guard that’s trying to hold on to things, keep things the way it was, and then there’s a need for things to move forward as well. Given our current, in the US, our current administration and political situation, it’s very obvious, it’s very evident that a lot of these old institutions are going to crumble and something else will be able—

Zoe: Will come.

Ash: Will come. Something else will come. I am hopeful that something better will emerge, because a lot of these systems weren’t working. It wasn’t doing what it needed to do.

Zoe: Yeah, exactly. And I think in some ways you are, there is that very, what feels dated, old-fashioned, I don’t know… And at the same time it’s, for me, I don’t think it’s not about an age thing or an ageism thing, because I feel like—I’m not suggesting you’re saying that—but I think that some of the most incredible experiences or the people I’ve learned for are of course the people who’ve been active in shaping where we’re at for decades. But often they aren’t the people who also get to be leading those institutions or buildings, and therefore I think that they certainly have, they know all the ways that we’re going to have to fight and change, and they’ve done it before. Yeah, and I’m not suggesting you’re saying that, but it’s making me think of that. And I’ve had some incredible experiences. I’ve been wedged between very young people and much, much older people, and that feeling of what people of different ages, experiences, and passions, and beliefs all bring to the table.

Ash: I wanted to know, how can folks who are listening to this get involved in Artists on the Frontline?

Zoe: Yeah, sure. So if you go to Artists on the Frontline, we actually have on the website, I think it’s under projects, it says, “Get Involved,” and you can find their projects like The Revolution’s Promise, which are absolutely things that people can pick up and do by themselves. You’ve got also what is a digital archive of different activism that people’s been doing called the Cultural Intifada, and that’s not necessarily our activism, although it is, sometimes we’re connected. But it’s actually just like a million and different examples of what people have done in the last few years around Palestine and ways to inspire what you might want to do, and you can find all the different people who’ve done that and go towards their work. Oh, and it’s got various different things on there. And so yeah, really the website is the way to get those things in more depth. And then for sure, the social media is also a way to really get things in the immediate.

Ash: That’s fantastic, thank you so much for joining me and for being here.

Zoe: Oh, thank you.

Ash: This has been an episode of the Nonfiction Theatre Forum podcast. I’m your host, Ash Marinaccio. This podcast is produced as a contribution to HowlRound Theatre Commons. You can find more episodes of this show and any HowlRound show wherever you find podcasts, including iTunes, Spotify, and non-commercial, open-source apps like Anytime Podcast Player for iPhone or AntennaPod for Android. Be sure to search HowlRound Theatre Commons and subscribe to receive new episodes.

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