Dreaming of Shakespeare in Palestine

In September 2011, I travelled to the Palestinian Occupied Territories to participate in an internship with the Al Kasaba Theatre in Ramallah. As part of my internship I was invited to attend rehearsals of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" with students of the Drama Academy Ramallah. Directed by Samer Al-Saber, with movement and choreography by Petra Barghouthi, the production premiered as a work in progress in Palestine before touring to Essen, Germany, where it was presented as part of an Intercultural Shakespeare Festival organised by Folkwang University. In this paper, I draw on post-colonial theory to offer some observations about the various strategies of syncretisation that the production seemed to employ in order to localise, indigenise or "Palestinian-ise" Shakespeare's text. My analysis will attempt to illuminate some of the Palestinian cultural specificity introduced by the syncretic approach as well as offer some assessment of the potential and unintended impact that this approach might have engendered.