Tearing Down the Wall

After a breathless, rampaging two-hour set regaling another sell-out crowd with tales from his 723km walk along the wall separating Israel and the Palestinian West Bank, an exhausted Mark Thomas sinks into a chair at the Bongo Club, a well-earned whisky dangling by his side. I’ve just informed him that his show, Extreme Rambling (Walking the Wall), is the first ever comedy show to be shortlisted for the coveted Amnesty International Freedom of Expression Award, and he’s chuckling at a certain irony. Back in 1999, Thomas was given a special "commendation" from Amnesty for his comedy TV show, the Mark Thomas Comedy Product, where he posed as a media advisor at an arms fair and was able to coax a number of Indonesian generals into extraordinary admissions of torture in East Timor. He recalls: “When I was getting the commendation the guy from Amnesty said ‘we don’t give awards to comics, but if we did…'"

Certainly since its inception (in 2001), Amnesty’s Freedom of Expression Award (FoE) has followed this mantra. The aim of the award is to reward Fringe productions that build an understanding of human rights, and the assumption that has always followed is that comedy lacks the ability to fulfil this remit with the same aesthetic power as theatre. But this year Thomas has changed all that.

Having spent nine weeks zigzagging between Palestinian and Israeli communities on either side of the wall, his show is a very clear narrative of the journey, and in particular brings to life the people he encountered with an almost ethnographic attention to detail. Some of these characters are deeply comic, such as the protesting mime artist who stays in character even when bombarded with tear gas, or the Zionist estate agent who dreams of expanding Israel’s borders as far as Iraq. But, in truth, most of the show barely resembles standup. Instead it is simple, compelling storytelling, which eventually reaches the central conclusion that the West Bank wall is unsustainable not for political reasons, but on the basis of human rights. “This is about a wall taking people’s land, an object as a mode of oppression. The fact that you have restrictions on freedom of movement, that’s a rights issue. The fact that this is forcing people into penury is a human rights issue. For me the whole show is about human rights.”

Although Thomas has never hidden his resolute left-wing politics, what is perhaps most surprising and powerful about the show is the absence of rhetoric and political hectoring. Yes, Thomas may ultimately focus on the oppression of Palestinian communities, but he does so from a point of empirical authority based on months of observational research. Indeed, this same insight also allows him to uncover some of the complexities that make the conflict so inscrutable – from Palestinian gang masters who exploit Palestinians seeking work in Israel, to the Israelis that work against the West Bank settlers and vehemently oppose the Israeli right-wing. “The most important thing I want to get across is that there’s not two sides to the debate, there’s just a whole load of sides,” he says. “It’s not about flag-waving, it’s not about left and right, it’s about justice.”    

Thomas is also keen to talk about the role of comedy in exploring areas of conflict and human rights. He says he’s flattered to be the first comic on the FoE shortlist, but hints that cultural snobbery, rather than artistic ability, may be to blame for comedy’s absence in the past. He’s certainly quick to point out that he is not the first comic to imaginatively probe issues of prejudice, injustice and human rights. In particular, he recalls the extraordinary storytelling powers of the late godfather of alternative comedy, Dave Allen.

“Dave Allen was just a genius. I remember he once told this amazing joke while he was recording a live show for London Weekend Television. Forgive the terrible accent, but he went, ‘I tell Irish jokes, I get into a lot of trouble for telling Irish jokes. But sod it, you’ve got to be able to laugh at yourself, don’t you agree?’ Big round of applause. ‘So I’ll tell an Irish joke…two Paddies leave Dublin and go to work in London…and the IQ of Dublin halves overnight’. Big laugh. ‘They get to London and the IQ doubles’. Deathly silence. ‘Now, I thought we agreed that you have to be able to laugh at yourselves’. And it was brilliant; he caught their prejudice squarely on the chin. And actually comedy’s got the ability to do that.

"It’s the same when we talk about Israel and Palestine. You have to see beyond the tribalism, and comedy gives you the chance to play around with those ideas - to play around with prejudice and bigotry, to capture human foibles and stupidity. And for me that’s really important.”

The Amnesty Nominees...

In addition to Thomas's Walking the Wall, three other performances have been shortlisted for Amnesty's Freedom of Expression award. Here's a brief rundown

Sold

Pleasance Courtyard, 3–29 Aug, 11:10am, £8–£9

Award-winning director Catherine Alexander's new show confronts the issue of human trafficking with an uncompromisingly brutal sense of urgency. Covering the many manifestations of what the show describes as “modern day slavery”—from forced labour and domestic servitude to prostitution—Sold explores the horror of trafficking through the eyes of the victims.

Mixing starkly-realised drama with input from activists and charity workers, the stories woven together in Sold are based on interviews carried out with victims of sex trafficking. With a cast of graduates from the prestigious Central School of Speech & Drama, these stories of abuse at the hands of traffickers are depicted with harrowing realism.

Alexander worked closely with a number of activist organisations to develop the script, including the Poppy Project and the Human Trafficking Foundation – whose chairman, former Conservative MP Anthony Steen, appears in the play as a narrator portrayed by Peter Randall. [Marcus Kernohan]

The Wheel

Traverse Theatre, 6–28 Aug (not 8, 15, 22), times vary, £17–£19

The Wheel, the latest piece from playwright Zinnie Harris and produced in collaboration with the National Theatre of Scotland, is a dark exploration of the horrors of war and the impact violence has on ordinary people and everyday life. 

Opening amid a Franco-Spanish conflict from a pre-industrial age, The Wheel follows one peasant girl and a rag-tag collection of young children as they chase across a series of devastated landscapes. As they travel, each new group of soldiers they encounter are echoes from different and distant eras: peasants with pitchforks, scarred veterans of the Somme’s trenches, Nazi uniforms and Vietnam-era American GIs. Although times might change, Harris is saying, human nature remains violently the same.

With its depictions of torture, murder and an underlying message that violent societies breed violent people, The Wheel is a haunting production that stays lodged in the mind long after leaving the theatre. [Ben Judge]

Release

Pleasance Dome, 3–29 Aug (not 17, 24), 2:00pm, £10-£11

Created after 18 months of interviews with ex-offenders, probation officers and hostel managers, Release follows three ex-inmates as they negotiate life after prison.

Fusing powerful physical theatre with imaginative set design, the play skilfully avoids political point-scoring and instead delves into the minutiae of life on the outside. Each character is first carefully constructed, and then followed through the mundane struggles of finding employment, starting a relationship and reconnecting with family.

This rocky, complex process of adaptation is carefully observed, and an astute script captures in particular the struggle prisoners face when revealing their past life to new friends and partners. All three actors shine, but Paul Tinto is the standout performer as the eager, likeable, but ultimately damaged, Kyle. [Sam Friedman]