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Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, September-October 2008, pages 58-59 Music & Arts The Peace Café Finds “Stuff Happens”
SEVERAL participants of Washington, DC’s Peace Café traveled to the DC suburb of Olney, MD on July 17 to attend the Olney Theater Center’s production of British playwright David Hare’s “Stuff Happens.” The play’s name was taken from then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s callous response to a reporter’s question about the looting of Baghdad following the U.S. invasion. The play premiered at London’s National Theater in September 2004, and had its American premiere in Los Angeles the following year, opening in New York in 2006. Olney’s production was the first in the DC area. “Stuff Happens” has been described as a docudrama which follows the key players in the Bush administration as destiny—as well as their own agendas—leads them toward a conflict in Iraq. In telling the story, Hare includes public addresses verbatim, as well as the imagined discussions that could have taken place behind closed doors in the Oval Office, hotels and boardrooms. Bringing the two dialogues together sets a realistic historical mood while reminding the audience that the playwright is using creative license. Following the performance, Peace Café co-founder Ari Roth asked five of the actors to meet with the Peace Café group in the moonlight at the Olney Theater Center. One Peace Café participant opened the conversation by stating that the play confronts us with the full implications of what led up to the war with Iraq. The events leading to the war come slowly to a boil, he said, “with us not realizing the full impact. We are like the frog that stays in the pot without reacting.” One cast member said he thought that most Americans were not as well informed as those sitting with him around the table. “There is no draft,” he pointed out, “it’s a war of volunteers. Out of sight, out of mind.” “To understand why the war has failed, you have to understand that it is an occupation,” added a Jewish Peace Café regular. “Just as the majority of the Palestinians view Israel as an occupying power, so do the Iraqis.” She found it interesting that, of all the world players, only then-Secretary of State Colin Powell cared what the rest of the world—and history—thought of America’s actions. The play’s Palestinian character states that she believes the U.S. invaded Iraq in order to protect its “three-billion-dollar-a-year colony in the Middle East.” A Jewish Peace Café member expressed amazement that the Palestinian character was so “myopic and short sighted” as to believe that America went to war with Iraq simply for Israel’s sake. Another pointed out that it is not only Palestinians who feel this way. This reporter asked if anyone in the cast had heard gasps when the actress portraying the Palestinian women spoke the line, “‘We [the Palestinians] are the Jews of the Jews.” The actors nodded their heads in response, and one replied, “At the beginning we got a lot of sour faces, and many walked out.” But once word of mouth got out, he added, those who understood the play’s message began to fill the theater. —Jamal Najjab |
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