Levant X Interviews: Mo’min Swaitat
Mo’min Swaitat, Palestinian Actor and Director, talks to LevantX
Image: Julian Mährlein
LevantX: How did your journey begin? Where did it all start? And what pushed you to do what you do?
Mo’min Swaitat: I was born in Palestine, in a town called Jenin in the north of the occupied West Bank. I was 11 when the Second Intifada (uprising) started, and for young people like me, we had literally no choices.
The only option we had was to face these huge military machines everyday which are still being made to dominate and occupy the people of Palestine. Those machines were sometimes the first things we’d see on our way to school.
Everything was limited for us. But the only thing we could have was our imagination, and our dreams. I always imagined myself being an actor, being on the stage.
In 2006, it was a terrible situation. I was really depressed and wasn’t doing well in school, which was shut about 70% of the time due to the 2000-2005 Intifada. I once came across this advertisement that they were opening an acting school and theatre called the Freedom Theatre… this was the only hope I had during my teenage years.
The theatre was opened by Arna Mer-Khamis (who was an Israeli-Jewish human-rights activist), who used to work with kids in Jenin refugee camp and established a theatre - the Stone Theatre - during the height of the First Intifada. Some of those kids who got involved were my cousins, and I had heard about her work and wanted to get involved but was too young.
Later on her son, Juliano Mer-Khamis, joined her in opening this theatre. He had released a film called Arna’s Children.
[Juliano had released a documentary-film in 2004 he directed with Danniel Danniel called Arna’s Children. The film spoke about the children’s theatre his mother, Arna, had opened in Jenin.]
The film amplified all the work they did with the kids in Jenin. They called it the ‘children’s house’, where they delivered drama therapy through artwork and physical work.
Arna had initially come to Palestine and joined extremist Zionist groups to help expel Bedouins from their villages in the Nakba. Later, she met her husband, Saliba Khamis, who came from a little town next to Nazareth. Arna’s perspective changed completely. She went from being a member of these Jewish Zionist militias to joining the Communist party and helping Palestinians.
LX: So Arna went from being an extreme, right-wing Zionist, to changing her outlook on everything happening… and rather than taking part in crimes against the Palestinians, she came to understanding their struggle and wanted to start helping?
MS: Precisely. And this is why she went onto opening the children’s theatre. Later in 2002 during the Battle of Jenin, the theatre was knocked down by Israeli forces.
[The Battle of Jenin took place in the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank on between 3-11 April, 2002. The Israeli army entered the camp, and other areas under the administration of the Palestinian Authority, during the Second Intifada.]
Juliano was already a very well-known actor in Haifa. I watched his film, Arna’s Children, and I saw two of my cousin actors being killed (a reality Palestinians have faced). I was moved.
After a couple of weeks, I submitted my application to join The Freedom Theatre, which I then joined late 2007. This is how I became involved in theatre.
A picture as part of a fundraising campaign for the Palestinian Forests.
Image: Julian Mährlein
We did a lot of productions, such as an adaptation of the book Animal Farm by George Orwell, on which we put on 80 productions. We did Fragments of Palestine, based on our experiences and memories of the Second Intifada. We also did work based on the German Jewish philosopher Walter Benjamin and our own take on Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.
The years that followed were fun for us, as Palestinian youth, as well as the audience, to have a place to go and watch theatre.
In 2011, Juliano was assassinated outside the theatre. This was a second turning point in my life. Me and my group left Jenin after the killing as we no longer felt safe, and there was no investigation into the crime, neither by the Israelis nor the Palestinians, despite Juliano being quite an influential personality at the time.
LX: It’s clear everything you’ve spoken to me about was very traumatising and led you to where you are today. You’ve lived under occupation, you had dreams of becoming an actor and breaking away from the misery you were living in, and, like you said, the killing of Juliano was a turning point in your life.
It takes me to another part of my question which is what influences you today? How have your experiences helped you evolve your work? What inspires you the most now?
Mo’Min Swaitat in the touring play“I Have met the Enemy and the Enemy is Me”
MS: Working at The Freedom Theatre with Juliano was always a form of resistance. We knew it from the beginning, we were not in a normal situation. This was not a normal acting school like anywhere else in the world. The first group of people who worked at the theatre were all assassinated by the Israelis, so we knew (our work) was going to be very political.
This is what influences me all the way up to till now. My work is always led by things that are personal to me, things that have bothered me in my life and the oppression that Palestinians face. This is where my inspiration comes from.
All my work is drawn around my feelings and memories growing up in Palestine. It’s very difficult to step away from it, because it’s very dark, but at the same time it’s very important that it’s projected and spoken about.
I’m not interested in playing basic roles of cliché characters and scenarios, I’m much more interested in talking about my own stories, my own narrative, my own experiences.
Theatre is a tool to create change, and I strongly believe in it as a means of resistance. Theatre, cinema, visual arts, social media. They’re all tools (we use) to say what we want, so all my work has been around that.
I moved to Palestine five months before the first lockdown to work on a documentary that revolved around Juliano and who he was and got stuck there due to the travel restrictions.
I decided to go into my family archive and sound archive in Jenin and became interested in cassettes and vinyl- I was collecting vinyl before but developed an interest for Palestinian cassettes.
Now, I’m establishing myself as a cross-platform artist which is related to social media and visual arts and sound, so I’m not just an actor on the stage. The lockdown has driven us to do more things rather than just being live performers.
LX: So you’re currently working on digitising your work?
MF: Yeah. Right now I have two collections.
One collection is an Arabic archive of vinyl which I got from an old Palestinian man in Jenin, who used to collect vinyl and has a massive library. He wanted to give his collection to someone that would make it available to a large number of people.
I sat with this man a lot during my stay in Palestine, and we’re currently working on releasing this stuff online.
My second collection is to do with the Palestinian Intifada, whether they’re label releases or field recordings. I’m dealing with over 7,000 physical cassettes of sounds ranging from Palestinian weddings to the anthems of the Intifada.
I’ve been supported by Jerwood Arts here in London to establish myself as a cross-platform artist, and focus on my new career as an archivist and blogger.
It’s an important thing to mention that the reason I’ve been drawn to this new work of sounds and music is because I’m a Palestinian Bedouin.
[Palestinian Bedouins are a people that have historically roamed with livestock and other domesticated animals in the regions that roughly corresponds with areas to the west of the Jordan river.]
Being a Palestinian Bedouin means you are a minority in the wider Palestinian community.
LX: So you’re a minority within a minority, and what makes it even harder is being a minority in a community already oppressed.
MS: Exactly. So we as Bedouins are surrounded by sounds and music, it’s our lifestyle sort of. I grew up around a cousin who played the bamboo flute called “Yarghol” or the metal pipe called the ‘Mijwiz’. Young teenagers playing these instruments professionally.
I grew up going to weddings and was always around my cousins and uncles practising their music all the time, so this is where my passion for music came from. So I wasn’t influenced by Palestinian music in general, it was specifically the Palestinian Bedouin music.
I had already been applying to come and study in London before Juliano was assassinated, in a school which focuses on physical theatre and devising.I then got accepted into this school, LISPA (London International School for Performing Arts) which is now known as arthaus Berlin. This school gave me the ability to search for myself again to realise who I am, as a human, and as a creator, and to ask myself who I wanted to be and where I wanted to be.
For me, it was the first time being outside of Palestine for that long, for three years. I was collaborating with young people who are there for the sake of art. It gave me the ability to express myself in the way I wanted to, not the way I “should” do it because I’m Palestinian.
LX: You found your own path
MF: Yeah. It definitely gave me a whole new way of looking at myself and what I want to produce.
Going through LISPA for three years in London - and spending part of this studying in Berlin - was good for me.
My work has become more important for me now, especially after seeing how difficult it is to do this work, especially as a Palestinian. I have a big challenge here to promote and talk about Palestine.
LX: You find that this is a big challenge but also a big responsibility…
MF: Yes, I find myself with tools to use in this big city, but no venues are ready to open this space up for me. This is very challenging, and a massive obstacle for me.
London venues are very diverse for certain groups but aren’t diverse when it comes to other ethnic communities. This city is so amazing with what they’re producing with art, but have you ever heard of a Palestinian Bedouin exhibition happening here? No.
Even sometimes when I go to job opportunities, I feel happy mentioning that I’m Palestinian… but then I go home and regret doing so, and I think I’m definitely not going to get the job now.
LX: So you feel that your identity creates a problem for you? That’s interesting, because London is very multicultural and very diverse and relatively welcoming to people of different backgrounds. It’s interesting when I hear this, because you’re basically saying it’s not diverse enough and doesn’t represent us (as Palestinians)
MF: No, it is diverse in the sense that when you walk down the street you hear so many different languages, but those aren’t being represented enough in the art scene in London. Compared to the diversity in London, the art scene is still quite narrow and less representative of people from different backgrounds.
LX: So you don’t see that London offers the best environment for Palestinian artists.
MF: No. Also, whenever (the work) comes to the Palestinian issue, it is always directed by a white person. The Palestinians have never been given the chance to speak about themselves, whether on stage or in film. Some non-Palestinians visit Palestine once and think they can confidently speak about it.
Even the Palestinian filmmakers who create films on Palestine have not lived there.
It’s frustrating seeing all these big budget films being made on Palestine that touch only on one topic, to do with the big walls and the checkpoints. We Palestinians who live in Palestine do not talk about these things in our everyday lives.
I don’t wake up in the morning everyday and act surprised that there’s a new checkpoint…
LX: You feel these things have become a part of your daily life; you don’t feel it’s necessary to talk about them all the time because you’ve become so used to it.
MF: This is one side to it, but I also have my own stories. The Palestinian youth are so creative. If you gave a young filmmaker a project to work on in Palestine, they’re not going to speak about the walls and the checkpoints.
“We have a beautiful culture, beautiful landscape.”
All of these things have made it difficult for a Palestinian artist living in London. And when you go to an exhibition on Palestine, you find that it’s very basic.
LX: As a non-Palestinian, the first thing that comes to mind when I hear Palestine are the checkpoints and big walls that separate parts of the country and the soldiers patrolling the streets holding guns. But what you’re trying to do is show people more than that.
MF: Of course. Any military colonisation consists of that. But that doesn’t mean this is our identity as Palestinians, that this is all we are. Our identity is much more colourful than just a wall and a checkpoint and Hamas and Fatah and Islamic Jihad. We existed, as an identity, before all these things existed.
It’s good that people are understanding (the occupation), but this is not my story.
LX: You want to take people away from just focusing on the politics and these groups that want to represent and speak in the name of the Palestinians. You’re trying to tell people that our reality is more than this, that you have a rich identity and history and culture, and (people need to) stop focusing on the politics but to look at other things as well.
MF: Yes. It’s even rare to find a Palestinian poet who doesn’t talk about the politics and what’s happened in Palestine and the Levant in general. All these songs that come out from Palestine, they all speak about borders and suffering and difficulty of movement. This should be spoken about, but it’s not everything.
We have a beautiful culture, beautiful landscape.
I’m releasing a short film now called Stones in Hand which I filmed earlier this year. I speak about an experience I had with my uncle who kicked me out of his house- something more personal and not political.
LX: So your new film focuses on a different aspect of your life growing up in Palestine.
MF: Yeah, and it’s got so many different layers to it. It has a little bit of the Bedouin culture for example.
All of these beautiful elements, I want to see more of this on the stage and on the screen. This is who I am, this is my identity. I don’t define myself only as a Palestinian who lived under a heavy military presence. This is a narrative to be shared and spoken about between Palestinians and non-Palestinians alike.
I just want to celebrate my culture, and whoever wants to see it is welcome to.
[Mo’min is crowdfunding for a community park in Jenin, consider supporting this amazing work!]