*7.3. "I Spy a Kind of Hope": A*ff*ective "Therapy"*

This leads us to the principal goal of "drama therapy", and how these child actors illustrate some of its benefits. In what follows, based on Brook's threefold sense and structure of theatrical action as potentially "religious" moments, I will propose what I take to be at least two signs of hope with three tentative and yet adequately clear lessons.

For Brook, recall, theatrical action can accomplish on occasion "temporary glimpses" that momentarily offer a radical shift in horizon between audiences and performers. In this moment, he suggests, a "healing process" is involved. Not only are such moments "salutary", in the holistic sense, they also become communal specifically between performers and audiences. With respect to this performance, conceivably, this climatic scene might provide a basis for the kind of momentary "reintegration" that Peter Brook has observed. By this, he refers simply to an occasion when this dramatic form furnishes a story and eventuates a performance with the audience "by the end of which everybody in it has actually, for a short time, experienced and *tasted* unity".<sup>69</sup> Peter Brook is not naïve, as he acknowledged, soon thereafter performers and audiences alike return to a "society which re-fragments itself immediately". In the case of Syria, whether concerning internally displaced and besieged Syrians or those who are refugees, this reality is current and real. As Brook presupposes, something of this "reintegration" might still remain after the fact.

First, most obviously, the adaptation offers a radically different horizon for the performers and the audiences. Consider Juliet, for example. When she interrupts the narrator, she initiates a complete reversal of the actions that catapult the original play toward its tragic conclusion. In a meaningful way, rebuking the narrator's claim, her outburst revises the original text of the play. If we turn toward the scene as it develops in the original version, we find Juliet seeking consolation from the friar, as she exclaims, "O, shut the door, and when thou hast done so, come weep with me—past hope, past care, past help!" (4.i.43–5). In reply to such despair, Shakespeare's Friar Laurence offers his "remedy":

Hold, daughter. I do spy a kind of hope, which craves as desperate an execution as that is desperate which we would prevent. If, rather than to marry County Paris, Thou has the strength of will to slay thyself. (4.i.68–72)

In the revised version, Bulbul's Homs-based narrator paraphrases this exchange, implicating "Father Frans" in this stratagem to deceive Paris and Juliet's family: "His great idea was to give Juliet a bottle of sleeping potion that would make it seem as if she was dead". In the statement that follows, Juliet implicates the narrator as either a liar or an immodest judge of intention. At any rate, subsequently, the actors submit a declarative challenge: "Enough blood! Enough killing! Why are you killing us? We want to live like the rest of the world!" For the performers and audience in Homs, the connection to the audience outside the boundaries of Syria offers a moment that restores hope: their voices might be heard. In reply to this call, the performers in Amman echo this refusal of suicide, blood, and suffering.

<sup>69</sup> (Brook 1979, pp. 50–51). Emphasis my own.

Second, at the same time, this moment may suggest the belief that through theatrical actions these children have become transfigured. In *Christ the Liberator*, with reference to resurrection appearances in the Gospel narratives, Sobrino proposes, "there is no adequate language in which to formulate the reality of this event and experience of it". This poses a specifically hermeneutical problem with respect to a "language barrier". Still, based on the New Testament, he notices a plurality of basic linguistic models: life, exaltation, and awakening. Let me briefly exposit. "The *language of life*", he claims, "has the advantages of showing that death and denial do not have the last word in history, which belongs to affirmation and life, particularly when Jesus is said not only to live but to live 'always' (Heb7:24)".<sup>70</sup> In a similar sense, conceivably, this might resonate with the collective declaration of the eight performers who shouted across the divide.

In a related sense, specific theatrical activities that led to this "salutary" moment might be more plentiful than can be observed. Still, Ibrahim, Bulbul's Romeo, may suffice as an illustration. At an earlier moment in the play, as Romeo, Ibrahim tosses aside his crutch in order to play-act with his other crutch. For him and the audiences, it offers an instructive scene of resilience. In the revised script, due to circumstances, Father Frans initially discourages Romeo from seeking marriage with Juliet; however, Romeo persists. In the Homs video-feed, through dialogue, Father Frans comes to accept and envision how the marriage can bring the Capulets and Montagues together. To close that scene, Romeo abandons his crutches and hops the stage, while expressing his gratitude to the priest. Given an allowance to play, experiment, and create through drama therapy, as actors, these children are invited to temporarily "inhabit" a different world. As a mediating approach, the practice of drama therapy seems to draw focus toward capabilities and hope, instead of impairment and despair. In other words, these children who are separated by the war are no longer identified in terms of victimhood but instead as actors. This may be the more enduring contribution of this short-lived adaptation.

Still, by witnessing this case, there are some clear lessons. If audiences take the performances of these war-affected children seriously, as with any devastating or tragic event, they may never be the same again. As for the performers themselves, through theatrical actions, they seem to inhabit for a defined period and in a demarcated after theatrical drama they may never be the same again. And yet if we look seriously at the performance of these war-affected children, we might find examples, all of whom decline temptations toward hopelessness and discover new creative capabilities.

As for Frans van der Lugt, in a sense, the performance "awakens" this figure. As if temporarily resurrected, the performance makes us look back and may even refers Christians and Muslims to the historical life of Jesus. In 2019, the Society of Jesus has postulated his cause for beatification, an initial ecclesiastical step toward canonization. After nine intense years of violence, Syria remains divided and fragmented, and yet Syrians wherever and however they gather may identify special significance to his name and memory. If the performance lends any indication, the play shows that van der Lugt might be part of a foundation upon which unity could be built in Syria, whether that is inside the national boundaries or beyond. Giving refuge to Christians and Muslims, he practiced hospitality despite extreme circumstances. For Christians and Muslims, who are outsiders, this extraordinary example may shed light on lessons for cultivating empathy, exercising mercy, and ordinary acts of affirmation.

Finally, from a Catholic perspective, this performance seems to present a hermeneutical principle analogous to one that Sobrino contributes from his Salvadoran context, namely, the "difficult" nature and "survival" character of hope. On the difficulty of such hope, he suggests, "it requires us to make the hope of victims, and with it their situation, our own".<sup>71</sup> For Bulbul and his troupe of players are based in Amman and Homs, however, the emphasis is less on victimhood than it is on survival. Still, drawing on *Romeo and Juliet*, an inspired figure, and their own resilience, their performance indicate that hope is ultimately rooted in love.

<sup>70</sup> (Sobrino 2001, p. 20).

<sup>71</sup> (Sobrino 2001, p. 45).
