UTAH, Feb. 17, 2024 (Gephardt Daily) — Will Richardson wasn’t especially looking for his next theater project. But a Facebook friend posted late last year about a series of monologues, and the actor/director couldn’t stop thinking about them.
“The Gaza Monologues” was written in 2010 by 13- to 18-year-olds who were shell shocked from a military action against Gaza. They had survived the war, but found it still waging in their heads. Was it safe to open up and move forward? Safer to suppress their emotions and dreams? Were their futures any more stable than the bombed out buildings around them?
It’s been nearly 14 years since those Palestinian children wrote “The Gaza Monologues,” curated by the Ashtar Theatre in Ramallah, Palestine.
And Richardson, as he read about “The Gaza Monologues,” couldn’t help noticing how many things haven’t changed.
“I just was reading through the monologues, and the best word I can come up with to describe the feeling is ‘haunting,'” Richardson told Gephardt Daily. “Their stories were the same kind of stuff that we’ve been hearing about these last few months.”
So Richardson and 35 of his closest actor and artist friends, most with Utah ties, will be releasing an online reading of the monologues, with the original pieces and a few newer. The production, with some editing, will be posted at 6 p.m. Monday, President’s Day, for people to view for free on the YouTube channel of In The Now Productions, Richardson’s theater company. Donations to the Ashtar Theatre are welcome, and help fund the ongoing therapeutic youth theater in Palestine.
Richardson can’t help but compare his theater journey to that of the children.
“When I was growing up, I knew that I wanted to be an actor and I wanted to be in theater,” he said. “And then I went and did that. I mean, I was broke a lot, but I needed that to happen, and I made that dream a reality.”
Several of the Gaza children wanted to become actors as well, Richardson said.
“Some of them wanted to be actors or work with children or be relief workers. Some wanted to travel the world and do all this stuff. Some of them only wanted to be free and safe and live like other kids did.
“But we don’t even know if some of the kids are still alive. We don’t know their status now, since the bombings. And to me, that’s what really resonates, is just hearing about their dreams and wishes, and they just saying they wanted to be like the other children of the world. You know?”
Islamophobia is older than this war, older than the terrorist bombings on Sept. 11, 2001, and predates the Crusades, at least.
Richardson said there’s no question that terrorism kills. His question is why so many people support killing non-terrorists.
“Nothing justifies the collective punishment of these hundreds of thousands of people,” he said. “The media keeps showing it’s an Israel-Hamas war, but then how many tens of thousands of civilians have been killed. Collective punishment is a war crime, and we continue to send billions of dollars, bypassing Congress and the democratic process, and saying we love it here in America while we continue these atrocities.”
Richardson hopes that whatever beliefs that theater audience may go in with, they will at least take time to listen to the children speaking their truths.
“I think any kind of peace or understanding is going to come out of being able to listen to the stories of people we may not be used to listening to,” he said. “But when we just make our minds up about people without listening, that’s the first step to dehumanization. We need to see each other as humans.”
