Yousef Sweid is, by disposition, no radical. Affable and prone to laughter, the Israeli-Palestinian actor first came to Berlin with his “first ex-wife”, the director Yael Ronen, to raise their family beyond the increasing acrimony of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s second term.
While he has made political theatre at the Maxim Gorki Theatre with Ronen – The Situation and Third Generation-Next Generation, which engaged the strife in Israel-Palestine – he’s also been appearing more often on television with Woman of the Dead or Munich Games. Now, he has turned his life story into theatre as the cheekily titled Between the River and the Sea, under the direction of his best friend and Gorki veteran Isabella Sedlak.
At turns reflective and comedic, Sweid’s autobiographical monologue seeks to generate a more nuanced conversation in Berlin and beyond about Israel-Palestine. One of the first non-Jewish and non-German voices to have a stage to consider “the situation” since October 7, 2023 – certainly at the Gorki Theatre – Sweid approaches Studio Я insisting on theatre not as politics but as personal encounter. He’s performing his life, and through it, hoping people might be able to get a feel of a world beyond inflammatory headlines.
This is a really personal piece for you; was there a specific moment that prompted writing it?
There were two. One, I was invited to Geneva to a concert for the hostages and for peace. There was also a group of Palestinian women for peace. I liked that it was mixed, with these two causes. They reached out for me to read some poems. And I said, listen, I want to tell a little bit of my story, and in a funny way, because I know everything is tragic. I want to do something that is lighter and gives some hope. So I did a five-minute monologue of my life, about my mixed – not identity, but [about] marrying a Jewish woman and having mixed kids.
And while doing that, my son came home from school [in Berlin] – he’s 15 – and he told me, ‘Wow, the war is happening and October 7th and a lot of horrible things are happening and nobody’s talking to us at school. Everybody’s talking about it, but at school, nobody.’ And he is not interested in his mixed identity. He doesn’t give a damn.
But for the first time, he was interested in understanding what’s going on in his homeland. I said, ‘That’s not okay, that they don’t talk about it.’ And then I thought well, who will talk to you about it? I don’t trust anyone. Anyone who’s from here, I don’t trust them to talk. And if anyone from [Israel or Palestine] is pro-Palestinian or pro-Israeli, I don’t trust them either. So I had this idea – maybe I should talk, because I’m living in between those worlds my whole life. And I thought, I did those five minutes, which people liked, and maybe I should make it wider. And that’s where the idea came from.
I knew that the Maxim Gorki Theater had an issue back then [with the deplatforming of Palestinian voices], and I worked there for a long time. My first ex-wife, Yael Ronen, worked there and we did some projects about peace: Third Generation, The Situation. So I felt that it’s the right place to continue working on this. They know me. And immediately Shermin [Langhoff, Gorki’s intendant] said, ‘I don’t know what I can give you, but we have a spot here in the studio. I would love it if you take it.’ And I took it.
I told her, listen, my aim is not to keep it in the theatre. I want to take it out. I want to go to my son’s school and to do it, I want to go to institutions. I want to go wherever in Europe, to give some idea about the complexity in our homeland.
What makes theatre the right form for this kind of outreach?
When you see your enemy as a monster… you don’t look inside
I’m not going to tell you what you should do. I’m just going to come and tell my story, because I think for a long time I didn’t say anything. I didn’t post anything on Instagram. A part of it is because I was scared. But now, after waiting for so long, I feel that the only thing I could tell is my own story.
I did some of it already. For example, in The Situation I tell parts of my story – like why my son doesn’t speak Arabic, or what I am doing in Berlin and why I didn’t stay in Israel. And in Third Generation, I say how I would like to struggle, how I would wish us – let’s say Palestinians – to struggle. I hate it that we’re always the victims. Of course, Palestinians are victims. But at the same time, it’s enough.
People don’t like, even as an actor, when you only play the victim. People don’t feel sorry for you. In this [new] play I want to have only my story, and not another, because I have a lot of things to say – but in a humble way. I don’t feel expert enough to tell you that I know all the truth. I don’t know the whole truth – I know my truth. I know how I lived.
The piece uses humour as well as sincerity. Why approach such a heavy topic with comedy?
I learned this very much from Yael Ronen. I love this trick. If you invite me to a play and I know it’s going to be depressing, I’m not going to go – especially about this subject. It’s like, not a chance. There is enough blood. There is enough depression. I don’t want to watch that. I feel that people are searching – I am searching – for a different way to approach the subject.
You spoke about taking this piece out beyond the theatre, to the broader public. What is the discourse you see occurring out there in which you hope to intervene?
I think that we just have to fuck each other and mix and bring to the world mixed kids.,,then nobody can say, this is my side and this is your side
I see a lot of people having a stand without having the information, without having the deep understanding. And sometimes I see people [who are] pro-Palestinian but in the end they are antisemitic or I see pro-Israelis who are evangelists and they don’t care about the Jews, they just care about themselves and hoping that the Jews will conquer, because then Jesus will come.
For me, when you’re ignorant and you are standing for [one] side, you’re actually hurting that side. It’s not enough to stand for someone. It’s more important to understand what’s going on. And I’m not coming to give – how do you say – my stance on this conflict. It’s more from my own life story to give some idea about the past that happened in Palestine, in Israel, and how I dealt with it.
What are some of the moments that you felt you needed to include in this project for people to really understand your experiences?
One of the first moments, and this is really the first one I tell in the play, is the first time I understood that I’m an Arab. It was in kindergarten. I was in a Jewish kindergarten and a boy came to me and cursed me for being an Arab. He said ‘filthy Arab’. And I remember at this moment not understanding what he meant.
What is an Arab? I know I’m speaking Arabic, but I see cartoons on television in English. So that is English, and I’m speaking Hebrew. This is Hebrew. But I didn’t know that there is a [difference] between Arabs and Jews. What is that? I don’t think he even knew actually what it was. And suddenly I’m faced with this knowledge about my national identity, and I don’t have a clue what it means. I only know by the behaviour that it’s probably not good, and it separates me from the others. That’s the feeling.
This is the kind of feeling that I got throughout my life living in a Jewish community or a Jewish school. But that was only one boy. The rest of the class just didn’t know what he was talking about. For them, I was like them. But [to divide us] needed only one person – always the minority, the extreme minority. But they have the strongest voice because they are the scary ones, and we are always scared of them instead of understanding that without them we wouldn’t think about those things. We would be united.
How are you approaching this performance as one of the first non-German and non-Jewish voices – certainly one of the first Israeli-Palestinian voices – to have a Berlin stage to talk about the conflict since October 7?
A friend told me that Hamas is the worst thing that happened to Israel and Netanyahu’s the worst thing that’s happened to Palestinians. And then I told him, well, if you mixed it, it’s also true. It’s like, maybe Bibi is the worst thing that happened to Israel, really – and for the Jews also. And Hamas is the worst thing that happened to Palestinians. And, if you look at it that way, that we’re destroying not just the enemies, we’re destroying ourselves with the leaders that we choose.
And I think [after] this war and all those years that have passed, it’s really hard when you see your enemy as a monster, as someone who wants to kill you, because then you don’t look inside. I feel that there is more that connects us than does not connect us. And I feel like there’s somebody outside – somebody who’s selling weapons, somebody who has other interests that just wants to divide us and just wants to make us fight each other. And that makes me really angry. And that’s why a lot of times I don’t take this simple position to stand on one side or the other.
But I don’t want to come on stage and blame America and Germany. No, I’m a small citizen that has a nice small story. And this is the story I want to tell. For me, I come on stage and say, listen, I married a Jewish woman. I have mixed kids. And for me, this is the solution.
Really. I think that we just have to fuck each other and mix and bring to the world mixed kids. And then nobody can say, oh, this is my side and this is your side. There is no white, there is no black, there is just brown and many other colours. It’s beautiful. It’s a rainbow. And really, I do believe that this is the way for being together and stopping those wars. And this is the story I want to tell.
Do you see theatre working somewhat similarly – bringing people into contact, mixing us up, unsettling our notions of the world?
Making a piece of art is to connect with the people. When I come on stage, I want to reach you. If you’re in the audience, I want to talk to you and then choose another person, talk to them. I want this connection – and that’s also why we chose to make it in a small theatre, not in a big theatre. ‘Listen, I’m going to tell you something.’ No, it’s an intimate meeting.
- Between the River and the Sea, Apr 5, 19, Studio Я, English with German surtitles
