Palestinian Comedy Club Review – Touring collective performance finds light in the darkness | film

ISure, at times, it seems to all involved that the name should be “Palestinian Tragedy Club” — but this theater group, founded by Alaa Shehadeh from Jenin in the northern West Bank, and Sam Bell from the United Kingdom, is all about laughter. They explore the nature of comedy and stand-up as a response to being Palestinian now. This documentary follows the group as they attempt to organize a national tour, with shows in Ramallah, Nablus, Haifa, Nazareth, and Jerusalem. In doing so, they confront the fundamental problem of struggling across roadblocks, and the sheer dismay and terror at the mass devastation wrought by the war between Israel and Hamas.

We also see how the members of the company find themselves, in reality, in exile in Amsterdam and Berlin and suffer the existential pain of loneliness and homesickness. Things get even more complicated at one point, by being in London – the seat of the empire – for a particular performance, which makes it clear that the British are the imperial villains in all of this (it is Britain, not Israel, that is being openly criticized on stage). I would have liked to see more of the actual Palestinian Comedy Club show, and more of the way the material is developed and performed, but we do get a very amusing bit from Shehadeh where he says that here, he receives formal, supportive “mmmm”s rather than laughter – the audience thinks about that, and maybe laughs later when they have time to think.

“Mmm” may be the only response available here, but there is something refreshing and uplifting in Shehadeh’s insistence on the urgency of making art in times like these.