Actor Edmund Kingsley in a performance of The Keepers of Infinite Space.
(Richard Davenport)
Electronic Intifada
For Palestinians growing up in the militarily occupied West Bank, the threat of imprisonment in an Israeli jail is a constant and very real fear.
Since the occupation began in 1967, an estimated 40 percent of the male population has been detained under military orders. Of those, thousands have been held in a procedure known as administrative detention, in which prisoners are held indefinitely without charge or trial.
This is the theme of The Keepers of Infinite Space, a new London play written by Omar El-Khairy and directed by Zoe Lafferty. It follows the story of Saeed (played by Edmund Kingsley), a bookshop owner from Nablus, who is arrested, thrown into an Israeli prison and has his sentence renewed indefinitely.
It soon unfolds that his father Khalil (Hilton McRae), now a property developer, was held in the same prison in the 1990s for his involvement in the Palestinian resistance. The play primarily examines the brutal treatment and torture of Palestinian prisoners in Israeli jails, as well as drawing on a range of other issues surrounding the occupation.
The cast was made up primarily of British actors, which seemed an unusual casting choice given the subject matter. While it may have been preferable to see Palestinian actors take on the roles, it was perhaps intentionally jarring for a largely British audience to hear familiar British accents and dialects in such an unfamiliar, brutal environment.
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