When six Palestinian comedians hit the road to tour a stand-up show across Palestine, their search for humour amidst the injustice of everyday Palestinian life becomes a plea for humanity against in the face of brutal war.
What’s funny about life under occupation? Palestine Comedy Club follows six Palestinian stand-up comedians from Haifa, Ramallah, Jenin, Hebron and the Golan Heights, who devise and tour a stand-up comedy show exploring the unlikely, often dark humour that circles the complex question of Palestinian identity.
There is no tradition of regular comedy clubs in Palestine and communities are divided by walls, fences, and checkpoints that create major disparities in culture and quality of life between one town and another. As such, developing a comedy show that can speak to these very different audiences is a difficult task, and the comedians face many challenges in connecting with their fellow Palestinians across the divides.
Despite the cultural and security challenges of touring six Palestinian comedians — all with different travel permissions — across checkpoints and borders to six theatres in Palestine and Israel, audiences flock to the shows and the tour gains momentum through increasing public demand. Word spreads internationally and they are invited to London for a series of gigs starting, tragically, on 7 October 2023.
Just as war breaks out at home, the comedians prepare to perform in English for the first time to an increasingly conflicted British public. Suddenly, the mission to connect with audiences with thoughtful humanity becomes an existential imperative.
Palestine Comedy Club is a quest to find joy in the tragedy of Palestinian life, and create connection against the odds through a common love of laughter.
Production Background
Palestine Comedy Club grew out of Tough Crowd founder Charlotte Knowles’ ongoing collaboration with cultural workers, comedians, and grassroots organisations in the West Bank.
The project began in 2018 when Knowles attended the comedy show ‘Showtime From The Frontline’ featuring UK comedian Mark Thomas and Palestinian comedians Alaa Shehada and Faisal Abualheja. Thomas had been to Jenin in the north of the West Bank the year before to teach stand-up comedy workshops at the Freedom Theatre in Jenin with comedy director and lecturer, Sam Beale, and had returned to the UK with two of the comedians from the Freedom Theatre — Alaa and Faisal — to perform a new comedy show across the UK.
After seeing the show, Charlotte immediately set up a meeting with Alaa: “having worked as an investigative journalist in Palestine between 2017 and 2019, reporting on human rights abuses, I was surprised to see a Palestinian comedy show advertised in London - it couldn’t have been further from my experience to that date. The show blew my mind - I could see immediately that comedy had the potential to do what journalism would always struggle to do: make these stories personal and intimate. Comedy could really make audiences care deeply. But it also showed me how little I knew about Palestine — despite having spent a lot of time there researching, investigating and interviewing, comedy took a deep dive into the intimate truths of everyday Palestinian life”.