{"id":42,"date":"2013-09-19T23:51:06","date_gmt":"2013-09-19T23:51:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/?p=42"},"modified":"2013-10-01T20:48:07","modified_gmt":"2013-10-01T20:48:07","slug":"new-theatre-lab-a-hub-for-community-stories","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/2013\/09\/19\/new-theatre-lab-a-hub-for-community-stories\/","title":{"rendered":"New theatre lab a hub for community stories"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Caption: Dr Rand Hazou, at the Albany campus\u2019 new Theatre Lab to open next month.<\/em>
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New theatre lab a hub for community stories<\/strong><\/p>\n

Growing up in Jordan across the valley from the troubled West Bank has given Palestinian-Kiwi theatre-maker Dr Rand Hazou a unique perspective on the role of theatre in telling marginalised stories.\u00a0It\u2019s a theme the scholar is keen to explore in the context of ethnically diverse Auckland at the University\u2019s Albany campus.\u00a0He bucked the migration trend and moved here from Australia to take up the role, bringing a colourful mix of theatrical experiences \u2013 from a kid playing the youngest thief in the musical \u2018Oliver\u2019 and Shakespearian roles as a teen, to backstage manager in Jordan\u2019s capital Amman for a political satire of Middle East leaders, then researching the role of theatre in advocating for asylum-seekers\u2019 rights in Australia for his PhD.<\/p>\n

As the new champion of the Expressive Arts programme in the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, Dr Hazou wants students across academic disciplines to take part in and create cutting-edge theatre. A custom-made Theatre Lab is currently under construction inside the Sir Neil Waters building, to be launched at the end of March. Theatre workshops, performances and artists\u2019 talks are in the pipeline.<\/p>\n

\u201cTheatre programmes in universities around the world are constantly battling against shrinking budgets and classes, and here it\u2019s expanding which is really exciting,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Dr Hazou is especially interested in the role of documentary theatre as a way of connecting with a community, and in the idea of tapping into untold true stories within communities.<\/p>\n

\u201cDocumentary theatre is about storytelling,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019m really interested in finding out what makes this local community tick, producing students who are creative, and engaged with their local community as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

His doctoral thesis, which he did at La Trobe University, Melbourne, explored potent examples of how documentary theatre was being used to tell the stories of asylum seekers. Titled Acting for Asylum: Asylum Seeker and Refugee Theatre in Australia 2000-2005, he examined how the traumatic experiences of asylum seekers held in remote detention centres in Australia were told through theatre.\u00a0The main source of public information about asylum seekers on hunger strikes and rioting was from a government slant via the media, he says. \u201cIt was shocking stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat was amazing was the theatre response. Actors, directors and ordinary people who were hearing what was going on started contacting groups with access to the detention centres, and going in to befriend these asylum seekers,\u201d he says. \u201cThey would write down their stories, and make performances. During this period we had a renaissance of political, documentary theatre in Australia.\u201d<\/p>\n

Asylum-seekers\u2019 stories of perilous escape and life in detention centres were turned into scripts and posted on websites so that community theatre groups could download and stage them. During his research he documented 35 new performances about asylum seekers, with some staged numerous times.\u00a0He also spearheaded the Harakat Project<\/em> involving Palestinians in Australia \u2013 supported by the Australia Council for Arts. Still a work in progress, he hopes to stage it in New Zealand. Again in the documentary theatre mode, it delves into the issue of interrogation, inspired by a New Yorker magazine article.\u00a0He may straddle two cultures, but for Dr Hazou being Palestinian is at the core of his sensibility towards other marginalised peoples. He grew up in an international community and bi-cultural family, the second of three sons of a Kiwi mum and Palestinian father whose family left Jerusalem in 1947 just before the 1948 Arab-Israeli war.<\/p>\n

His father, Tuma Hazou, a radio announcer for the BBC World Service in London, found himself a war correspondent when he bought a camera and returned to Jerusalem to make a documentary about the old city when war broke out in 1967.\u00a0Mr Hazou met his Kiwi wife Virginia later when he was working for the Hashemite Royal Palace where she was working as a trained nurse and nanny. New Zealand was an exotic faraway place from a Jordan perspective but Dr Hazou\u2019s maternal heritage allowed him to spend a year here as a five-year-old, and again for several months as a high school student during the Gulf War.<\/p>\n

As a child, he recalls viewing the West Bank and the lights of Jerusalem from across the Jordan Valley. He didn\u2019t visit the city of his forefathers until he was 21, and has been back several times to Jerusalem and the West Bank, though never to Gaza. As a member of the Palestinian diaspora \u2013 estimated at around five million, or half the total population \u2013 he believes Palestinian refugees \u201cshould be allowed to return and live in peace side by side with Israeli neighbours. Many in refugee camps dream of this.\u201d<\/p>\n

But he feels it would be condescending to suggest theatre could heal conflicts as deep as the Arab-Israeli one. \u201cIt\u2019s more complicated than this. The idea that people don\u2019t understand each other is false. They just have very deep grievances.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe theatre that I\u2019m interested in is more about raising questions than solving, or having any therapeutic effect. Provoking people \u2013 not just across cultures, also Palestinians, about they how they perceive themselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

When it comes to teaching drama at university, he believes theatre skills are highly relevant to a broad range of professions, from business to health, teaching, science and media. \u201cThe type of skills you learn in theatre \u2013 engaging people, using your voice confidently, physical communication, listening \u2013 you can apply in any chosen career. I\u2019m hoping there will be room to cater to people from other disciplines, not just actors.\u201d<\/p>\n

Theatre, he says, can also transform and enhance people\u2019s experiences of living in an urban environment. So his drama dreams are likely to spill over into skate parks, beaches and shopping malls, because for Dr Hazou, all the world\u2019s a stage.<\/p>\n

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Caption: Dr Rand Hazou, at the Albany campus\u2019 new Theatre Lab to open next month.   New theatre lab a hub for community stories Growing up in Jordan across the valley from the troubled West Bank has given Palestinian-Kiwi theatre-maker Dr Rand Hazou a unique perspective on the role of theatre in telling marginalised stories.\u00a0It\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,13],"tags":[18,17,174],"class_list":["post-42","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-albany","category-theatre","tag-hazou","tag-rand","tag-theatre"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133,"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42\/revisions\/133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.massey.ac.nz\/expressivearts\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}