Sapir Heller / Maya Arad Yasur

Performance

It’s 06:30 in the morning: a woman is asleep in her bed when the dog starts barking outside and a little later the sirens start wailing. She goes into her children’s bedroom and lies protectively over them. No amount of desperate knocking from a neighbor seeking protection can release her from this position. Based on this exemplary scenario, and in direct reaction to the terrorist attacks on October 07, Israeli author Maya Arad Yasur reflects on coping strategies in the face of inhuman horror. The subsequent panel discussion provides a space to discuss the possibilities and limits of humanism at a time of great catastrophe.

Diskussion

The play WIE MAN NACH EINEM MASSAKER HUMANISTISCH BLEIBT IN 17 SCHRITTEN was developed immediately after the terrorist attack on October 07. It is an attempt to come to terms with pain, powerlessness and horror. Since then, the situation in Israel/Palestine has escalated massively: until the fragile ceasefire (as of January 24), the ultra-nationalist government of Israel waged a brutal war in Gaza for 467 days. At least 46,000 people were killed, a high proportion of them women and children, and at least 110,000 were injured. A large part of Gaza was razed to the ground, the livelihoods of the Palestinians living there have been destroyed and the future is uncertain. Leading genocide researchers speak of a plausible genocide, which in turn is disputed by other researchers. Palestinians around the world complain of a lack of empathy with their situation in the face of serious crimes under international law. Has a humanist perspective failed? The subsequent panel discussion will provide a space to discuss the possibilities and limits of humanism in the moment of greatest catastrophe.

Maya Arad Yasur is a playwright based in Tel-Aviv. Her plays deal mostly with questions of identity, exile and war through a dissection of narrative mechanisms. Yasur's plays have been produced and published worldwide and are translated to 12 languages. She is the recipient of the Berliner Theatertreffen's Stückemarkt prize for "Amsterdam", the International Theatre Institute award for playwriting for "Suspended", the Habima award for "God Waits at the Station" and the city of Tel-Aviv Rosenblum Award for the performing arts for her promising achievements.

Naz Al-Windi is a political scientist specialising in decolonial theories and liberation movements in the Global South.

Sapir Heller is a theatre director who lives in Munich and was born and raised in Israel. She studied drama and music theatre directing at the Hochschule für Musik und Theater and was a scholarship holder of the Heinrich Böll Foundation. Her productions have been staged at the Schauspiel Frankfurt, Theater Essen, Staatsschauspiel Dresden, Theater Augsburg, Maxim Gorki Theater, Theater Hof and the Nationaltheater Mannheim, Theater Lübeck, Theater Regensburg and the Münchner Volkstheater, among others.

Hanna Pfeifer is head of the research area Social Peace and Internal Security at the IFSH at the University of Hamburg. She researches domestic and international dynamics of order and violence. Hanna Pfeifer works at the interface of political science research on violence/conflict, international relations and regional studies on West Asia and North Africa (WANA). Her most recent field of research is conflict dynamics in Germany as they have developed since the escalation of the Israel-Palestine conflict since 2023, including war discourses, protest camps and mobilisation in foreign policy.