From the Meet the Artist program at the Kerala International Theater Festival on Wednesday. | Photo credit: KK NAJEEB
What should have been a full stage remained empty. But that emptiness spoke louder than any performance.
The latest play Gaza, scheduled for two performances at the KT Muhammed Theatre, could not be performed at the International Theater Festival of Kerala (ITFoK) on Tuesday after the troupe failed to receive a travel permit. Instead of silence, the festival chose resistance through memory, poetry and music, turning absence itself into a performance.
In a deeply moving message sent to the festival, director Einat Weizman described the empty stage as a place of testimony.
“We stand here in our absence,” she said. “The place that should have been ours on the stage – empty. But this emptiness tells a story.”
The Last Play in Gaza is more than just a play. It’s documentation. It’s a testimony. It is about the reconstruction of a destroyed theater and the silencing of voices.
“‘Theatre for everyone’ no longer exists in Gaza. Artists have been displaced, killed, forced to flee. And we have taken it upon ourselves to re-edit what they have created, because culture cannot be bombed into silence,” she said. First comes the erasure of Gaza. Then the deletion of the Gaza documentation. Then the deletion of voices that talk about Gaza. Even in India, which is a partner of the Zionist entity. But if the game can’t be played – then the absence of the game is itself a performance, she argued to sustained applause.
Special program
Instead of the game, ITFoK presented a special program called Gaza: Testimony at the same venue. Poets PN Gopikrishnan, Anwar Ali and P. Raman read Palestinian poems accompanied by Thomas Joe on saxophone. His restrained, elegiac music, at once fragile and haunting, translated sadness into sound, allowing poetry and music to converse in quiet intensity.
Kerala Sangeetha Nataka Akademi Secretary Karivelloor Murali gave the opening speech, formally declaring ITFoK’s solidarity with Gaza. Ms. Weizman’s message was read on stage by Sri Lankan director Ruwanti de Chickera, who lent a transnational voice to the moment. Poems by Palestinian poets were recited before the program, before the program ended with verses by Mahmoud Darwish — synonymous with Palestinian poetic resistance.
Later in the evening, during the slot originally reserved for the play’s second performance, an audio message from the director played to the audience, reaffirming that while borders may block bodies, stories continue to spread.
At ITFoK, The Last Play in Gaza didn’t make the stage. But its absence became an act of presence—proof that erasure is never complete and that theater, though denied, can still speak, according to Ms. Weizman’s message.
Lucia Joyce, Little Drama in Motion; Noramma Briyani Dharbar; Oranges and Stones and Madan Moksham were the games played on Wednesday apart from Meet the Artist and Discussion Forum.
Published – 28 Jan 2026 20:43 IST
