From Our September Community Gathering

illustration of hands holding up a hand written sign that reads: hope is an active agent: the opposite of despair.

On September 23, The Theatre Centre hosted a Community Gathering & Reading, as part of our 10 for 10 programming (ten unique offerings over ten months), which celebrates ten years since we moved into our forever home on 1115 Queen Street West. This is the first of a series of texts that were read from our invited readers.

The first text featured below is from our former Residency artist, Rimah Jabr.

Talking about hope seems absurd, even naive.

This past year, I’ve questioned everything—people and circumstances alike. The world speaks out against oppression, yet nothing changes. My last visit to Palestine was in the summer of 2021. Little did I know, it would be a long time before I could return to the place that holds my heart. 

My brothers picked me up from the border—by the way, the worst border is between Jordan, Israel, and Palestine.

The border I’m referring to is more than just a line on a map; it’s a series of strict security checks conducted consecutively by Jordanian, Israeli, and Palestinian authorities. On our way to Nablus, we took the usual route near a large checkpoint known as Zaatra. I noticed trucks and bulldozers digging, and my brother explained the Israelis were building roads to connect the settlements. After Zaatra, we had to pass through Huwwara, a well-known checkpoint. It serves as the main southern entrance to Nablus. Back in 2002, As Palestinians, we had to check Huwwara’s status before traveling between Nablus and Ramallah.

This morning, I spoke with my sister on the phone and asked about the roads. She said, “It’s fine, we passed al-Mrabba’a.” I asked, “What’s that?” She replied, “It’s the new checkpoint we must take. It’s near the northern part of the city, so now the road to Ramallah is half an hour longer. We have to drive around the city, bypass Huwwara, and then head to Ramallah.” I asked what would happen to Huwwara, and she said, “They built a bridge for the settlers, and it seems it will never be open again.”

I mention all these details because this was happening in 2021 and even earlier, long before October 7th. It’s part of a plan unrelated to how Palestinians react or what they do. The nearest feeling of confinement that people here can relate to is the lockdown of COVID-19, which didn’t affect me much as a Palestinian as I was used to it, but we call it curfew. Now, that the world passed COVID 19, the confinement feels more specific and individual, targeting certain people. As a consequence of October 7th, my mom had to return to Palestine earlier than planned, leaving my husband and me alone with a three-week-old small being that has lungs and a mouth. We must keep it alive while witnessing other babies being torn apart.

It breaks my heart to think of the children and babies in Palestine, waking up in fear every night. I can’t help but compare our situation to theirs, and it pains me to say “us” and “them”—us, here in safety, and them, under bombs and in tents. During Toronto’s air show, we were outside with Adam, and when the planes thundered overhead, he clung to me, burying his head in my arms. I myself once cried during that same air show.

As long as those machines fill the sky, I can’t find hope. But after the air show, when Adam began playing again with a bright smile, I knew things had to change. There had to be hope.

I was meant to be with my family, and they were supposed to meet my baby, but we couldn’t go, and they couldn’t come. I have the tendency to be fragile and hopeless, but I carry on because babies feel their mother’s emotions, so I pull myself together and fake some strength. Adam won’t wait for me to find hope again. He needs me now, every day. He’s growing fast, learning to say “Dada,” “Mama,” “Nane”—words that mean “I need something; I want something to help me survive.”

Screenshots of videos of Nablus, courtesy of the artist

Over the past year, I’ve felt disconnected from the world. Even when surrounded by others, the pain and helplessness kept me from looking outward—I turn inward. The process of motherhood has compelled me to focus on my sense of self, what I was becoming, and being denied the ability to be who I was. This dual sense of both loss and gain creates a complex emotional space that didn’t happen naturally because of what is happening in my home country.

The fact that I couldn’t go back was more than just wanting my family to meet my baby. It was about wanting to be in my city. I have nightmares that one day I won’t be able to return, or that the city will change. This fear is valid because we’re witnessing that change now.

I grieve the loss of the landscape and the entrance to Nablus as I once knew it. I can’t pass by there anymore, and I’ll never see Nablus the way I used to from that southern entrance. No wonder I obsessively filmed every trip I took when I was there—those videos are all that remain, footage of a memory. We cling to every photo or video we take there because each time might be the last. I always check my phone based on the hour there; I sleep and wake up based on the hour there, although I am here. Since I left Palestine, I have lived in between two times… I stand between two worlds, caught in the seven-hour difference between Nablus and Toronto.

Is my heart here, where dawn breaks slow and soft, or seven hours ahead, where the sun already fades? I am neither here nor there, lost in the question of where I belong. What is my time? Is it now, where my feet touch the floor in the middle of the night as an immediate response to an immediate need to hold a crying baby, or far beyond, where my soul seems to drift? Where Jasmine falls on the sidewalk of an-Najjah street where my family lives.

Time blurs, stretching across the sky, and I am left wondering which hour holds my truth.

A Marvelous Victory — from Justine Abigail Yu

I am walking down Queen Street looking for a treat for myself. I’m thinking some kind of baked good, or a fruit smoothie, or a fancy coffee – you know the kind. Instead, I find that the treats, really, are found on posters slapped onto signposts, graffiti scribbles on random brick walls, and on decor hanging from the windows of random homes. They are the posters that assert that “Colonization is a crime”, the graffiti scribbles that read, “Free Palestine”, the Palestinian, Black Lives Matter, Every Child Matters, and trans flags that hang on my neighbours’ windows. 

I am supposed to go see my mom in Markham but before I make my way to Union Station, I first join the Grassy Narrows River Run March. I am surprised and delighted to see how massive the protest is. It’s a Wednesday at noon and there are thousands of people gathered at Grange Park. More than 8000 people, they’re saying. Many of them are young children and teenagers. I pass by a group of 6 or 7-year-olds with homemade signs full of their gorgeous artwork, marching and chanting, “Grassy Narrows! Grassy Narrows!”.

I get on the streetcar, look for a seat, and make eye contact with someone wearing their keffiyeh. “Nice keffiyeh,” they tell me. “Free Palestine!” I hold my fist up. We smile at each other and nod, going back to whatever it was we were doing before. 

Almost every Sunday, I cycle over to the Wallace Avenue Pedestrian Footbridge that my Davenport neighbours have, for months now, renamed and reclaimed as Gaza Square. We gather together to put up posters, eat snacks, make bracelets and other art, share books, plant our newly made healing garden. It is our time to get to know each other, to cultivate our growing community. 

It feels so small when I write these words down that I pause and question if I should write them down at all. But in the moment, these interactions mean the entire world to me. It feels foolish sometimes in the face of so much violence and death and endless fucking destruction all around the world and right here on Turtle Island to feel uplifted by these fleeting encounters. 

And yet these moments are the portals to other worlds. Just worlds. Loving worlds. The kind of worlds I want to live in. The worlds that we are creating in real-time. Right now. Together.

Howard Zinn once wrote, “If we do act, in however small a way, we don’t have to wait for some grand utopian future. The future is an infinite succession of presents, and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

And here we are today. We’re gathered here at this gem of a neighbourhood hub called The Theatre Centre talking about….hope. Generating that very thing that we think we lack. 

While I can’t be here in my physical form, I am with you. And we are eating soup and being together. In the face of destruction. In the face of violence. In the face of so much wreckage. 

We are eating soup and being together and opening a portal to these just and loving worlds. 

So look around. Cherish this moment, step through that portal, and remember – we are living a marvelous victory.

From Emily Jung

I personally hate both of the words “hope” and “despair”. 

I hate any words that could be baked into mugs like “Kindness”, “Diversity”, “Empathy”, “Imagination”, “Perseverance”, “Creativity”. 

(I guess “despair” is okay)

So, when I learned about the topic of this Theatre Centre gathering, it required me to do a little bit of inner reflection. Why do I hate these words so much? Why do I hate using these words?

And I often just blame it all on the English language. I hate speaking English. Isn’t it so violent that many of us in this room today speak this language fluently?

When you are an “English as a second language” learner, you develop an acute sensitivity to the meaning of words. Double checking every other word in the dictionary is not a habit that dies easy. 

If you’ve ever been at the edge of tears for not knowing a language as a kid, you may know what I mean when I say that every single word that I know in English has a close relationship to my personal shame about fluency.

“Kindness”, “Diversity”, “Empathy”, “Imagination”, “Perseverance”, “Creativity”, “Hope” and “Despair” — were all words that, at some point, I had written down multiple times as a child, memorizing each alphabet of its spelling and its meaning.

So, perhaps you can imagine the anger I feel when people misuse words to the point of washing out their meaning — when I have spent my whole life wrestling with correct usage of terminology. You can imagine a unique rage I feel when performative words result in false hope, confusion and harm. 

In similar fashion, I hate when someone tries to convince me of things that are obviously untrue.

“Institutional policies causing helplessness”, for example, or phrases like “best practices” — or words that make workers and artists feel that their actions have no power. 

It has been baffling. How much I have to fight for honest use of words in the arts. 

At this point, I am so curious.

How do people write and direct shows about liberation and decolonization and then weep about how this generation of artists and workers stand up for their rights?

How can someone stand at a podium and say that art is about difficult conversations, and then in the office, say that it’s not their job as an arts leader to comment on “world events”? 

How can someone say that they value artistic freedom and then put their employee in a retaliatory PIP for speaking out against genocide?

How can someone advocate against A.I. art while ripping off workers, claiming that creative programs and projects belong to companies because it was done “during company time”? 

How can someone take taxpayer funded flights to attend international festivals, and then claim that civic action is too partisan for their charitable organization that gives out tax receipts? 

How can someone ever mention humanity of any sort today? 

How do they possibly stay silent and still take a salary in the arts without feeling shame?

…

Knowing my relationship with the English language, it may not be very surprising to you that my job now is in communications. 

In order for me to be good at my job, I need the sensitivity around words: to know what kind of representation is being desired versus what is actually true. 

Much of my work is about fighting for clarity, and aiming to describe things clearly. 

So, here are some things I can say to you today that are true and honest.

The collective actions of artists and workers are more powerful than someone’s short-lived career as an uninteresting arts leader.

If someone is so comfortable sitting in a world of apolitical inaction, and by nature they are so unimaginative that they like to work in a culture of conflict-avoidant despair, it seems to me that their existence in an arts institution is disrespect to the very idea of art itself. 

Every person in the arts today stands on the privilege that has been built by generations of people before us— who have taken action. 

Art is both labour and hope in that it does not exist without action.

During New Year’s celebration this year — a good friend and I were speed-walking down Queens Quay West, trying to catch up to the march for Free Palestine through the harbourfront traffic. 

I didn’t make my way there because I thought walking would stop this genocide in any meaningful way. 

I went to the march because I was personally in such a moment of hopelessness and despair, watching the world celebrate a new year with fireworks while people in Palestine are being bombed by the tens of thousands. 

We chanted together, walking up from Queens Quay West all the way to Dundas street. 

I look back at these past 10 months of 2024. We have done lots of work. Some of it was extracted and some of it was productive. 

As we head into the next year (and the next, and the next), more and more words are about to be misused to the point of losing their meaning — now more conveniently with the help of intelligence bots. 

Art is something that is supposed to break through noise and uplift us with truth. 

Today — where we are seeing arts labour being disrespected inside prominent arts organizations who are choosing to stay complicit against humanity— what can we do to not fall further  back into despair? 

We have no choice. 

We have to show up.

We have to yell through the noise.

We have to fight for meaning.

We have to stand up for our energy.

We have to protect the dignity of our labour.

And we have to take action.