Ramallah - Twenty-two-year-old Jasmin is visibly proud to be a student at the first professional acting school in the Palestinian territories. The young Palestinian woman with a green nose ring and her 10 fellow students have just completed their first classes in the Drama Academy Ramallah, which opened its doors in the West Bank city this school year.
"We learned voice training," said Rami, a 20-year-old with dark curls. In the short break after which the subject will switch to theatre history, the students lounge on gymnastics mats in a large dance studio in the top floor of the Al-Kasaba Theatre in the city centre and practice what they have just learned in voice training by warbling.
The school's three-year programme has been developed in cooperation with an arts college in Essen, Germany.
"The education students receive there is recognized everywhere in the world," said the director of the school, Ibrahim Mozain. "Ninety-nine per cent of the plays on which we work come from the western tradition, the rest come from Arab theatre."
The 11 students, who were carefully chosen from 70 candidates, are to receive a thorough education in theatre. Acrobatics and stage fighting are also part of the curriculum.
The project is operated under the patronage of German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fajad. It is supported by 300,000 euros (447,885 dollars) from the German Mercator foundation.
Until now Palestinian actors and actresses had to travel abroad or to Israel to receive an education.
"The idea of the new school is that students are able to study in their own language near their homes," said Mozain. He hopes the school will bring fresh momentum to theatre in the Palestinian Territories. Plays run in Ramallah for only four or five performances, then the audience potential is exhausted.
"Ramallah is a liberal city," said George Ibrahim, director of the Al-Kasaba Theatre where the school is being housed initially. "Many people here are open to new influences." In order to reach a poorer audience, the theatre travels through the Palestinian Territories and performs in other West Bank cities.
The tuition of 600 dollars a year is low compared to tuition elsewhere in the world, but for many Palestinians from poor families it is still prohibitive. Mozain said the school is working on providing stipends. His German colleague, Veronika Weindl, eases contact with German partners. At the end of their first year the Palestinian theatre students are to perform the tragedy Antigone by Sophocles in Germany, and at the end of their third year they plan a joint performance with students from the Essen arts college.
Mozain said the Israeli blockades in the West Bank are serious impediments to work in the theatre in Ramallah.
"Some students have to pass through several military barricades. It takes altogether three hours to negotiate a short distance," he said. Important exchanges with the Arab world also are complicated. "We recently had a group from Tunisia and weren't sure until the last minute whether they would receive permission from Israel to enter the country."
Out of bitterness over the Israeli occupation he strictly rejects cooperating with theatres in Israel.
Imad Jabarin, an Israeli Arab and the new school's history of theatre instructor, teaches in Israel and studied at the Tel Aviv university. Travelling between the two worlds is not easy for him. "One has to be a sort of psychological hero in order to put up with it," he said. "But you develop a strong spiritual immune system."
Jasmin also travels every day from Jerusalem. "My parents worry about my security," she said, smiling. "But I am a strong woman."
