The Othering of Palestinian and Israeli people in Birds of a kind

The play was also translated into multiple languages, such as German, Hebrew and English, which allowed its multinational intention to be further realized.

A recent staging of Ptáčci took place within the international Brno Theatre Festival “Divadelní svět” on 22 May 2025. The production by Národní divadlo moravskoslezské, directed by Aminata Keita, was staged in Městské divadlo Brno, as a three-hour play interrupted by a break.

Ptáčci addresses questions of belonging, migration, religion, love and death: “What is a life lived between two worlds? What is a migrant? A refugee? A mutant?”

The performance starts with merely a ladder from a library on an otherwise empty stage. A young woman is standing on it, seemingly indulging in a book by لحسن بن محمد الوزانالفاسي (al-Ḥasan b. Muḥammad al-Wazzān al-Fāsī), as a young man enters the stage. He rips the book out of her hand in an agitated manner. It is a meaningful book for him, he explains and starts a conversation. In a series of happenings, we see them fall in love. Them, that is the German-Israeli genetics researcher Eitan and the Arab-American PhD student Wahida, who studies questions of identity within the texts of the diplomat and scholar الحسن بن محمد الوزان الفاسي. This historical figure lived in multiple cultural contexts and was forcefully converted to Christianity. His inclusion reflects the experiences of Eitan’s father David, who will later learn about his true origins. Born in a raided Palestinian village, stolen and brought up by an Israeli soldier, David grew up believing he was an Israeli Jew. The shock from learning the truth led to him experiencing a stroke and later death.

His character and family are meant to portray the complexities of the Middle Eastern conflicts within individuals; however, the play ends up reproducing a number of racist stereotypes about Jewish, Arab, Israeli and Palestinian people. It starts with the terms “Jewish” and “Israeli” being used as interchangeable synonyms, as well as “Arab” and “Palestinian”, all the while both groups are described as clear opposites.

Racial othering, a marginalizing practice in which (racialized) groups of people are intrinsically described and treated as alien to oneself, usually by assigning them undesirable characteristics in a dichotomous manner, is extremely present in the play, especially in relation to the Arab characters. The exclusively white cast acts in exaggerated, over-emotionalized ways, for example through screaming and shouting, which makes the Arab characters appear as the disruptive, hysteric Other.

The Palestinian reality is depicted only from a stereotypical white-centered perspective. An example is the way the Wahida is dealt with – her story remains a side plot and her character is reduced to being Eitan's girlfriend. Eitan’s trip to Israel in order to explore his family's history is central, while Wahida is portrayed solely as a victim of the hatred from Eitans family, a victim of rape by a soldier at a border etc. Almost accidentally she later learns about the importance of Arab identity, which she, in a bafflingly reductive manner, embraces by wearing a hijab.

In this way the play fails to challenge the concept of homogeneous identities; it instead solidifies them. David's character had the chance to break this conservative view through his seemingly conflicting identities. Instead, his internalization of the conflict led to his death, denying the audience a resolution showing the heterogeneity of identities and the evident dangers of reducing the people living in Palestinian and Israeli territories to their race or religion.

The minimalist stage design consists mainly of fragments of a house, some chairs, a desk and a television, all placed on a revolving stage, the rotation of which is supposed to show change of the location. The portrayal of the life and suffering of the Palestinian people is confined to the size of the television screen. Every now and then the development of the conflict is shown on the screen, it is never acted out on stage by people and therefore remains distant. In a shockingly disrespectful manner, considering the humorous undertone of the play, videos of killed children and weeping mothers are shown. Just moments before and after the videos are shown, the audience laughs at the play. It laughs at a comedically designed play about the Israel-Palestine conflict, while simultaneously a genocide of the Palestinian people is taking place — its latest development being the blockade of food deliveries to Gaza. Pointing out this alienating matter is not meant to suggest the conflict should not be addressed through culture, but rather that it should be portrayed in a respectful manner.

Just as striking is the decision to perform the play entirely in Czech without any translation while being part of an “international festival”. The content of the play frequently touches on the importance of multilingualism and language as a part of identity. That is why many theatres choose to include multiple languages in the staging of the play. In that sense, the question remains to what extent is the specific staging by Národní divadlo moravskoslezské responsible for the racist and reductive portrayal, rather than the original text.

Political theatre is more necessary in times of crisis; a harsh critique of it is therefore necessary as well.

Národní divadlo moravskoslezské – Ptáčci (Birds of a kind). Author Wajdi Mouawad, historical advisor to the author Natalie Zemon Davis, translation Michal Zahálka, linguistic cooperation on translation Lenka Bukovská, Jana B. Hniličková, Jitka Jeníková, stage director Aminata Keita, dramaturg Norbert Závodský, set designer Martin Chocholoušek, costume designer Simona Rybáková, music Martin Hůla. Cast: Vít Roleček, Sára Erlebachová, Anita Krausová, Hana Doulová, Petra Kocmanová, Tomáš Jirman, David Viktora, Jan Fišar. Premiere 1 February 2025, Divadlo Antonína Dvořáka. Written from a reprise on 22 May 2025 at the festival Divadelní svět Brno.