PORTLAND, Maine — Mayim Feinberg’s eyes rolled back, their lids buttoning shut.
The Portland teen’s knees then buckled as Feinberg collapsed backwards into classmate Saphire Ensworth’s embrace. Both sank to the floor.
“The hardest thing to feel is that your moment of death is near,” Feinberg whispered.
A roomful of people watching the pair answered with utter silence.
Fienberg’s words were first spoken more than a decade ago by a Gaza teenager — the same age as Feinberg — when recalling what it felt like to wake up after an exploding Israeli bomb left her unconscious for a time.
Feinberg and Ensworth were rehearsing their parts for an upcoming Portland performance of “The Gaza Monologues.” The theater piece features a series of first person accounts by young people who lived through a January 2009 Israeli assault against Hamas which killed more than 1,000 Gazans.
Performing the monologues, which swing between unspeakable tragedy and farcical comedy, is grueling, emotional work. But the group of young Maine performers, along with their older, more experienced directors, think it’s worth the psychological toll.
In fact, they say it’s vital.
Feeling frustrated and helpless on the other side of the world, raising the voices of unheard Gaza teenagers is the least — and maybe all — they can do to effect some kind of positive impact on the grim, present-day situation there, as the current Hamas and Israeli war stretches into its fourth month, with a reported 25,000 deaths and no end in sight.
Feinberg got involved with the monologues after organizing a vigil for the dead on both sides at Casco Bay High School, where they are a senior. It didn’t work out as they’d hoped.
“Only 15 people showed up out of a school of 400,” Feinberg said.
Taking to the stage instead, they hope the powerful monologues will have a wider impact on local Mainers.
“It will at least get people talking,” Feinberg said, “and when people are talking, it’s always better.”
The show’s cast consists of four Casco Bay High School students, one student from the University of Southern Maine and two from Bowdoin College. The performers are a diverse group, with family backgrounds rooted in Maine, Iraq, Tunisia, Syria, Somalia and Sri Lanka.
“As artists, we have to focus on important work like this, to educate people about what’s going on,” said Rickey Karunadhara, a government and theater student at Bowdoin. “Plus, what else can I do?”
Learning and understanding more about the situation in Gaza is what motivated Ensworth, a first-time actor, to get involved.
“That’s the point,” she said. “I really knew nothing about the war in Gaza — and people should know, even if hearing it is hard.”
Intended to humanize largely unheard Gazans, the monologues were developed by the ASHTAR Theatre, located in the Palestinian West Bank, in 2010. Since then, the text has been translated into dozens of languages and performed all over the world by thousands of young people.
“What I love most in Gaza is people’s kindness and simplicity, and what I hate most is the political party fanaticism,” said Bowdoin student Selima Terras, in the voice of a 15-year old Gazan girl named Sujoud Abu Hussein. “Sometimes I feel that there’s a contradiction between all this love and kindness that people have, and this evil that controls the surface.”
Other monologues tell the story of a teenage boy who saw his friend die, and another who saw dead bodies stacked three-high in a hospital.
One young person’s monologue talks about their father who broke the only window left in the house not shattered by a nearby Israeli bomb. Several talk of how they wish they could escape the violence.
This latest, Maine-based production is organized by two veteran theater professionals, and old friends, who first met at the Celebration Barn Theater in South Paris in the 1970s.
Nat Warren-White is a former theater department faculty member at Emerson College who also spent 22 years coaching business executives how to be better public speakers and leaders.
Fateh Azzam is an actor, playwright and director originally from Palestine. Azzam is also a former Senior Fellow at the Carr Center for Human Rights Policy and an expert in international human rights law.
“Being from Palestine, I was stateless before I became a United States citizen at the age of 29,” Azzam said. “Nat showed up to the ceremony dressed as Uncle Sam.”
Warren-White confirmed the memory with a smile as the pair worked seamlessly together, directing a monologue rehearsal last week. Warren-White said he didn’t hesitate a moment when his old friend asked him to help. Plus, he loves the material.
“There’s not a single mention of retaliation or revenge in these stories,” Warren-White said. “It’s just kids saying what kind of lives they wish they had.”
Judging from ticket sales, Mainers are anxious to hear more about the Palestinian teenagers’ experiences.
When tickets went on sale this month for the single, Feb. 3 performance at SPACE on Congress Street in Portland, it sold out in two days. When a second, matinee performance was added, it too sold out.
But Azzam and Warren-White said it wasn’t easy to find a venue for the politically sensitive show.
“Nobody wanted to touch it,” Warren-White said. “I think we went through 10 different places.”
SPACE spokesperson Nick Schroeder said his organization made the decision to host the show because it’s a good way to amplify both local and far away voices not often heard.
“Since, and including, the events of Oct. 7, I think a lot of us have felt a pretty intense grief and horror watching this unfold,” Schroeder said. “Personally, I’m really awed by the gesture these local students have taken on for this performance.”
He also said the live show will be a powerful way to engage in person with events going on in Gaza, thousands of miles away.
“Which seems significant for a war that most of us can only witness transpire online,” Schroeder said.
Looking ahead to the performances, Azzam and Warren-White said they have no illusions about what kind of impact their Maine-based performances will have on the international geopolitical stage.
“I just have to do something,” Azzam said. “I’ve been on the edge of rage and tears for months.”
At the end of last week’s rehearsal, with the young actors finally blowing off the heavy tension they’d been holding for two hours, Warren-White looked at them and nodded.
“It makes a difference for us, for them,” he said, “to get together and try and make sense of it all. Isn’t that enough?”
