Performing the Intifada (How Palestinian Performance Artists Utilize Their Art as a Medium of Protest and Resistance Against the Normalcy of the Israeli Occupation)

Abstract

This paper was essentially based off the thesis and intent of an undergraduate course I have taken, entitled “Culture and Rebellion in the Arab World”, in which the ways Arabs exercised a rebellion through art was examined on an individual level, and featured artists from a variety of Arab countries. I wanted to shift the conversations found on this topic to focus on Palestine, for as their cultural production is less prominent as the Israeli Occupation has expanded. With that being said, my research question asks how Palestinians utilize the performing arts to protest and resist the persisting Israeli Occupation. Because I have also been fascinated by the performing arts ability to instill a message into the minds of an audience, as well as it being a successful platform for historic storytelling, I have separated my variables of study into three different art mediums: film, music, and theater. To strengthen the probability of my research question and hypothesis being accurately demonstrated, my methodology for this project includes an examination of interviews from artists within these mediums. To add on to this, I noticed that we cannot simply ask why certain events or setbacks for Palestinians result in producing protest art. Instead, I made sure to include a variety of areas of the state and time periods in which these artists came to prominence to prove that while there may be different push factors in performing a piece of resistance, it is all done in the name of Palestinian identity.