Khalil Albatran and Bilal Alkhatib are collaborators and good friends. Based in Ramallah, Palestine, they have been examining a story idea that is a uniquely tragic reality for many Palestinians, that of being named after family members martyred by occupying Israeli forces. They have explored this complex and sensitive idea in different mediums and genres over many years. One iteration of this exploration will hit a Vancouver stage this weekend at PuSh Festival. In “Khalil Khalil,” Khalil himself will tell his very own story of being named after his brother who at eleven years old, was martyred by the occupation in the first Intifada. Music, storytelling, dance, and performance art, will be showcased in front of archival footage projected on a screen. Khalil will show audiences what it really means to carry the hopes of families dealing with immeasurable loss while forging an identity of ones own under debilitating circumstances.
Khalil is a Palestinian theater director, performer, and music composer. He works independently across performance and sound under the name BTR / Batr. He has founded Mushtabik, a platform exploring how art can confront reality through live, interactive performance. Bilal is a Palestinian cinematographer and film director who has written and directed several documentary and short films, including Palestine 87 (2022), which was selected for the International Competition at the Clermont-Ferrand Short Film Festival and received the Audience Award. With “Khalil Khalil,” the duo have created a contemporary theatre piece that uses multimedia to tell the multifaceted story of Palestinians who bear the name of their martyred family members. We talked with Khalil and Bilal about their new show. Their answers are presented as one narrative as Khalil’s answers were in Arabic and while Bilal translated for Khalil, he also added his own thoughts to Khalil’s answers, a true reflection of their artistic partnership.
What was the seed for the show? How did it came about and how did your collaboration originate?
Khalil was living in a village called Idhna, near Hebron, and he saw his name on a grave there for the first time. That discovery led him to pursue theater. He started searching for himself, for his story, he wanted to understand the meaning of the story, and his relationship to the story. When he started to study theater, he decided to tell this story. He tried to tell it many times, but he hadn’t really been able to until we met.
Three years ago Khalil and I decided to tell the story together. We started working on a feature film, a feature documentary. Then we shifted our focus to theater, because Khalil is a theater director. He is a music composer and performer as well. So we decided then to do a play. Which was very different from the film. The film focused on Khalil’s family, his community, and his relationship with the community that sees Khalil through his brother. The play is more about Khalil himself. He performs his feelings, and his reflections on the community, on culture, on his name. So there were two projects. Each standalone.
How did you both meet? Were you working in a professional capacity? And then you realized that you have good collaborative energy and wanted to do something together. How did that happen?
I have known Khalil for a long time. We have worked together in theater and film. I’m a cinematographer, and at the time I had started working on a film as a film writer and director. We both live in Ramallah. When we met it was like we knew each other from a long time ago. It was funny actually, I was sitting in a cafe when Khalil showed me a short video of himself dancing, overlaid with old photos of his martyred brother that he was planning to post to social media. That’s when I discovered that Khalil carries the name of his older brother, who was killed in the first Palestinian Intifada when he was eleven years old. I learned about his struggle with his family, the family who saw him through his late brother. I saw his personal struggle of finding his own identity. I felt there was a powerful story there.
His struggle was reaffirmed for me when I later visited his family home in Idhna. I saw pictures of his late brother in every corner of the house. Khalil told me about his brother’s grave and how it drove him to leave the village and study theater. Studying dance became a way for Khalil to find his identity and express his struggle. And I began really to understand Khalil’s struggle living with his brother’s name and memory. Khalil is looking for his own identity. Not the identity that is reflected on to him by his family.
You both are making art in such a difficult circumstance at such a difficult time. How do young Palestinian artists like yourselves grow up thinking that they can be artists at a time like this? What is driving you to make art at a time like this, where does that come from for both of you?
You know, we believe that art is resistance. We are living in a very complex situation. We have to tell the world our story. We believe this is the only way we as artists, can fight, and that’s through art. We always try to find a way, to exist, to survive, and through art, we survive.
It’s like, sometimes you don’t need to see a physical doctor or a therapist. You need to make art. To tell your story, to understand yourself, to understand. What drove me to tell Khalil’s story is when I saw that there are hundreds of Palestinians who have been named after their martyred brothers, sisters, and other family members. It drove me to ask: what does it mean to carry the name of the martyr, and why did families rename their children after them? We wanted to tell these very personal stories.
The personal stories help the world see Palestinians as being something other than heroes or victims. The media want to see us as victims or heroes, but we are humans. It’s all about the human story. When we asked Khalil’s family why they named Khalil after his brother they said that this was their way to fight, because it stops them from being erased. We live under occupation, and the occupation wants to erase us. It’s our way to fight. Through our arts, we fight. Khalil doesn’t like being called an artist. He feels that he is fighter. Like all Palestinians, who are fighters, and each one finds their way.
When you live under occupation, you feel all the time that you have something to say. You have a message for the world, and you find your way to tell it. We are lucky that we have a way to tell our story in different ways, through cinema, through theater, through dance, through performance.
How easily were resources available to you when you were coming up and learning about your craft? How can the resources be made better?
It’s not easy to find the resources here in Palestine, especially nowadays, because of the political situation after October 7th. Khalil and I are independent artists. We developed our work together. And then we got funding from the Institut de France, Les Subs Lyon, Culture Resource (Mawred), Mishkal Grants, British Council in Palestine, and the Goethe Institut. It takes a lot of time to find all these resources and the people who believe in your story. It’s not easy for young artists. There are a very few organizations. If you work with an outside organization, for example a production company from Europe, it’s easier. We are lucky that the world wants to listen to our stories.
We work together in groups, with friends, and then we find our way, because we believe in our story. We could go to work as farmers. We could work in any another field. But this is our way.
It’s not only Palestinians that are having a hard time finding resources to make art. But yes, in Palestine, it’s especially difficult. You sometimes have to sign with associations you don’t want to sign. They could be Zionist. You don’t have freedom to walk around. It’s not easy to move between the cities, so it’s not easy to get a group together. When we decided to work on our play in Bethlehem, it’s less than half an hour away, from Ramallah. But we decided staying there for weeks on end would be easier. We would go there each week. Stay the week. And then come back to Ramallah for one or two days. Nowadays there are also limited spaces like theaters, places for learning, teaching, and training.
When we left Palestine for a bit to develop our work, we got some fresh air. We got some separation from what was happening here, and we got to focus on our work.
So much of what you’re saying is like Isabella Hamad’s book about staging Hamlet in Palestine. How do you balance making art with grief and so much uncertainty around you. How do you make art in such a stressful situation?
When you grow up under occupation, you find a way to survive. I didn’t want to sit at home and watch TV and watch what was happening around the world. That’s why when you walk around in Palestine, you see people sitting in cafes. There is a wedding here, there is a party there. People keep fighting for their lives. This is our way to survive.
I’m not saying that it’s easy and that we are joyous all the time. We compartmentalize our minds. We decide that today I want to focus on my work. Like when you have to cross a checkpoint, you think, the checkpoint is over there, and I have to cross it. If I don’t cross it, I have to go back so I find my way to cross it.
You learn something when you are under occupation. We are not victims, we are not heroes, but we are survivors. Telling Khalil’s story means fighting the community, the occupation. We are fighting on many levels. Art gives us space, gives us a break from all these feelings. Khalil lives in a Muslim family in south Hebron. It’s a traditional community. In traditional communities, they want to see you conform. Khalil wanted to be free from this. Sometimes he, metaphorically, wants to take off his clothes. He wants to show himself and be free.
When you see what’s happened with the Pro-Palestine movement around the world, how people in the streets around the world support us. It’s a kind of cinema. It has come from artists and articles. Not from the media.
Can you talk a little about the multimedia aspect of the play?
This show was my first experience as a theater director. I joined the project with previous experience as a film director. We decided to focus on Khalil. I said, Khalil, I know that you are a dancer, that you are a composer, and you make music. For this project I thought, you have to be yourself. You don’t have to be angry. You don’t have to shout. Be yourself. Go back to your story, go back to yourself. So we started working from this point, that is present in all the scenes, on stage and on film as well. We made it multimedia. Film, theater, dance, music. We mixed it with archival material from the first Palestinian Intifada. We brought it all on stage, and Khalil remakes all the songs as well. This was challenging. And through it all we always thought about showing respect to our community while also being true to ourselves.
I also wanted to mention that this play is more contemporary art than classical theater. We started thinking about mixed media for this play. Every scene can be told through theater, as a monodrama, or in a cinematic way or many other ways still. For example, in one scene you want to talk to your mother. You don’t have to shout. In another scene you can’t talk, so you dance. But the audience can feel why you are dancing.
When the audience sees the archival material, they can see where it comes from too – from Khalil’s imagination, his memory, his thoughts, from his family and what they are thinking, as well. Mixed media helps with that. We talked for hours and hours about this. I say do whatever you want. Just feel it, you know. That’s what freedom is. We are making a case for freedom. It’s all about freedom.
Who were your influences? Who do you look up to and who inspires you?
Khalil is inspired by his mother first and foremost. Then from a lot of music around him and the stories of the people around him. Khalil makes his music through these sounds. He makes all these sounds, they inspire him to create his music.
For me, especially in relation to this story, I love Iranian cinema. But I always go back to my village when I want to tell any story. I’m a farmer. I live in Baytin. It’s a village near Ramallah. I grow crops with my family and I’m connected to our lands. Usually you see Palestinians in the camps, in the city, but I feel there is a missing representation of the villagers. We are Palestinians too. I love to listen to the sounds of nature in my village, to see the open spaces. But yeah, we see a lot of reference to our world especially in Iranian cinema. And Andrei Tarkovsky too.
From the show, what do you hope that young Palestinian kids, who hopefully will get to see this show at some point, will get from watching the show? And how can non-Palestinian audiences better support the Palestinian people after watching the show?
It’s a very simple answer for both audiences, especially for Palestinian kids. The message is that Khalil is looking for freedom. And the occupation is the reason for the suffering and oppression. Khalil can’t be free because of the occupation. The occupation is the reason for everything. So the project is about freedom and about ending the occupation.
For me this project is about names and identity. It asks questions. I’m always asking questions. I never care about answers. Only when we ask questions about freedom can we be free. There are two important questions for us. We are asking the families why they renamed their children after their martyred family members. And what does it mean to carry the name of your martyred family members? The show is about these two questions. And also about freedom. You can ask questions. You don’t have to be silent.
Are you hoping to take this show to other places? What is the future of this show? And then are you working on other things together? What’s the next topic you want to tackle?
The world premiere of the show will be in Vancouver. Then we’ll start working on distributing the play in different theatres around the world. We hope we can show our story in different places around the world.
Aside from that, we are working on the film version of this play. It’s a feature documentary called “My name is Khalil”. It’s a different part of the same story. It looks at Khalil’s relationship with his family and the wider community. We hope to finish it by 2027. After Vancouver, we tour Europe and Palestine. We hope we can touch audiences with our story. And that they love it.
Buy tickets to “Khalil Khalil” here.
– Prachi Kamble