AN EMOTIONAL performance bringing together pro-Palestinian activists from Belfast and musicians from Cork has given voice to people under siege in Gaza in the face of a world that has too often turned its back on their suffering.
In a unique and powerful collaboration, the plight of Gazans – sisters, brothers, fathers, mothers – was heard at the extraordinary performance at St Comgall’s as part of Féile an Phobail.
Women from the Belfast-based Mothers Against Genocide read the Gaza Monologues in a poignant piece of work that was accompanied by music and song from signer-songwriter Martin Leahy, cellist Gerry Kelly, Thaddeus Ó Buachalla on the oud and saxophonist Moze Jacobs.
The Monologues are an original work by the ASHTAR Theatre Collective based in Ramallah, Palestine, and feature authentic and personal stories of people from Gaza which have been translated into 14 languages and performed around the world since 2010. There have been new additions since 2024, telling of the onslaught on Gaza.
The Cork-Belfast collaboration on Sunday was a powerful and emotional performance that brought hope and solidarity to those in attendance at a time when many people feel powerless as the Palestinian people in Gaza cling to life while around them people are murdered in droves.
The Monologues speak of pain, sorrow, desperation, hopelessness, anger and abandonment by the wider world. The music that accompanied them fed us hope and resilience.
Singer-songwriter Martin Leahy raised the spirits with his song Palestine and ended the Monologues with the powerful We Remember, played while Gaza native Nasser Al Swirki rolled off the names of Palestinian villages and towns that Israel has destroyed since 1948.
Speaking after the performance Martin talked about working with Nasser on the song.
“He is naming the stolen and eradicated villages but he only names 80, there were hundreds and hundreds," he said.
“I always had an idea that I wanted to do an Irish-Palestinian collaboration album but I suppose that after the events of October 7th when it became very obvious that Israel was engaged in collective punishment the day after, it propelled me to write the song Palestine which I sang at the first protest in Cork on Saturday 14th October (2023).”
Reading one of the Gaza Monologues at St Comgall's
Nasser said the Gaza Monologues have toured the world, including the United Nations in New York.
Now living in Cork, he added: “We have a solidarity group in Skibbereen and we started to gather people to read the Monologues and from there it developed to theatre performance and we started to perform it in Cork and then to Skibbereen and now in Belfast.
“What’s new about this project is that the readers are not the same. You go to the area and you find people there and they will read the Monologues. For us Belfast is a special place and we know that they have strong feelings towards Palestine and towards the Palestinian cause, so we have met this amazing group (Mothers Against Genocide). They read the Monologues with all of their minds, with all of their hearts. It was very emotional and it was lovely. And also the audience received them in a nice way.”
Ana Kerr from Mothers Against Genocide read one of the Monologues.
“The rehearsals went really well but the difference on the day was so impactful,” she said. “When the director told us to slow down just before the performance, I didn’t expect how much that would shift everything. The weight of the words settled in differently.
“Speaking slowly gave space for the emotion to breathe – for the truth of the monologue to land not just with the audience, but with me. By the time I finished, I had tears in my eyes. In reading one of the Gaza Monologues, I felt the weight of a thousand unheard voices – and the honour of carrying just one of them for a moment."
Fellow group member Margaret Deevy said it was an "honour to be part of this moving performance".
"Knowing that we were speaking the words from someone in Gaza was incredible. Sharing their experiences, their hopes and fears in a room surrounded by lists of names of martyrs was profound. This experience will stay with me forever.”
Sinead Owens from Mothers Against Genocide agreed.
“Performing the Gaza Monologues was such a moving and emotional afternoon and will be a memory I cherish,” she said. “It was an honour to amplify the voices of those in Gaza. To read their words puts the focus on them and their humanity: human beings deserving of life and happiness instead of enduring the ongoing genocide.
"Free Palestine.”
