Rachel Halliburton

Last year, Royal Court audiences were treated to a devastating yet humorous portrait of the increasingly desperate situation in the Middle East. A group of Palestinian actors devised a series of monologues based on the hardships they were witnessing daily.

Al-Kasaba Theatre, based in Ramallah, has always been keen to emphasise that its theatre places the personal above the political. Obviously there is a point when the two cannot be separated, yet in this production, Alive From Palestine, comic moments - such as the scene in a restaurant where two lovers enmesh fingers across a restaurant table, and exchange a rubber-bullet as a love-token - the company evokes both the horrors and the mundanities of violence in their lives.

This piece of theatre is constantly evolving in response to the political situation as it develops. Playing to packed houses in Ramallah, even under shelling, the company now comes to the Young Vic for its second London run.

Alive From Palestine