In Gaza, actors perform a war they are still living

Abu Qasai Qaddoura, a 42-year-old who previously worked behind the camera, now travels two hours on foot through rubble-strewn side streets to reach rehearsals for 50 Minutes in Gaza. He lives with his wife and three children — Ghazal, 15; Qusai, 12; and Sham, 7 — in a single rooftop room sheltered by a plastic tarp after his home in al-Tawam was destroyed by Israeli airstrikes. Limited resources shape his mornings: he buys firewood at seven shekels per kilogram when he can, or scavenges cardboard or wood to light a small fire for cooking and warmth before washing soot from his hands and leaving for rehearsal.

Under director Ali Abu Yasin, a veteran actor and playwright with 37 years’ experience, the company transforms recent, documented wartime experiences into scenes for the stage. One scene re-enacts a filmed account of a father in a Gaza hospital: an actor portraying a doctor must attempt an amputation on a baby without anaesthetic. For Qaddoura, the performance carries intense personal weight — he says holding the child on stage brought his own children’s faces to mind and produced uncontrollable tears and physical collapse during rehearsals.

The production itself emerged from a writing workshop supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation in April 2026. Fourteen people were originally slated to participate but conflict-related injuries, displacement and travel constraints reduced the group to eight performers who ultimately chose to present the finished script themselves. The foundation covered basic production costs and provided small honoraria rather than regular salaries; many participants continue to rely largely on humanitarian aid.

Producing theatre in Gaza has become increasingly difficult as venues have been damaged or destroyed. Abu Yasin’s longtime theatres were hit in previous rounds of fighting — Al-Mishal Cultural Centre was destroyed in 2018 and the Rashad al-Shawa Cultural Centre was damaged in 2023 — and UNESCO recorded damage to 164 cultural sites in Gaza by March 2026, including 128 buildings of historical or artistic interest. Rehearsals have been staged in makeshift fabric-and-plastic tents, a car park, and later a small partitioned room in a partially damaged café, all amid the noise of displaced families, drones and nearby gunfire.

For the company, continuing to perform is about more than employment. Abu Yasin and the actors describe the work as a way to process trauma and offer audiences an outlet for shared experience. Despite exhaustion, security risks and scarce resources, the cast returns to the stage to channel daily realities into dramatic scenes and to sustain a cultural practice that has been battered by years of conflict.