Between 2002 and 2007, Emilie Pirdas and Emilien Urbach organized and participated in seven trips of the Sรฎn Company to the occupied Palestinian territories. They also hosted several artists working in the West Bank in France multiple times. In 2002, as Palestine was engulfed in violence, they traveled the roads destroyed by Israeli tanks with the intention of meeting these artists who, despite the war, continued to keep hope alive. By 2007, the “wall of shame” was nearly finished being erected, and the semblance of a return to calm masked a much more inhumane reality: the imprisonment of an entire people. From these stays, Emilie and Emilien retain bitterness and horror, but also the joy and vital energy of a people resisting the Israeli colossus and their own ghosts. Through a montage of texts by Darwish, Genet, Bรฉnaรฏssa, testimonies collected from the populations they met, and videos made after each stay, the artists of the Sรฎn Company attempt to provide a sensitive account of these five years spent encountering a humanity martyred by the absurdity of war.
During the tour in the West Bank in autumn 2007, for the puppet show of the Sรฎn Company, “The Tree of Palaver,” Emilien Urbach met the founders of the Freedom Theater in the Jenin refugee camp. Israeli-Palestinian Juliano Mer Khamis is the director and has made a must-see documentary film:
“THE CHILDREN OF ARNA.” Following the performance of “Testimonies,” the Sรฎn Company offers a SCREENING.
