Ahmed Tobasi, the artistic director of the Freedom Theatre, was woken by the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) pounding on the door of his house in Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank. Immediately, he knew it was another raid. 

Dec. 13 was the beginning of the largest raid in Jenin in over 20 years. Over the course of three days, the Israeli military raided Tobasi’s home and multiple others, as well as the Freedom Theatre. The IDF detained him and about 100 other Palestinians — several of whom were Freedom Theatre members. 

“The Freedom Theatre is a cultural, artistic place where we have children, girls, boys, women, who come to practice, to find the place where they can express themselves, where they can imagine there is a better life,” said Tobasi to Democracy Now. “[The Israeli soldiers] arrest us as artists, as people who do theater, they destroy everything that shows there is culture, that there is art, that we Palestinians are a normal people.”

Dozens of UC Santa Cruz professors from the Department of Performance, Play, and Design signed a letter to the editor that was published in Lookout Santa Cruz on Dec. 26, 2023 and in City on a Hill Press on Jan. 14, 2024. The letter condemned Israel’s abductions of the theater members.

“If we do not stand up in solidarity with our friends at Freedom Theatre, the oppression of artistic and cultural voices lives on in all of our creative communities,” the letter stated. “A threat to artistic freedom anywhere is a threat to artistic freedom everywhere.”

The signatories came together when the Freedom Theatre sent out messages via email and social media on Dec. 13, asking people to speak out against the abductions. 

“It felt really important for me and a number of my colleagues to take action, because we feel there is no difference between the theater-makers here and the theater-makers in a place like Palestine,” said Amy Mihyang Ginther, an associate professor of theater arts. “We all should be allowed to state our art free of oppression, free of imprisonment.”

Ginther explained that Sayda Trujillo was invited to take a UCSC residency from Jan.16-18 as a way to uplift the work of the Freedom Theatre. They also invited her to deepen students’ understanding of the Israel-Palestine conflict, and share her own diasporic story.

Trujillo is currently an assistant professor at Cal Poly Pomona specializing in voice and movement. She also taught at the Freedom Theatre for six months in 2013, and has traveled globally learning about the ways theater happens in various corners of the world.

“[In] my work with the Freedom Theatre, I was a guest there to teach boys, but I learned so much more from them,” Trujillo said. “There was no separation between their work in the theater and the work every day in their homes and in the streets. […] The theater they were making was about resistance and real stories, losses, hopes, and dreams.”

On Jan. 16, she also held a public discussion about models of resistance developed at the Freedom Theatre. Throughout the conversation, she explored the concept of using joy and art as acts of resistance, and viewing artists as being fundamental to justice.

“I hope students leave with an understanding that they have a role in diagnosing the colonial present that we’re living through and working to use their skills to intervene in state violence,” said Dr. Jennifer Kelly, one of the conversationalists. 

On Jan. 17, Trujillo exhibited her performance, Win War or Tell Me a Story, at the Mainstage Theater. Inspired by her time in Palestine, the one-woman “physical theatre” piece takes a look at the effects of war and the power of story, following moments from her childhood in war-torn Guatemala to her experience of witnessing Israel’s violence towards Palestinians.

“The Freedom Theatre is an oasis, the Freedom Theatre is a place where people express and create and transform, and so to shut that down is actually also a threat for any of us,” said Trujillo. “In the end, what we do is powerful, to keep our joy is powerful, to not harden is powerful, and I think power structures are fearful of our joy.”

Additional reporting provided by Franny Trinidad.