The focus of this article is a critical evaluation of the impact of international development and conflict-resolution funding on theatre in the Occupied Palestinian Territories. The article complicates the predominant narrative of theatre as ‘cultural resistance’ in conflict zones by historicizing the Ford Foundation's role in the institutionalization of Palestinian drama; delineating the effects of neo-liberal state building and development on Palestinian modes of performance; and subsequently, analysing the Freedom Theatre's imbrication in a normative, humanitarian logic. Aid, while ensuring the material conditions for the growth of the Palestinian performing arts, promoted a structural dependency that emptied the language of anti-colonial resistance of emancipatory potential, generating a soft, phantom sovereignty for the audience of the international community. By reimagining ‘freedom’ as liberation from a backward, conservative society, the language of the human rights industry and its attendant cultural economy spawns a spectral ‘cultural resistance’ where freedom and nationhood appear real and unreal – visions refracting, but not existing in, reality.

中文翻译：

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论自由剧场的（不可能）可能性：反对巴勒斯坦发展的剧场

本文的重点是对国际发展和冲突解决资金对巴勒斯坦被占领土剧院的影响进行批判性评估。这篇文章通过历史化福特基金会在巴勒斯坦戏剧制度化中的作用，使戏剧作为冲突地区“文化抵抗”的主要叙述复杂化；描述新自由主义国家建设和发展对巴勒斯坦表现模式的影响；随后，分析了自由剧院在规范的人道主义逻辑中的影响。援助在确保巴勒斯坦表演艺术发展的物质条件的同时，促进了结构性依赖，清空了解放潜力的反殖民抵抗语言，产生了一种软、对国际社会的观众来说是幻影主权。通过将“自由”重新想象为从落后、保守的社会中解放出来，人权产业的语言及其伴随的文化经济催生了一种幽灵般的“文化阻力”，自由和民族性在其中显得真实和不真实——愿景折射，但不存在于，现实。