“It was a once-in-a-lifetime adventure. Will I do it again? Almost certainly”

Name the comedian who might say “I wonder if I can set up a comedy club… in a refugee camp… in Palestine?” Of course, it’s Mark Thomas. And that is exactly what he tries to do.

Dodging cultural and literal bullets, Israeli incursions and religion, Mark and his team set out to run a comedy club and put on two nights in Jenin in the West Bank… only to find that it is not so simple to celebrate freedom of speech in a place with so little freedom.

Jenin refugee camp, a stronghold for the al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigade during the Second Intifada, is not a place synonymous with laughs. But it is also home to the Jenin Freedom Theatre and to people with a wealth of stories to tell.

Mark tells this story alongside Faisal Abu Alhayjaa and Alaa Shehada, two performers, actors and now aspiring comics from the Jenin Club. This is a story about being yourself in a place that wants to put you in a box. Funny, moving and necessary. Mark says it’s the nearest he will ever get to Alan Parker’s Fame.

Well, Mark. How did you settle on the idea of a comedy club – in Palestine, and in Jenin in particular?
The idea of the show came while doing book readings in Palestine.
In 2009/2010 I walked the entire length of the Israeli wall in the West Bank and was introduced to the Jenin Freedom Theatre, a theatre in a refugee camp. From my very first encounter, the very existence of this place became an obsession with me.
I love the idea of a theatre in a refugee camp: it completely defies the narrow-minded bigoted vision of a refugee holding out a rice bowl waiting for Bob Geldof and it speaks of our amazing creative energies as a species. The idea of what was happening there, and the injustice of it all, really grabbed me.
I was invited back by the beautiful people who run the Jerusalem Education Bookshop and have since returned a few times. In 2014, I did some book readings in the West Bank and went to visit the Freedom Theatre while they rehearsed a new show. It was thrilling to see such an amazing and creative process and it occurred to me that stand-up workshops might give people in the camp an artistic way of responding quickly to situations as they arise. Stand-up thrives on the immediate.

Clockwise from left: Mark Thomas with performers Alaa Shehada and Faisal Abu Alhayjaa. Pics: Lesley Martin

How similar or different were the topics people were coming up with in the Jenin comedy club, to the topics you might hear in an average UK comedy club? 
All comedy is specific to people’s lives: but because those lives are different, the circumstances that they live under are different. What you can see are the similarities and differences. Someone might be talking about queuing for the bathroom, and the next minute they might be talking about queuing at a check-point. The important thing is that people talk about their lives.

What were the highs and lows, pleasures and challenges, of this whole experience?
Come and see the show, it details them all!
The joys of doing this show: well, it’s quite mad to do four years of comedy workshops and then bounce out of that into doing a live show. It’s taken four years to plan it, and it happened because lots of people didn’t say ‘no’. Everyone we spoke to thought it was a good idea: agents, performers, one of the most prominent theatres in London accepting a script, Jenin Freedom Theatre opening their arms… it is all so amazing. When you think about it, to make a leap of faith like this is quite outstanding. … I think that the very fact that this has managed to happen is a testimony to what we can do and what we can achieve, to the power of ‘yes’.

So, what form does Showtime… take? Do you, Faisal and Alaa essentially tell us the story of the comedy club?
It’s actually a play, and if you want to find a reference point to it, the best place to look is [the Scottish left-wing theatre troupe] 7:84. They did a show up in Scotland called The Cheviot, The Stag and the Black Black Oil. It was an incredible show that used the form of a ceilidh to tell the story of people being dispossessed from the land – and we’ve kind of taken that as a benchmark, in the sense that you don’t have to have a straight play. We’ve used stand-up, storytelling, reportage, sketches and scenes to create the story.

What legacy do you hope to have left behind in Jenin?
We insisted that the teachers from the Jenin Freedom Theatre attend the comedy workshop so that the techniques and the teachings stay in Jenin. We also hoped to do further work, but we’re not discussing it at the moment. We will have to wait and see what type of legacy gets left behind.

Do you think humour has a role to play in making people’s lives better?
Obviously I do! One, it materially improves my financial existence. Two, getting someone to laugh, moving someone from a stage of not laughing to laughing, is good for you. Also, what the show proves (I hope) is that all jokes are stories, and when you see people perform their jokes and their stories, you see the similarities and differences in their lives and our lives, and when you see that, you get to experience empathy and that’s no bad thing.

Would you ever do something like this again (elsewhere)?
This was a once-in-a-lifetime adventure that worked by chance and operated on a shoestring. The likelihood of us pulling it off was very low. What are the chances of me doing it again? Almost certainly I’ll be trying to do this again.

Mark Thomas brings Showtime from the Frontline to Bristol Old Vic on Monday,. Feb 12. For more info, visit bristololdvic.org.uk/show-time-from-the-front-line.html