Interview: Julia Pascal

Unlike many works that attempt to address the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, it seeks to reflect more than one point of view.

I feel that it is my duty to show all sides of the conflict

"I think that it's the playwright's duty not to take a simplistic line," says Pascal. "I've been examining what plays have been done on Israel [in Britain] over the past 50 years, and almost all of them have been from an anti-Zionist point of view. So, because of who is allowed to write about Israel and who is commissioned to write about Israel, you only get the simplistic Israel-bad/Palestinian-good point of view through the plays we have seen. I fee it's my duty to show all sides. Whether that's comfortable or not is another question. It's the kaleidoscope that's important."

But surely a playwright has the right to approach a subject with a fully formed opinion and reflect it in the work.

"Yes, but it has to be well-informed,'' says Pascal. "A play by a Palestinian about Palestine is going to have some lived experience, texture, colour, history and insider knowledge. What I find disturbing is where a play is constructed to support a particular point of view and it's coming from the outside in rather than the inside out."

Such as?

"Caryl Churchill's Seven Jewish Children [2009] and Jim Allen's Perdition [1987]; both works have been accused of antisemitic]. Both are written from political points of view from the outside. Fine, but that's the dominant culture and only one expression about Israel is worrying. Which is why I want my work out there. I looked at what has been done recently and it is either a desert or the extreme left point of view, which is written from the outside to prove a point rather than from the inside with knowledge."

To write from the inside, and with knowledge, Pascal draws on her time spent in Israel.

"I've been in Israel a lot, I've lived in Israel, I know the voices. I understand the points of view and I kind of agree with them all, which is what happens when you write a play. And I think that gives me a difference as a writer. I've breathed the air, heard the sounds." Pascal has also walked through the same streets that her character Varda walks in the play.

"I was walking through [East] Jerusalem with my husband who is French. And I said we must never speak English because we will be taken for Americans and therefore as Jews. I'm not going to meet people that way. I spent some time talking to Arabs about Israel and they took me for a French Catholic. I heard material which I then put in the play."

Pascal admits to being shocked by some of the opinions she heard. "I was fairly shocked to hear the Arab desire for a Jew-free Israel. A kind of ethnic cleansing," she says. That view is expressed in the play. But then so is the equally uncompromising Israeli view about Arabs. When a Palestinian says, in so many words, "we want our country back", Varda replies: "You have 22 Arab countries. Why don't you go there?"

"That kind of thing is mildly shocking to hear on a British stage," says Pascal. "But it is what some Jews say in private."

Despite these views, Pascal is more optimistic about the prospects for Israelis and Palestinians than she was when the play was first seen in 2003.

"I've met educated Palestinians who are into coexistence, and also Arab actors auditioning for the play in London. It has been interesting. Quite a few of them are Jews whose family converted to Islam in their family history. It's a kind of dirty secret. And so they are not anti-Jewish at all. And neither are they nationalistically pro-Arab. They have perspective."

Beyond her life as a playwright, Pascal has an academic side. She is currently working on a PhD, the rather niche-sounding thesis of which is "The Absence of Jewish Women Characters on the British Stage from 1945 to Today".

"I have been reading everything that everybody has ever written in English theatre and I've come across certain stereotypes. Jewish women are either completely sanctified or the dominating Jewish matriarch."

Her own play is a rare exception, she maintains.

"I've come to realise that my writing challenges stereotypes of Jewish women," says Pascal. The women in Crossing Jerusalem are a case in point. "If you look at the character Lee, she works with Arab and Jewish young people to try and create some sort of peace, yet she has quite a promiscuous life in order to revenge herself against her estranged mother.

"Then you have Yael, a Sephardi character who at first looks quite submissive but is actually quite challenging to the Ashkenazi community and connects to the Palestinian Arabs on a cultural level.

"And in Varda you have a 58-year-old businesswoman who is sexy, funny, rude, political and highly active.

"That's the kind of complex view of Jewish women you just don't see anywhere else."

parktheatre.co.uk

'Crossing Jerusalem', The Park theatre until Aug 29. www.parktheatre.co.uk