Scotland is giving this essential art the platform it has been denied

The National

08-06-2025

Although many hundreds – including some very big names – signed, several notable artistic directors of buildings I have worked in chose not to respond.
Meanwhile, in Scotland, the prestigious Edinburgh International Festival has proudly programmed Ahmed Masoud's exceptionally powerful short play, The Florist Of Rafah, which is part of Cutting The Tightrope, a collection of pieces by 14 eminent playwrights that explore the art's and society's unprecedented censorship of Palestine.
Cutting The Tightrope's journey from London to Scotland is a story of rags to riches. In May 2024, these short political plays went on in the small studio at the Arcola Theatre in East London as a totally unfunded rapid response piece. Put together in a fortnight, they were staged against the backdrop of Israel's decision to hold 2.3 million people hostage by closing their borders, while threatening to cross Joe Biden's 'red line' with a ground invasion of Rafah – an ancient city which a year later barely exists.
Meanwhile, the Charity Commission's clause of 'political neutrality' had been so weaponised by Israeli lobby groups that Arts Council England (ACE) – an organisation that is supposed to protect artistic freedom – updated its policy guidelines to warn that anyone in a regularly funded arts organisation making 'political statements' could cause 'reputational damage' and therefore 'breach funding agreements'.
READ MORE: 'Joy, celebration and warmth' of Palestinian art to be showcased at Edinburgh Fringe
Although subsequently retracted, a FOI request revealed the statement had been made immediately after a meeting between ACE and the UK Government about Israel/Palestine and the message was clear: speak out and your organisation may lose government funding. The National Theatre, which had projected the Ukrainian flag on its building's expansive white wall, now chose to say nothing at all.
Although Cutting The Tightrope's first run garnered rave reviews, and instantly sold out with long waiting lists, ACE still rejected a small bid made to transfer the show to the Arcola's main house. Its reason was revealing. It ticked the box that claimed other shows were 'more likely to make a difference', despite ours being the only show about the genocide playing to packed audiences, who yearned a creative space to unleash their grief and rage and find much-needed solidarity. I wonder what ACE now makes of our being selected by the International Festival to showcase the best of British theatre to an international audience.
The very silence adopted by ACE and major English theatres to preserve their position has simultaneously made them even more irrelevant. By obeying the command to look the other way, they have lost the devotion of artists brave enough to speak out, imaginative enough to think outside the box and collaborative enough to together create phenomenally ambitious work against all odds.
Aghast, these artists stepped into the void and used their talents to protest, creating work enormous in its necessity, bravery, emotional weight, urgency and impact – thereby attracting in droves the new young and truly diverse audience the theatre so needs to survive.
After 19 months, an unstoppable new art movement has been forming across disciplines: a movement of rebellion. Like Dadaism emerging from the ruins of world war, this urgent movement is born from the ruins of Western values, placing solidarity, integrity and the artist's voice at its core. And where have these radical artists – penalised or ignored in most of the UK – found a platform? Scotland.
Take Gaza Biennale – Jinnaah UK whose importance in celebrating, supporting and documenting more than 50 artists in Palestine confronting genocide cannot be overstated. Until recently, the current and lost artworks of these artists – who by facing erasure must surely be the most critical and precious of our time – were relegated to being projected by GB-JUK on to the walls of cultural institutions in London. In Scotland, however, three of their artists are currently being proudly displayed along the Edinburgh Pavilion.
In one of Cutting The Tightrope's short plays, Dare Not Speak, a murdered girl, Hind, ends the play with a premonition that she will haunt the dreams of an artistic director. Sometimes I wonder, when watching the play, if there will soon be any artistic directors left to haunt, if mainstream English theatres continue to limp so feebly behind the politics of the day.
Cutting the Tightrope will run from August 14 to 17 at the Edinburgh International Festival