Writer: Alaa Shehada
Director: Katrien van Beurden & Thomas van Ouwerkerk
Fresh from its sell-out Edinburgh Fringe run and a stack of five-star reviews, Alaa Shehada’s haunting one-man coming-of-age comedy The Horse of Jenin lands in the Bush’s Studio. Tickets are scarce for good reason, and the piece transfers to the Bush’s much larger Main Space in January. The show crackles with rowdy, open-hearted humour, but beneath the surface sits tightly controlled anger. The result is a portrait of a boy clawing joy and hope from circumstances designed to crush both, carried by a performer with comic instincts sharp enough to draw blood.
Jenin on the West Bank has lived under de facto Israeli military occupation since 1967, a long, grinding continuum of control punctuated by violent flashpoints. Shehada draws on stand-up, physical theatre, commedia dell’arte-style masks, and near-relentless audience interaction to chart a childhood shaped by rubble, raids, and the daily choreography of growing up under occupation. In less talented hands, The Horse of Jenin could be sentimental, but Shehada’s focus is on innocence, resilience, and faith in the face of loss, as well as on the power of storytelling to bring healing.
The narrative is episodic, memories pulled from the wreckage and held up to the light. In 1991, we see Shehada’s grandfather kissing the newborn baby and gifting him with a toy horse. In 2000, we see him playing on the streets of Jenin with his best friend, Ahmed, whose presence is brought to life through voiceless, cartoon-like, mime vignettes. We see schoolteacher Samir, who has the city’s first mobile phone and doubles as a taxi driver, insist on teaching Shehada and his peers English. Why? So that they can tell the world about the occupation. The world arrives in the form of a TV News presenter, dismayed to find that Ahmed is not digging for his family’s remains but to liberate his PlayStation from the rubble, and a ditsy American counsellor who insists the boys “take the trauma out and kiss it goodbye”.
Later, we see the boys throwing stones and shoes, sharing their first cigarette, and climbing a 5-metre-high metal sculpture of a horse, constructed by a German artist from the remains of bombed-out cars and ambulances. The horse, a traditional Arabic symbol of freedom, becomes a meeting point for teenage play and the location for Shehada’s first, disastrous date. Shehada, who wants to be an artist, lands a place at Jenin’s Freedom Theatre school where, in a twist one literally could not make up, he takes a lead role in an Arabic version of Pinter’s The Caretaker. The piece ends with a loss that one can see coming, but it is a hefty punch to the gut, nonetheless. The Horse of Jenin deserves all those five-star reviews.
Runs until 20 December 2025, then at the Bush’s Main Space 14 to 22 January 2026.
