Have you heard the one about six Palestinian stand-ups who walk into a theatre?

Daniel Nelson

Six stand-up comedians on a tour of Palestine? You must be joking.

They are. And (most) audiences are laughing.

Why did they do it? Partly perhaps because laughter is the best medicine - and in Palestine sometimes it’s the only one.

“We can’t cry all the time,” says one of the six, Alaa Shehada. “We want to smile a little bit.

“It’s a very beautiful feeling when you make people laugh. Gorgeous.

“It is very important to laugh and share our stories,” he explains, “because of the tragedy that we are living every day.” 

The documentary film of the 2022 trip, Palestine Comedy Club, joins the group as they prepare for the tour and accompanies them on the road as they nervously negotiate military checkpoints and disparate communities with varied and often conflicting cultural, religious, social and political attitudes, including differing Red Lines for what is and is not acceptable.

A wry dialogue with God, for example, is ok on some stages but has to be cut on others; not everyone in Beit Awwa thinks it funny to draw attention to the village’s eyesore garbage heaps; feisty female performers may need “to put filters to make people accept you”. One recalls being boycotted after a show about Christianity: “We don’t understand each other well.”

Such issues have to be considered at every venue — as do the effects of Israeli occupation, such as the difficulty of  getting hospital treatment when one of the team falls ill or when a show is cancelled after a man is shot dead outside the theatre.

Only brief clips of the stand-up routines are featured in the film, which focuses on the experience of life on the road and on the concerns and work of the six: Alaa Shehada, Hanna Shammas, Ebaa Monther, Diana Sweity, Khalil Al-Batran and Raed Al-Shyoukhi from Haifa, Ramallah, Jenin, Hebron and the Golan Heights. 

The film is not just a record of an unusual tour and a fascinating insight into the personalities and attitudes of the six performers: quietly and implicitly it also reveals details of Palestinian life uncaptured in more earnest documentaries.

Towards the end there’s an unexpected twist when three of the stand-ups are offered gigs in England, which adds another layer of complexity, because of having to perform in English. It’s proof, says Shehada, that they have achieved one of their aims, “opening the door of stand-up comedy in Palestine.”

The England tour began on 7 October 2023.