A relentless dissection of the passive violence of mass media
At the time of writing this review, 73,928 people have been killed in Gaza (Al Jazeera, 25/9/26) since Israeli forces began what the UN’s Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory has deemed a genocide on the people of Gaza. Three years into this there is a sense amongst many in support of the Palestinian people that violent state power, across many states, is being used to curb the support of the general public. The cost of Western comfort is once again being challenged, and the new play by Béznă theatre sits exactly in this discomfort. With a cast and creative team from vastly different backgrounds, this distance between individuals is as exposed as the distance between the BBC’s reporting of events and the realities of Palestinian lives in Gaza, an impactful side effect of the innovative ways the team explore the latter, more primary topic of the play. We are left with a play that is relentlessly cold, committed to wit, and resistant to emotions, breaking down the media’s suppression of Palestinian voices as much as a mathematical equation. This is what makes The First Year (of the Gaza Genocide in the Media) such an effective piece of work. Its commitment to brechtian techniques, uncommon to this extent in today’s theatre landscape, makes it a truly revolutionary piece of work.
This does not play out flawlessly, which is part of what makes it such an active experience. The show follows a series of scenes and vignettes, some following the lives of Palestinians inflicted by the violence, some following and dissecting how this was reported. It’s most effective in moments like a side-by-side comparison of the Nuseirat massacre and a mathematical dissection of the media’s use of empathy, performed with precision and vigour by Sara Masry, a standout in the show. The whole cast pulls their weight in performance. Sometimes, it is clear the material is tricky to work with, not only in topic but in format. Jumping between these meta dissections of the timeline and more intimate monologues from interviews by real people can fog the narrative a bit. Clarity is lost a bit in the play, but whilst it could do with some tightening, this lack of clarity is not entirely a limit of the play–it’s one of the things which pushes the audience to be active participants in the timeline they see playing before them. The First Year thrusts its audience into the narrative without begging or forcing them to. Early on, the audience is given a choice to leave—from that point onwards, when you don’t, it is clear that you have agreed to hear their every word.
These relationships—between cast, writer, director, audience—transpire onstage so opaquely it makes for a difficult but effective watch at times. Actors are given more leeway to expose their opinion on the piece throughout. Some leave and re-enter during. Some break character and laugh at the script they are being made to read. It’s incredibly strange to watch such raw discomfort, and it goes a long way to expose exactly what it looks like to try and make work around a topic of such targeted violence. There is a moment from an anonymous writer, presumably not Palestinian, who dissects their own discomfort from a previous scene around a line referring to a character who is being rescued. The actors perform these words with great scepticism, and the words themselves are well considered and candid to the point of real unease. The inclusion of this moment shows a real commitment to lighting every dark and awkward corner of this narrative.
The play ends on a note that perfectly encapsulates the tone of the play—cold, relentless, exhausting. True, really, to how the past few years have landed. The First Year (of the Gaza Genocide in the Media) snaps at your attention, during a time when more and more distraction is designed to lure us away.