Music City is a beautiful place where everyone spends their days playing music and dancing. Each year the King organizes a big music festival, inviting musicians from all over the world to perform. But this year things starts to go wrong: the people who have spent all their life dancing and playing music have not worked, the children have not gone to school and the fields have not been tended to and thus yield no crops.
One of the King’s ministers suggests a solution: every man, woman and child in the kingdom are to work all day and all night for a week in order to pay taxes and buy tickets to the festival. The people agree, because they love music. But the instruments, believing that this decision is unjust, start playing the magic notes of a revolution.
The Freedom Theatre is proud to present its first professional play for children: Magic Note, inspired by the German folktale The Pied Piper of Hemline. The play is written and directed by Ahmed Tobasi, a former student of The Freedom Theatre School who has spent the last five years making a career for himself as an actor in Norway. He is very happy to be back at The Freedom Theatre, sharing his skills and experiences with new generations of aspiring actors.
– This is what I wanted to do even before I left Palestine, Ahmed says. In many ways directing this play is my dream come true. I get to do what I believe in, in the way that I feel is right for my community. I can see that me returning to Jenin and to The Freedom Theatre motivates the students and puts a certain kind of sparkle into their acting.
When asked why he chose this particular piece Ahmed says that to him, Magic Note symbolizes life in Palestine. His main aim with the play is to bring children on a journey to a magic place, far away from the reality in which they live, where they can imagine, learn and reflect upon what they see.
Although Magic Note is primarily a children’s play, Ahmed believes it is relevant for any age. – All of us have lost our childhood in a way. Our society is not like most others in that sense. I hope whole families will come to see the play, as there are many lessons in it for children as well as for adults. We need to take care of the children and we can’t accept everything, we have to try to change what we don’t agree with.
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Magic Note opens on Saturday January 25th, at 15:00. Performances will then be given throughout January 26 to 31, at 15:00. Special school performances are also scheduled. The performances will be followed by workshops where the actors discuss the themes of the play through dynamic games with the audience.
Magic Note is produced in cooperation with the Nordic Black Theatre in Norway. The play is supported by the Swedish Postcode Lottery and by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, Sida.