Rebels and Patriots, a timely theatre piece hits Edinburgh Fringe

Floating Shed are not afraid to confront difficult issues and challenge public opinion. The multi-disciplinary theatre company weaves different methods of storytelling together to highlight the problems of the modern world. The company was established in 2020 by Royal Birmingham Conservatoire graduates Tom Dalrymple and Nadav Burstein, and their first play in 2022 explored themes of conversion therapy and homophobia. Now, in 2024, and not afraid to talk about polarising topics, the duo are bringing Rebels & Patriots to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. 

The show bravely explores the political situation and conflict in Israel and follows writer Nadav’s real-life journey from mandatory IDF conscription to becoming an actor and theatre producer.  

We caught up with Nadav to find out more about the performance.

Can you tell us a bit more about the background and Rebels & Patriots, and how it came to fruition? Rebels & Patriots started as notes in my diary as a soldier in the IDF and is based on my experiences and those of my closest childhood friends from Tel-Aviv in the army. Like all young people in Israel, we were mandatorily conscripted at eighteen. Mandatory service is two years and eight months, but after eleven months of service I decided I couldn’t stay in the army anymore for several reasons – some to do with my mental health and some to do with the complicated political reality in which I was living and to which I was hyper-exposed. 

As I left the army I encountered a book by French philosopher Albert Camus; ‘The Myth Of Sisyphus’. It’s a book about the theory of the absurd world and Camus talks about the ways in which a person can deal with the absurd world around them. I read the book at a time when a reality I thought to be true was collapsing around me, and everything seemed very much absurd. One of the things he talks about is becoming an actor. I could talk about his book for pages on end, so I’ll stop here and recommend anyone to read his writings, but it was he that opened my mind to the possibility of becoming an actor, and it was because of his words that I moved to the UK and applied and trained at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire. 

Through my journey of developing an artistic voice and vision, I found myself getting to know myself and my experiences better through an artistic lens, so turning those notes from my time in the army into a theatrical piece made sense. In the six years following my release from the army those notes grew and became a play that has been through many drafts and rewrites, and now is the version of Rebels & Patriots that we’ll be presenting at the Edinburgh Fringe.I met some incredible creatives during my time in training, one of them, Tom Dalrymple, is the co-founder of our theatre company Floating Shed. We’ve been working together for a few years and our first project, ‘Passion’, touched on subjects of conversion therapy and homophobia and was how we began our shared journey as theatre makers. Tom is part of the creating ensemble for Rebels & Patriots and has been crucial to the making of this show from the first Research and Development we did for the piece until now. Another dear friend and collaborator of mine, Harvey Schorah, is the third member of the ensemble. He was raised in a family of British soldiers and police officers, and so it was clear to me that he could understand the Israeli character that’s based on a childhood friend of mine and that he’s playing in the piece to such an incredibly detailed depth. Harvey was there in the first R&D of the piece too. The newest member of the company is Palestinian theatre-maker Tarik Badwan. I met Tarik as an actor on a project that he directed for the Camden Fringe called ‘Jerusalem 48’; a show about a post-apocalyptic world where governments have collapsed that examines a survival-based relationship between an Arab and a Jew. Since then, we’ve found a special creative and collaborative relationship and find great strength in working together. We live in such a polarised world where people like me and Tarik don’t get to co-create work about our experiences and views. We know our venture together is an important testament for co-existence. Tarik experiences have informed the writing of the current draft greatly, and it was important for me that he informs the way the character he’s playing is being written; an Arab-Israeli who’s conscripted to the IDF. 

Our play was shortlisted for the Charlie Hartill Reserve at the Pleasance and we ended up being finalists in it, and so when the Pleasance offered us a slot this summer we couldn’t resist. It was a positive push towards making the show happen, because as a writer you never feel like a project is ready for production, and of course making this kind of political show at the Fringe has many difficulties; financial, creative and more. We’ve now started diving deep into the creative exploration of the show and can’t wait to share it with you all this August. 

Has it been a challenge translating your real-life experiences into a performance piece?

There are many obvious challenges in making a piece of theatre that’s based on real experiences, but I’d say that for me, the emotional proximity I have to the narrative and events was quite helpful when it came to translating it into a performance piece. The piece went through several ‘translations’ too. Originally written as notes in Hebrew, I then started writing it dramatically in English, then a few years back re-translated it to Hebrew and worked on it like that for a while, until I translated it to English again two years ago for the current life it has. This toing and froing of translation was really helpful in terms of the dramatic translation of the events to a theatrical space. It’s almost like reducing a sauce with two saucepans. I ended up with a distilled or reduced version that is informed by a theatrical language that I learned in England mixed with a personal experience I had in Hebrew, from Israel. I also think that in terms of my personal journey towards healing after my time in the army and in a deeply wounded society, being able to write about and play with my experiences as narratives or stories has been a real privilege and a way for me to understand many things about how I feel or have felt. It’s a great way to process life and see it as a story, because in the end of the day, that’s all life really is.

Why is it important to put this on stage? 

The violence and horrors in Israel-Palestine has reached a terrifying phase. It’s never been more important for Israeli and Palestinians to create together, in the theatre and outside of it, and it’s never been more pressing for Israeli artists to demand a stop to the violence the Israeli government is participating in. I want people to get an insight into how complicated Israeli reality is and how torn it is within itself – but more importantly, that there are many people in Israel that want to live peacefully with their Palestinian neighbours and that those voices for peace and co-existence will not be silenced by the loud shouts of polarisation and war. I want to present a raw story based on real events about those who end up paying the ultimate price. What happens after this current and vicious cycle of violence will dictate the world my children might live in, and so it’s crucial to say that enough is enough.

How do you hope audiences will respond to the themes of mandatory conscription and its impact on young men?

This story is about the political situation in Israel and the conflict in the region, but in essence it tells a much more global, human story. The story of lost young men that don’t have the tools to talk about the traumatic experiences they’re going through. I think I hope it will give people perspective into such a complicated reality they hear so much about in the media. It’s not a story about patriots, or about rebels, really. It’s about people who are neither. It’s about young men who want to belong, be loved and live peacefully in the impossible violent reality they were born into.

The play uses physical theatre and live music throughout. How do these elements enhance the story you’re telling?

When going between the translations of the piece from Hebrew to English, I realised that while one version offered a ‘culturally accurate’ version, the other offered a fuller artistic possibility. But during the R&D of the piece we found that there is an emotional or even spiritual essence the piece deals with that neither language was truly able to unpick. That’s because I think that there are things in this world that cannot be expressed through language at all. That’s why physical expression and music are special tools; they can tell us things language cannot comprehend. More than that, one of the biggest themes Rebels & Patriots deals with is grief. Anyone who’s experienced grief will know that no word, not even the word grief, can truly encapsulate that odd feeling. That’s an interesting space for me and the rest of the ensemble creatively: to find a performative language to explore and express this thing, this inexpressible thing.

Rebels and Patriots will be performed at 3pm at the Pleasance Courtyard (Upstairs) from 31st July – 25th August 

Booking Link: https://www.pleasance.co.uk/event/rebels-and-patriots