The storyteller's right

Over the past couple of days, our class has been trying to determine which stories we want to tell for our final project of the term. The format is epic theatre, and the recommendation is to take a human story against a historical backdrop - a time of political upheaval, of war, of off-balance. We started out with about a dozen stories, and it looks as though we've narrowed it down to three themes for as many groups: the slave trade, a George Orwell story about the British occupation of Burma called Shooting an Elephant, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

I chose to be in the last group, and I'm fucking terrified. We haven't chosen a story yet, but just that story, the theme of that conflict is so scary to me. I don't know that it's a story that I feel qualified to tell. It's so present and real and bloody and messy and complicated. In a way there's no objective distance from this theme, and in a way there's far too much. I'm terrified of messing it up. I'm terrified that sometime in the next five years I'll find myself in the West Bank (which could easily happen, based on this peacework investigation I've been doing of late) and feel like I told the wrong story or didn't do it right, or got it wrong. I'm terrified of preaching about something I know nothing about. I'm afraid of presenting in front of the two Israeli students in the morning group, and their reactions, whatever they may be.

And it's far too early in the process to freak out, in a way. But there is something in my gut that is very aware of how hard this will be, and how dangerous it is.

If we pull it off, if we're able to find a supremely human story to extricate from that ridiculous painful political mess, than it will be absolutely powerful and incredible and amazing theatre. If. But right now, when it's early enough that we haven't, I have misgivings galore.