zAmya Theater Project hosts a screening of filmmaker Stephen Apkon’s documentary “There Is Another Way” at Minneapolis Central Library. The film tells the story of Combatants for Peace, a bi-national movement of Palestinians and Israelis, including former enemy combatants, who reject violence and work together toward justice and peace.

Set against the devastation and escalating violence following October 7 and the war in Gaza, the film asks what becomes possible when people refuse to surrender to hatred and injustice, even as their deepest beliefs are tested.

This free public event will introduce audiences to the work of Israeli activist, theater scholar, and Theatre of the Oppressed practitioner Dr. Chen Alon, whose six-month virtual residency with zAmya is centered on the company’s ongoing Locked In program. More info at zamyatheater.org/chen-alon.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Stephen Apkon, Combatants for Peace co-founder Sulaiman Khatib, and Dr. Chen Alon, who will join via Zoom.

Since its emergence in Latin America in the 1970s, Theatre of the Oppressed has evolved as a tool for collective analysis, dialogue, and social change. Dr. Alon has developed what he calls a “Polarized” Theatre of the Oppressed model, designed to build trust and understanding between groups positioned in tension or conflict.

The April 19 screening serves as an introduction to Dr. Alon’s body of work and to zAmya’s continued exploration of Theatre of the Oppressed through Locked In, a project co-created by zAmya and EqualHealth’s Campaign Against Racism (CAR), a global movement of health workers organizing to dismantle structural racism in healthcare.

Locked In centers the experiences of people facing homelessness and examines systemic bias in healthcare against people who are unhoused. What began as a single script, Locked In: A Theatrical Dialogue about Healthcare and Homelessness, has grown into a body of work that now includes two short scenes and a full-length play performed in the Twin Cities, Chicago, and at the national Theatre of the Oppressed conference.

Dr. Chen Alon is a theater activist, actor, and director who wrote his Ph.D. on the Palestinian-Israeli Polarized Model of Theatre of the Oppressed in the Theatre Department at Tel Aviv University. A Major in the Israeli army reserves, he co-founded Courage to Refuse, a movement of officers and soldiers who refused to serve in the occupied Palestinian territories, for which he was sentenced to prison. He is also a co-founder of Combatants for Peace, a movement of Palestinian and Israeli former combatants who have renounced violence and struggle together nonviolently against occupation.