The First Year (of the Gaza Genocide in the Media) – New Diorama

There is something inherently difficult about making theatre about an event that is still unfolding, particularly one as politically charged and emotionally divisive as Gaza. It requires not only courage, but perspective: enough distance to transform material into theatre rather than simply place it on a stage. For me, this is where The First Year (of the Gaza Genocide in the Media) falls short.

The production, developed by BÉZNĂ Theatre with the International State Crime Initiative and Shadow World Investigations, is an ambitious collaboration built from testimony and research. Its credentials are impressive, as is the care with which the material has clearly been assembled. But after 90 minutes, I was left wondering: what is the purpose of this play?

The production begins from an assumption: that its audience already accepts its central premise about Gaza, its people being genocided, and the media. If you agree, much of what follows pushes through an already open door, spending the evening demonstrating the brutality of what has happened and the failures and biases of its media coverage. If you do not agree, however, the production offers little opportunity to change your mind, offering virtually no dramatic tension, nor sustained contradiction.

Whether one believes in an Aristotelian model of theatre and its catharsis, or in a Brechtian model that refuses the alleviation of discomfort in order to keep the audience critically activated, both rely on the particular machinery of theatre, the DNA of its powerful technology: tension, stakes, change and the embodiment of contradictions.

Here, that machinery is largely absent. What remains is essentially an hour and a half of people grieving on stage.

Perhaps that is precisely what the production is trying to provide: a space for grief for a cast and a community that is otherwise often denied. In Atlas of the Heart, Brené Brown highlights how grief is arguably the one emotion that must be witnessed in order to be processed. Regardless of where one stands politically, it is hard to deny that Palestinians are experiencing an immense amount of loss, with very little space to express it in Western media or in its writing of world history. The set design by Jida Akil, with lighting by Jody Underwood and video projections by Dan Light, gives that grief a powerful visual space.

But witnessing is not necessarily theatre.

The irony is that the production briefly demonstrates exactly where its theatrical potential lies. In its best scene, an anchorwoman demonstrates how emotions and opinions can be manufactured: high warmth and low competence produce pity; low warmth and low competence produce disgust.

I found myself wishing the entire production had pursued this line: that it had made us experience the mechanics of media bias rather than simply tell us that it exists.

Because for the most part, the play represents Palestinians through their suffering, and their inability to stop that suffering, leaving them trapped inside the identity of victimhood. That may generate pity but sadly not much more.

The First Year clearly wants us to feel. Even its clap-less ending makes that clear. But why choose theatre for this when other media can create an emotional response more efficiently? If lasting effect, or a call to action, was the goal, I would have welcomed a greater trust in the particular transformative power of theatre.

The First Year runs at the New Diorama till 10th October 2026. https://newdiorama.com/whats-on/the-first-year

Reviewer: Klervi Gavet

Reviewed: 26th September 2026

North West End UK Rating: