Drama as teaching tool re Israeli-Palestinian conflict

This play looks fascinating:
Precious Stones: Interview with playwright Jamil Khoury

Apparently it's the story of a wealthy Palestinian woman and a working-class Jewish woman, who try to start a dialogue group in Chicago in 1989 and end up falling in love.

I recommend checking out the article linked above—the description of the play (& especially of the author) is intriguing. (Don't be dissuaded by the opening paragraph, which is really, really bad writing at its finest. The writing in the rest of the article is quite bearable).

Khoury, whose father is Syrian & who was in the West Bank during the time the play takes place, identifies primarily as a "queer feminist," and at least from this article, it sounds like he really is a feminist. He says there's no "message" in the play—he says that "taking sides" would insult the intelligence of the audience.

Khoury talks about wanting to write believable, sympathetic characters from all perspectives, and all the work he had to do to be able to write characters whose views he wasn't used to sympathizing with (like the right-wing anti-Palestinian boss of the Jewish woman). Intriguingly, he has two women play all six characters, so that the same woman who portrays the anti-Palestinian boss also portrays the Palestinian lover.

It sounds like he does have a message, but it's that women relate to the conflict very differently from how men do, and also that there is a lot of diversity and internal dialogue within each "side" of the conflict.

This (especially the latter half) is an idea I have been struggling to convey to your average American for years. As I mentioned below, I just wrote a whole lesson plan that attempts to present eight views of the conflict for high school students, and I must say it wasn't very successful. It sounds like this play could be a great way to do that, without making students read a lot of political rhetoric from eight different people (yawn! plus—vocabulary!!!).

Although....heh, it would be interesting to see whether I'd get more flak from parents over making students read a lesbian love story or an interview with the leader of the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigade.

There was a production of "Precious Stones" in Milwaukee on March 5—I really wish I'd known about it. It sounds incredible.