Contemporary Palestinian theatre has received little attention from scholars or the broader performing-arts world. Gabriel Varghese's book Palestinian Theatre in the West Bank: Our Human Faces aims to address this lack of knowledge and of acknowledgmeent. Varghese's stated ambition is to ‘offer the first account of Palestinian theatre in the West Bank after the Oslo Accords’ (pp. 150–1). His contribution to the study of contemporary Palestinian theatre is essential, as he notes that most research conducted on the subject covers the time period from the late nineteenth century to the First Intifada.

Varghese rightly focuses on the ‘five major companies currently working in the West Bank’ (p. 25): Al-Kasaba Theatre and Ashtar Theatre in Ramallah, Al-Harah Theatre in Beit Jala, Al-Rowwad in Aida's refugee camps in Bethlehem and the Freedom Theatre in Jenine's refugee camps. For each of the five companies, Varghese gives insight into its founding, outlining the company's members and its historical, political and social contexts. He complements this with details about each company's objectives, the challenges that theatre-makers face and their most significant productions. The very rich and detailed information, as yet unpublished, could not have been collected without intensive fieldwork. If the work is mainly based on interviews, as the book states, it could have been enriched by sources from a different nature; I would have liked the author to specify the multiple sources that helped form his perspective. Were there corroborating interviews, theatre archives, artists’ private archives or metatheatrical documents like brochures, tickets or press reviews?

A study of seven productions completes the work on the five companies. The chosen productions share common elements, objectives and a vision that theatre is an alternative way of resistance, a form of ‘beautiful resistance’ (p. 47) as defined by Abdelfattah Abusrour, the director of Al-Rowwad. This choice of productions extends from an affirmation in an anecdote recorded in the book's introduction, that ‘all the participants [at the tenth anniversary of the Freedom Theatre] agreed on one thing: the centrality of Palestinian cultural works, and theatre specifically, in resisting Israeli settler colonialism’ (p. 2).

However, the choice of productions is not a full representation of the reality of contemporary Palestinian theatre. Other Palestinian theatrical works, which are more limited in space and time, are not guided by political and social objectives, but only by artistic and aesthetic ones in order to take part in global discussions on theatre. The phenomenon of ‘internationalization’ (p. 58) concerns not only Varghese's seven selected productions, but all Palestinian productions, although their objectives and intended audiences are not always the same.

Some inaccuracies on François Abou Salem (1951–2011) could have benefited from a closer study of this major figure of Palestinian theatre. Under his leadership, the work of the Palestinian National Theatre/El-Hakawati, which he founded, has played a fundamental role in the emergence of the Palestinian theatrical movement in the early 1960s. El-Hakawati was the first Palestinian company to tour abroad and as such is key to the internationalization phenomenon studied in the book. Among members of the theatrical troupe were Imane Aoun and Edward Muallem, founders of the Ashtar Theatre. Additionally, the artists presented in Varghese's book crossed paths with François Abou Salem, who trained and influenced generations of theatre practitioners in Palestine.

The question of humanization is at the heart of Varghese's work, and presented as a characteristic of the studied theatrical institutions and productions. More broadly, humanization characterizes Palestinian contemporary productions. Human beings are not only characters personified onstage but are also part of the process of creation at every moment, from the play's genesis to its representation in front of the audience. With its audience being an integral part of the creation process, the contemporary Palestinian theatre embodies a peculiar approach to an alternative tool of resistance. But beyond the anchored context in which it operates, a question arises about the way a theatrical work is received and relates to a direct audience, whether local or international, during the performance globally.

The above remarks above do not undermine in any way the great value and input this book brings, not to mention the author's double profile as a scholar and theatre practitioner, which offers a unique approach and perspective.