The mountain, in many voices.

It began at a theatre

We met at Al-Balad Theatre in Amman. Some of us had been working for a while with Leslie Rudolf as part of Compagnie Venado, running theatre, movement and yoga workshops with young people across the city and its camps. We came together at Al-Balad as artists, to build a show, The Seven Chapters, an original work written and illustrated by Leslie about the stages of a life.

Building that show, we found each other. A musician, a movement teacher, a drama artist, a yoga facilitator, one at a time, independent artists who kept turning up in the same room. By the time the show was over, we didn't want to stop working together.

So we didn't. We took the work off the stage and into Jabal al-Hussein camp, where the audience needed it most, and we widened it: not only theatre now, but music, body movement, Dabke, drawing, and English taught through play. That is Izhar Aljabal, a group of artists who came together to make one show, and stayed together to make something that lasts.