Flowers spring up even in the desert, and one has blossomed in the hills of Northern Galilee in Israel. In the space of a few miles there are kibbutzim, moshavim
and Arab Christian villages; Muslims, Circassians and Druse.

It is here that Angelica Edna Calò Livné works. An Italian Jew, born in Rome, she immigrated to Israel 30 years ago. After obtaining her degree in social theater and a masters program on integrating the arts into education, she had the idea of using theater to promote peace. With this in mind, she founded the Arcobaleno-Rainbow Theater Group. The troupe is made up entirely of young people; half are Jewish and half are Arab.

Their latest success, Anne in the Sky, is based on the story of Anne Frank, a subject close to Livné’s heart. There is also a mime-opera called Beresheet (containing just five spoken sentences), which explores how conflicts originate.

Many Colors, One Rainbow

Livné firmly believes that her theater group can help promote peace, despite all the differences and difficulties. “The idea of the Arcobaleno-Rainbow Theater Group,” she explains, “is that the spectrum contains many colors, each different from the other. And yet its beauty lies precisely in the fact that all these different colors appear harmoniously together.”

Livné always wanted to use theater for education, and she has managed to put together young people from completely different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. “At one time,” she says, “I was teaching in five different schools, and I decided to open a theater school. Lots of young people joined, but we didn’t have any Arabs. On the kibbutz where I live, there was a young Palestinian lad who worked in the kitchen. One day he saw me pinning up a poster for the school. ‘What are you doing?’ he asked. ‘I’m pinning up this poster. Why don’t you come to my theater? Come on, don’t worry, anyone can act.’

“I convinced him to come,” she remembers. “Now half the students are Arabs and half Jews. When you see them together, there are no obvious cultural or religious differences. And yet they lead completely different lives, with different languages, traditions and religions. There are even differences among the Jews themselves,” Livné says.

“We meet once a week for three hours,” she explains. “But the first half hour is always taken up with kisses and hugs and bringing each other up to date with what has gone on over the last week.”

The basic idea behind the theater school is very simple: “Every religion, every human being, every tradition has its own wonderful world. But because they don’t know one another, there is fear of the unknown and mistrust, and this creates conflict,” she says. “Somehow, through education, we have to bring young people together and let them get to know each other, so that they can pass their experience on to their people.”

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Published in Living City (October 2007), the Focolare Movement's monthly magazine of religion, dialogue and culture