Coriolanus star Hazem Shammas on the futility of making art at a time of crisis

Hazem Shammas doesn’t see the point in making art at a time like this. 

“I feel the futility of it more and more,” he tells ABC Arts.

It’s a disappointing and troubling feeling for the Palestinian Australian actor, best known for roles in TV shows Safe Harbour, Underbelly and The Twelve.

Shammas is grappling with this as he prepares to play the title role of Coriolanus in a new production by Bell Shakespeare in Melbourne.

The rarely performed play — it’s Bell’s first staging in almost 30 years — is about the corrosive influence of power and politics.

Shammas plays Coriolanus, a soldier who returns to Rome victorious after war with the Volscians. Called upon to be the city’s next consul, he faces opposition from both the city’s elected tribunes (played by Matilda Ridgway and Marco Chiappi) and ordinary citizens.

He rallies against the idea of popular rule, saying citizens having any power over politicians allows “crows to peck the eagles”. Consequently he is banished from Rome, and soon seeks revenge on the city by joining forces with the Volscians.

Coriolanus — marking Shammas’s return to Bell Shakespeare after starring in Macbeth in 2023 — is landing rave reviews, but the actor had to be convinced to take on the role.

“It’s not the crowd-pleaser that, say, Macbeth is, and it’s not known so much,” he says.

“And the language: I get a real sense of Shakespeare’s maturity in his writing; the poetry is denser.”

While parallels have been drawn between the character of Coriolanus and US President Donald Trump, the far more disturbing link for Shammas is to the war in Gaza, where 146 people including 88 children have died of malnutrition and the death toll has passed 60,000 people since Hamas’ attack on Israel in October 2023.

“We’re studying power in a time when there are horrific abuses of power and that affects me,” Shammas says.

“I’m playing a role where a man walks around talking about essentially ethnic cleansing.

“Of course I’m going to think about that constantly.”

The silencing of artists in Australia

Making theatre at this time, Shammas says, is “dabbling in whimsy” and an “intellectual privilege”.

“[Coriolanus] is a play about the abuses of power, but when we’re living in a climate of utter, horrific abuse of power and our arts community is silenced, and we remain silent, it troubles me.”

Since the beginning of the war in Gaza, Australian artists whose work has referenced the Arab-Israeli conflict, or who have spoken out about human rights abuses, including the killing of journalists, have had performances cancelled and awards rescinded.

Those artists include Khaled Sabsabi, who, after being dropped was recently reinstated to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale; and Jayson Gillham, who is suing the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra for his cancelled performances.

Expressions of support for the Palestinian cause have also ended in censorship.

Writer K A Ren Wyld lost a $15,000 fellowship over a social media post following the death of Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in October last year, which was deleted shortly after it was posted.

Kellee Green’s win at the Queensland Music Awards for an instrumental song titled ‘River to Sea’ led to the Brisbane City Council withdrawing funding for the awards; workshops by Omar Sakr and other writers at the State Library Victoria were cancelled over “child and cultural safety”; and when some of the cast of The Seagull at Sydney Theatre Company wore keffiyehs to a curtain call, a number of donors and board members withdrew.

“We’re in a perpetual state of fear, and we’re walking around not talking about it, only worried about our next job and whether we’ve got a job or not, while people are being f**king slaughtered.”

Shammas argues government intervention “can stop our voices”.

“But it’s happening everywhere and to everyone right now purely because of a f**king genocide that is being allowed to happen in Palestine.

“[That intervention] is more troubling now than it was [in the past].”

Israel has repeatedly denied it is pursuing a campaign of genocide in Gaza, accusing Hamas in turn of trying to wipe out the Jewish population in Israel.

The path forward

Shammas does not intend to stop working in the arts.

“That’s who I am; it’s what I do,” he says. “That’s why I’m so troubled by this.”

And while he is frustrated by the failure of the Australian arts community to speak up against against the war in Gaza and what he argues is censorship, he is also at times heartened by solidarity in the wider community.

For example, current and former collaborators — including Coriolanus co-stars Jules Billington and Matilda Ridgway — have signed an open letter of more than 4,000 artists to the federal government calling for unimpeded humanitarian access to Gaza, potential sanctions of Israel, and recognition of Palestinian statehood.

“I don’t doubt the people I work with and their capacities for engagement in this,” he says. “I don’t doubt any individual audiences’ capacities for engagement in this.

“But I doubt our collective will for engagement in this.”

Still, Shammas remains proud of the work he and his collaborators at Bell Shakespeare have done on Coriolanus.

“We’ve created an exceptional piece of art,” he says.

But he fears the ideas about power and politics in the play fail to reach beyond the theatre. That impelled him to speak up.

Coriolanus is at Arts Centre Melbourne until August 10.