KNEECAP Lehrstück (anon)

KNEECAP Lehrstück [9-5-2025]

ACCUSERS:
Kneecap!
You said Up Hamas!
You said Up Hezbollah!
You called for blood!
You support terror!
You invite terror!
You make music —
but music cannot be a shield for this!

KNEECAP:
What did we say?

ACCUSERS:
Up Hamas! Up Hezbollah!

KNEECAP:
Oh.

ACCUSERS:
These are proscribed organization! To invite support of them is illegal!

KNEECAP:
We don’t support attacks on civilians.
We condemn violence.
We’re performers. We perform.
Our statements are part of the act.

ACCUSERS:
The performance is over
only law remains. 

AUDIENCE:
We were there – we cheered because —
Finally, someone said it!
We cheered for the break in the lie.

ACCUSERS:
Words have weight.
And weight breaks the back.
Will you stand by your words?
Will you go to prison?
[sneeringly] Will you become the next Bobby Sands?

KNEECAP:
Those who help the downtrodden
are the scum of the earth.
We are the scum of the earth,
we must not be found. We play the game.
We pull back the words,
The law is a net,
but we are small fish. Smaller even than Netanyahu.

AUDIENCE (splintered, some uncertain, some defiant):
But weren’t you brave?
Didn’t you mean it?
We believed you meant it.
We wanted you to mean it.

ACCUSERS:
They didn’t mean it.
They never meant it.
They’re cowards, they sell rebellion like merchandise. They’re capitalists!

KNEECAP (to audience):
Do you want us jailed?
Or do you want us here,
shamelessly playing in Republicanism, which is our sandpit,
Making music in the wreckage?
Bobby Sands: we inherit him
or we profit from him
or we betray him. Sure. But we don’t become him. His revenge is our laughter. We’re different.

AUDIENCE:
You won’t go down for the cause?

KNEECAP:
We are more likely to simply be prisoners than political prisoners. This too is a kind of progress – solidarity between criminal and political prisoners!

AUDIENCE:
We cheered. Then we watched them retreat.
We also know
that jail or prison
is not desirable.
But this spectacle is sad, because it shows how unsayable reality has become!
And we know
the real story is not this,
not these words, or retreats in meaning or intent.
The real story is that Israel pummels a defenceless Gaza,
starving the population, whole families buried under rubble.
The open-air prison is now a death camp. Indescribable brutality, and an almost cosmic indifference in the collective commentariat and ruling classes.

KNEECAP:
On stage, the performance was a statement. Offstage, we made a statement that implied that statement was a performance, but that was the real performance. We can only say this here, in a play which is essentially fanfiction.
We are not free,
but we will play free. FREE FREE

AUDIENCE:
PALESTINE

KNEECAP:
FREE FREE

AUDIENCE:
PALESTINE