GAZA CITY, Gaza Strip — Gaza University in Gaza City will offer a one-year theater program starting at the beginning of November, but few students have signed up for Gaza’s first academic drama program.

The theater program is the brainchild of Riyad Saidam, a former actor and the dean of professional diploma programs at Gaza University. He told Al-Monitor that the idea of an academic drama program came to him during his days as an actor in the mid-1980s. Back then, the Palestinian National Theater in Jerusalem — known as El-Hakawati Theater — as well as theater groups affiliated with Birzeit University in Ramallah and An-Najah University in Nablus performed regularly in university theaters. Actors from the Gaza Strip, which did not have any drama schools or theater halls, were forced to join their counterparts in the West Bank so that they, too, could perform at universities and El-Hakawati Theater.

As soon as Saidam became dean in early 2018, he sought to establish a diploma program where professional actors would teach students drama and help them produce an end-of-term play.

Despite high expectations from media and artistic circles, the initial interest has been low. The program will continue to enroll students after courses have started, but, for the time being, there are only 10 students. All of them are men.