THE real star of the Royal Opera House’s recent production of Il Trovatore took their final curtain call in the back row. In a now viral moment captured on video, queer dance artist Danni Perry, who uses they/them pronouns, wrestled a Palestinian flag onto the stage and held it there resolutely during final bows.

When opera house director Oliver Mears tried to grab the flag away in a brief tussle, a colleague wisely dissuaded him from extending the night’s performance with a piece of stage combat he was destined to lose.

Perry has since disclosed the exchange that took place between them. With breathtaking unoriginality, Mears delivered that most clichéd of lines — “you’ll never work in this town again” — although “you will never work for the opera house ever again” is what he actually said.

Perry snapped back, “I don’t give a flying fuck.” Because this is where a majority of the British public now stands. Threats, bans, arrests, jail time and other attempts at silencing the pro-Palestine movement aren’t going to stop the protests. Instead, the defiance is mounting.

At last Saturday’s national pro-Palestine march in London, 522 people displayed similar disdain toward intimidation and were duly arrested. Perry — who spoke at the rally — has also seen their action pay quick dividends.

A letter signed by 182 members of the Royal Ballet and Opera supporting Perry’s action and opposing the institution’s collaboration with Israel was sent to the Royal Ballet and Opera’s CEO, Alex Beard, and its board on August 1, leading to the cancellation of the Royal Opera’s planned production of Tosca, scheduled for Tel Aviv next year. As Perry said at the rally, the outcome was a result of collective action.

In their letter, the signatories praised Perry’s “act of courage and moral clarity on our very stage. A performer used their moment in the spotlight — a moment traditionally reserved for personal recognition — to raise the Palestinian flag.

“In doing so, they reminded us that art cannot and does not exist in a vacuum. Their gesture was not one of self-interest but of solidarity, a call to conscience. We stand firmly with them.”

They also condemned the response by Mears, writing, “In the same moment, we witnessed Oliver Mears, director of opera, attempting to forcibly snatch the flag from the performer, displaying visible anger and aggression in front of the entire audience. This act, far from being a neutral administrative intervention, was itself a loud political statement.

“It sent a clear message that any visible solidarity with Palestine would be met with hostility, while the organisation remains silent on the ongoing genocide. Such behaviour, particularly from a leader in a position of influence and visibility, demonstrates extremely poor judgement. Mears does not represent us.”

At the time of the action, Perry expressed dismay at how few members of their profession were taking a proactive stand against the Gaza genocide.

“As artists, we are lucky enough to have these platforms that reach huge audiences,” Perry said. “Therefore, I feel we have a responsibility to use them, and that goes for producers, creatives, anyone that is working in the industry. Use your platform. Speak up.”

Alexei Sayle is one performer who has been on the marches from the beginning. The actor, author and comedian is a self-described “elderly Jew in show business,” which, he says, gives him a certain degree of immunity from career cancellation for speaking out on Palestine.

“If you remain silent during this holocaust, then you would have remained silent during that holocaust,” Sayle told Al Jazeera, referring to the extermination of Jews during World War II.

British actors Khalid Abdalla and Juliet Stevenson, Irish actress Denise Gough and singer-actress Paloma Faith are among the still too few performers who have gone beyond Instagram posts, bringing their presence and their voices to the marches, in some cases, month after month.

Abdalla, who was born in Scotland to Egyptian parents, has been shocked at the increasing crackdowns, starting with the January 18 march in London where Stop the War Coalition’s Chris Nineham was violently wrestled to the ground by police and arrested.

“As I walked out of Westminster Tube station at 12.15, I was confronted by an image I did not expect to see in this country,” said Abdalla, speaking before an audience several days later, on the 14th anniversary of the Egyptian revolution.

“We were struggling to walk to Downing Street from the corner of Trafalgar Square,” he recalled. “Immediately, what I saw was the ghost of how we are policed in Egypt. I have been subject to police brutality in this country. But last Saturday was the first time I have tasted the shadow of what may be an authoritarianism to come.”

Speaking out comes at a price, of course, but those who do appear to share Perry’s sentiment.

Miriam Margoyles, 84, who would probably also describe herself as an “elderly Jew in show business,” dismissed the backlash she drew when she lamented that “The terrible thing I face is that Hitler won. He changed us, made us like him,” calling those demanding she be stripped of her OBE, “just chickenshit people who think that’s important.”

Irish actor Liam Cunningham, has also been a consistent voice and travelled to Italy with the Freedom Flotilla to mark the launch of the Madleen, the boat attempting to bring aid to Gaza which was later hijacked by Israeli forces and its crew detained, among them Swedish climate activist Greta Thunberg.

“If you’re baffled as to why they’re murdering health workers in Gaza, it’s because they are the people who will testify in court as to what has been done,” Cunningham said. “They are killing the witnesses.”

But too many A-listers remain silent, particularly in the US, the greatest source of Israel’s political and financial support and the chief supplier of the deadly weaponry fueling the genocide. Some have signed letters, and Susan Sarandon, most notably, has spoken at rallies.

But Leonardo DiCaprio, ironically a UN ambassador for peace, was recently revealed to have a 10 per cent stake in a new luxury hotel project in Tel Aviv. DiCaprio, along with British actor Orlando Bloom, was also among the guests at Jeff Bezos’s $55 million wedding in Venice in June while Gaza starved.

Meanwhile, longtime supporter of Palestinian rights actress Vanessa Redgrave, now 88, came out in her wheelchair to protest at Lambeth Town Hall recently, joining in the banging of empty pots and pans in opposition to Israel’s forced starvation of the now considerably fewer than 2 million Palestinian citizens still left alive in Gaza.

Watching from across the Atlantic, New York City socialist and Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, himself constantly assailed by zionist operatives, praised Redgrave’s “lifetime of courage, truth, and unwavering solidarity.”

Linda Pentz Gunter is a writer based in Takoma Park, Maryland.