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Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 17 Spring 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage O Lord! By Ali Abdel-Nabi Al-Zaidi By Ali Abdel-Nabi Al-Zaidi, Amir Al-Azraki, Jeff Casey Published: May 12, 2025 Download Article as PDF Ya Rab! By Ali l-Zaidi, National Theatre, Baghdad, 2016. Printed with permission of the production staff O Lord! By Ali Abdel-Nabi Al-Zaidi Characters: Mother, in her fifties. Moses, in his sixties. A large valley surrounded by mountains on all sides, strange in its appearance, called the Holy Valley Tuwa. Mother enters, covering her body with an abaya, a black women's cloak, barefoot, carrying a large bag on her head. We hear her voice before she appears, speaking loudly on her mobile phone, then setting the bag aside . Mother ( Standing in the middle of the valley. ) Yes... I have arrived at the place. It seems terrifying. Tell all the mothers, I will not return without good news for them, cool water for their weary hearts. Yes, yes, I will call you later... ( She hangs up and surveys the valley. ) Everything here invokes fear: a valley of stone, my prayers made of stone, my fasts made of stone, and my supplications made of stone. ( She shouts. ) And I am a mother whose blood flowing in my soul has turned into stone! ( She raises her head towards the sky. ) I have come to you, O Lord, with a thousand tears and grievances in my heart. I blame you as if blaming my own soul. How can my soul not respond to my prayers?! I am your guest now, O Lord, and I have learned that the host hears even the breaths of his guests. And now what if I am both a guest and mother? Yes, a mother, alas for her! ( She shouts louder. ) O Lord... speak to me, as you spoke to Moses here in this valley. Respond to the heart of this mother who has lost her children one after another, heart by heart and laughter by laughter, only one son remaining, waiting for immigration and the sea's rafts of death... No third choice. ( Firmly. ) You can see, O Lord, that I have taken my sandals off out of respect just as I would in my own home, and I have come to your holy valley, Tuwa, knowing that you will speak to me. I know I am not a prophet, but the heart of a mother, as you know, equals a thousand prophets! The mothers have sent me to you, O Lord, and I am the most grief-stricken among them, the most insane. There must be a solution for the fate of our children, O Most Merciful of the Merciful! ( She screams. ) Shall I uncover my head? You will see how my hair has gone grey so that my children would grow up. But when they grew up, instead of their beloveds waiting for them, the rafts of hell waited for them in your seas, or explosions waited for them in the streets of madness. This killing, drowning, cannot continue. What fate is this that makes our children, who we protected when they were only tiny things, into fish food in the seas? What trifling fate is it that we wake up in the morning with nothing but the fragrance they left in their beds when they are gone? O Lord, we want them to grow up, not to die. I speak to you as the mother who has grieved the most, who buried her children without limbs, buried them in kilos, one kilo, two kilos, three! The biggest of them, I didn't find a single bone, so I slaughtered a lamb and buried its bones instead, and I visited its grave — I mean the lamb's bones, O Lord. What can I do? There is only one son left, and I want him to live and love and grow up and be buried whole. ( Takes out papers from her bag. ) O Lord! Where are you? These are the signatures of the mothers... look at them. I didn't forge a single signature. Thousands of signatures, whatever threshold we were supposed to meet to stop this, we have never had enough signatures, O Forgiving One. You must find a solution. ( Firmly: ) I will now say something important. ( She speaks forcefully. ) In my name and in the name of all mothers, we will give you a deadline, O Lord. You have twenty-four hours to command “it shall be so” and it will be, or we will declare a strike from praying and fasting. ( She shouts. ) Yes, that's what we have decided, we will strike from prayer and fasting, O Lord, and no mother will lift her hands in prayer to you after today, oh, closer to us than our own veins. Our conditions are clear... stop the killing that devours our children and stop their emigration away from our embrace. They leave our homes and don’t return while they are still in the prime of life dreaming of a spring that won’t come. ( Loudly :) We mothers want our children to reach at least fifty years of age. Fifty years... is that difficult for you, O Most Merciful of the Merciful? We do not ask for the impossible, and after that, do as you please. ( Madly :) Strange! ( She shouts: ) Aren’t You capable of everything as You say? Do something, O Lord, for I am in your holy valley, Tuwa. ( She cries. ) O Lord, O Lord, can you hear me, O Lord, my Lord, O Creator of the heavens and the earth, where are you? O Lord... Moses ( Enters, leaning on a staff, wearing old clothes. ) Don't shout. Enough, woman. What do you want? Mother ( Surprised. ) Are you... Are you... Are you God? Moses I seek forgiveness from Allah. Mother I thought you were Him. Moses You must leave the Valley of Tuwa. Mother What concern is it of yours? I took off my shoes and entered the valley. Moses You don’t have the right to enter… Mother It isn’t your right to give. Moses Silence is the master of this place. This is a sacred valley, only those permitted by the Most Merciful may enter! Mother I have waited my whole life for permission. Moses Then you must return to your home. Mother I won't return until God speaks to me. Moses He will not speak to anyone. Mother It's none of your concern. It's my Lord. Moses He has spoken to no one here except me. Mother Except you?! And who are you? Moses Moses. Mother And who is Moses? Moses ( Assertively. ) The Prophet! Mother ( In disbelief .) Prophet Moses?! You?! Moses I have lived in this sacred valley for a long time. Mother You live here? It's unbelievable. Prophet Moses living in a valley and leaving paradise? Moses This is my paradise, which God planted with the sweetness of His words, and suffused with the faint odor of His presence, spreading peace and love throughout. Mother It can't be. How can I meet a prophet who lived in a distant time? Moses Before God, it is all one time... A time where nothing exists except mercy, O mother. Mother O mother? And you know me too? Moses Yes, I know you... And I have been sent to negotiate with you. Mother Who sent you? Moses The Almighty God! Mother God? Negotiating with me? But I didn't ask for a prophet... I want only God to hear the prayers of mothers, and I am authorized by them... That's all. Moses You're a mother wearing the cloak of a madwoman. Mother Madness, O Moses... The killing of our children in the prime of their life. Moses You have the right to turn into a madwoman, but you have no right to incite mothers to madness. Mother ( Shouting. ) O Lord... I didn't ask for a prophet. I wanted You, the All-Hearing. Moses Be careful... The valley is monitored by cameras. Mother Cameras in the valley? ( Looking around. ) O Lord, I am a mother who came to this place with all her sincerity and devotion, with all her wails and mourning. Moses That's enough... You must stop immediately along with all the women striking from their prayers and fasting. Mother ( Firmly. ) We will proclaim our strike until our demands are met. Moses It's not right... You must seek God’s forgiveness. Mother ( Yelling at him .) Is it right that the blood of our loved ones is so cheap?! Moses And how can a creature stop loving their Creator who gave them everything?! Mother We love God more when we strike from prayer and fasting! Moses This is rebellion, not love. Mother God has given us the right to rebel in order to live with honor! Moses I take it as a conspiracy to overthrow... Mother ( Interrupting. ) I recognize that you are a prophet, but you have no right to stand between us and God. Moses ( Yelling at her. ) I just want to understand... What do you want? Mother Mercy! Moses He is the Most Merciful of the merciful. Mother I know... But not in our homeland. Moses His mercy is everywhere. Mother Where is it? Where? ( Firmly .) I’m in a hurry. Listen, O Prophet... Twenty-four hours is the deadline we gave to God, and then we declare our general strike. Moses Twenty-four hours? It's the worshipers' deadline for the worshiped. It's as if I live in the age of myths or hear a fable. ( Quietly. ) O mother... God cannot be threatened. Mother You understand it as a prophet as you wish, and we understand it as mothers as we wish... ( Her mobile phone rings, she answers. ) Yes, yes... What do you want? I'm still in the place. I'm negotiating. With whom? With the Prophet Moses. What's wrong with you? Yes, he's the prophet... God sent him to negotiate with me. ( Shouting. ) Don’t laugh, and leave your questioning now, your job is just to monitor comments on the mothers’ strike page on Facebook. Respond to all of the comments , do you understand?! ( She hangs up. To Moses :) Mothers can’t wait any longer. Moses The Mothers' Facebook page? What a mockery is this! This could evolve into a military coup. You don't understand what you're doing. This is an invitation to return to paganism or idol worship, like Pharaoh who said, "I am your supreme lord." Mother (Smiling.) Do demands for rights always turn into rebellion? Moses This is a dangerous development that could lead to the extinction of mothers from the Earth forever. Mother We will become extinct as long as the earth consumes our children every moment. Moses (Exclaims.) O God... Mother (Shouting.) Bags, bags, bags... Bags, O Moses! Nothing but luggage leaves with our children. Nothing remains here but their toys, their clothes, and the scribbles they left on our walls before they departed. (As if reading from a wall:) "Memory of my mother, father, siblings, and me on Eid." "The rose's fate is to wither, and our home's memories never fade." Moses (Raising his head.) How can I negotiate with all this pain? A mother plastered with memories of a home reduced to walls. (Strikes the ground with his staff.) Demands are rejected, O mother. Negotiations are over; you must leave from here. Mother Rejected? What's wrong with you? Cruelty doesn’t enter the heart of a prophet, as they say. Moses My heart contains nothing but purity. Mother (Looking at the staff.) Then try doing something with your staff, Moses. Moses My staff? It works by the will of God. Mother Tell it to split the earth in half... one half for murderers to live in, and the other half for us to live peacefully with our children. Moses (Points to the staff.) It seems to be out of commission right now. It always seems to need a Pharaoh. Mother ( Mockingly :) Even your staff has turned into scrap, O prophet! Moses I told you it works by the power of the one God, not by my power. Mother Try again... Chaos must stop in my homeland. Moses Rather, mothers must stop this chaos. Mother (shouting) Youbooee ! [i] Is there anyone who lives in peace and has never said "God is Great" [ii] ? What is happening, Moses? Say something. We are mothers who have nothing but the refrain "God is Great" since our children were born and our souls are longing for our children. What have we done to deserve all this hell? Moses Since Adam's soul was placed on this earth, that has been the question. Mother And no one answered it. Moses I object to the idea of a strike. Mother Did God send you to negotiate with me or to object? Moses The relationship with God is supposed to be without conditions and above assessment. . Mother We feel that God has lifted His hand from this land, turning it into hell. Moses Hell... It is a burning hospital to treat the disease afflicting all of you! Mother We will scream, refuse, and protest against this hell... Moses The sea will swallow you as it swallowed... Mother (Interrupting angrily.) Hasn't the sea swallowed us already, Moses? Haven't you seen or heard? Even the fish of the seas wept for them and were more compassionate and warmer than this homeland! We did not ask God for the impossible; we want our children to warmly sleep in our arms and dream dreams as innocent as they are. Moses (Painfully.) And I too... my mother found no place gentler than the sea to place me in. [iii] Mother ( Takes out a large mortar, grinding with it. ) Our children come out of our wombs and their heads are burning white... their hair all white, white, white... Do you understand? All of us have become insane in this country, a big hospital with nothing but mothers mad about their children. (Stops pounding with the mortar. Shouting :) Look at our misery, look at our wretched faces, O prophet... (Puts on one of the cloaks and performs the role of Mother 2. A group of people appears, bringing a coffin and exiting. Mother 2 looks crazy, sitting at a coffin with her son's remains, Moses is watching) Mother 2 (Crazily, ululating, laughing, dancing, approaching the coffin.) Finally, my eye, your mother told them you would come back, my son, and no one believed this crazy woman. Even the streets complained about her feet. [iv] (Screams : ) Come and watch my son return to my arms in the clothes of his wedding. (Ululates.) "Congratulations on your wedding, O son," they thought I was crazy, crazy, and now he returns to my soul... (Takes out a red dress from the sack, wears it over her clothes.) I vowed that when my son returns to my arms, I will wear a red dress the color of his blood, "Sweet, very sweet, amazing." (Recovers.) They brought his shirt with fake blood stains, and they said, “We found this on the edge of the sea.” I curse every sailor in the universe who stole my son's laugh... (Ululating, dancing around the coffin, then stops.) They finally brought you. ( Firmly with the coffin. ) Come on, wake up from your sleep. Be a man and rise. Rise and embrace your mother instead of this meaningless pampering. I will give you a new shirt without a single drop of blood. ( Shouting. ) They brought your shirt without your perfume, my life! ( A group of people appears, lifting the coffin and exiting. ) Where are you taking it? Wait! ( Shouting. ) They brought your shirt with nothing but sea salt, my soul... Congratulations on your wedding, my beloved... Here's joy, and another joy... ( She laughs and dances wildly . She stops performing the role of Mother 2 and takes off the red robe.) Mother Hah... What do you think? Moses Death is the norm of life... In your homeland there is nothing worth living a long life for, there is nothing but tears. Mother It's beyond our control, O Prophet, and it is God who destined us to be in this homeland. Moses I understand, but striking from prayer and fasting is rebellion against God's authority in this world. Mother I don't understand these terms, I don't know their meanings. I'm just a mother like all mothers, wanting to warm myself with the breath of my youngest child. Moses Beware, O mother, beware, for this place is monitored with cameras by Him, the Almighty. Beware... “And when We said to the angels, ‘Prostrate before Adam’; so they prostrated, except for Iblees. He refused and was arrogant and became of the disbelievers.” [v] Mother Ask this land where we have been prostrated our entire lives … Yet in the end, we were expelled from Paradise because we prostrated to God alone! Moses “We have certainly created humankind into hardship.” [vi] God has said so. Mother ( Smiling. ) Why, why in hardship? Moses ( Exclaiming. ) The dust of your streets is kneaded with pain. Mother No human has lived on this earth in such hardship except us! What did we do to deserve this? Is there a solution, O Prophet? Say something, do not remain silent... ( Takes out her mobile phone, presses a button to show Moses a video .) Look, look at this tragedy... Look. ( Sounds of mothers screaming, mourning .) Did you see, O Prophet? Moses I did. ( Confused. ) Yes, I did. ( Withdraws. ) Oh... What is happening here? How can I be a reformer when all I possess is a staff abandoned by life and consumed by time? And this land, this homeland... needs a new miracle, one as big as the children’s laughter that has stopped, awaiting an all-clear signal that never comes. How can I sow hope in a land where nothing grows but graves? Lord... I found people here living in a vast graveyard they call a country. I am perplexed, or a bewildered Prophet who doesn't know what to do? How does one negotiate this grief in the guise of a mother? How? Mother You do not know what has happened to us! Moses ( Shouting at her. ) All the women of the earth will be punished because of your thoughts, and Paradise will not be under their feet. [vii] Mother We do not want Paradise under our feet... Let it be wherever it is, just let our children live their lives with their mothers. They are our flowers. Have you heard of a Paradise without flowers? Moses And who are you to speak for the mothers of your homeland? Mother Me? Wait a moment, O Moses, wait. I will show you a special permission of those mothers... ( Opens a large bag, takes out a large collection of women's cloaks. ) They sent their cloaks with me so that Allah might see them, poor women. ( Shouts while tossing the cloaks. ) This one and this one and this one and this one and this one and this one and this one... I will spread them here in the valley. ( Holds a cloak. ) This cloak belongs to Abdullah’s mother. Abdullah never slept except in his mother's arms. He slept until he was killed by the shell. ( Holds another cloak. ) And this cloak belongs to Saeed’s mother. [viii] Saeed was never happy. He lived with his mother in a clay room, and when his body was torn apart, his mother found no grave to shelter what remained of him. ( Holds another cloak. ) And this cloak belongs to Salem’s mother, the sanest mother in our city. They brought her son’s head to her, and this wise woman turned into the craziest woman in our city. ( Points to another cloak. ) And this one belongs to Jaber’s mother. O poor son, he left his mother's embrace to sleep in the embrace of the sea. And this one belongs to Ahmed’s mother, and this one belongs to Ali’s mother, and this one belongs to... Look, ( Shouts :) these are mothers in the form of cloaks, each cloak carrying the scent of their children who were torn apart by explosives here and suicide belts there. Moses Who is this mother, O Lord? There is nothing in her soul but sorrow, and I have turned from a prophet into a spectator who possesses nothing but tears and questions. I am all Yours, O Lord... Please grant me the ability to answer even one of her questions. ( Pauses, then pulls himself together. ) O mother... I cannot understand what prayer and fasting have to do with what has happened to you. Mother No one listens to the cries of our tears... We have found no one to protest against except God... Perhaps He will send rain to extinguish the fire in our hearts, O Prophet, and stop this farce. Moses God is not a party to your conflict. For your people, killing is a picnic adorned with blood and hollowed words, creating a thousand justifications in your minds. God has nothing to do with this. Mother God created the killers! Moses And He created you too. Mother He shouldn't have created those monsters and made them live with gentle souls. Moses There must be contradictions in creation... There must be hungry and satiated, there must be killer and slain. Mother Has killing not been chasing us for a thousand years, O Prophet? Moses ( Yelling at her. ) I told you, death is the norm of life. Mother ( Yelling back. ) Death is a norm, but not killing, not slaughter, not burning, not drowning. Death is a norm, but separating heads from bodies is not a norm. Moses ( Withdraws alone, looks at the staff, speaks to it in a whisper. ) Do something, please, anything. One movement from you might make these mothers reconsider their strike. What's wrong with you? ( Stops, raises his head. ) O Lord... Tell the staff to do something according to Your will and let it be anything, stopping killing for one day, or one hour, or one minute. I implore You. O staff... No use... ( Firmly with the mother. ) Return, O mother, to your homes before the Almighty swallows you in the land of this valley. Mother I will not return until I take an oath from God that there will be no more emigration or slaughtering of our children from today onwards! Moses I am here to negotiate with you. Mother Our conditions are clear. Moses ( Raising his head, shouting. ) O Lord... I can’t bear the words of the people of the earth. O Lord, I am overwhelmed by the fire that spews from this mother's mouth. O Lord... Could it be that You created life only for it to be a knife prepared to slaughter this world? Could it be that You destined sorrow to prevail over joy and reduced all colors to just one dark hue? I have long known that Your throne, glorified be You, trembles for the cry of a single orphan... What now makes it completely silent in the face of an orphaned homeland? ( Shyly. ) Glory be to You, we have no knowledge except what You have taught us. Mother Silence... Nothing but silence. Moses Perhaps your hands can silently ask for something. Mother ( Gesturing with her hands. ) My hands are tired, O Moses! Moses Your stubbornness, O mother, will ensure that your prayers are never answered by God. Mother When were they ever answered before that they should be answered now? When? I forget my hands raised to the sky for hours, until they ache, and pigeons build their nests in the comfort of my palms. I forget my mouth for weeks as it pleads to keep my children safe from slaughter, and I forget my tears for years as they flow, hoping they would be dried by just one word from Him. ( She yells. ) Tell me, what should I do for God to answer my prayers? Moses Job endured afflictions for many years. [ix] Mother ( Shouting .) And we endure a thousand calamities while He is the Most Merciful of the Merciful! Moses Jonah lived, prayed, and fasted inside the belly of a whale. Mother It means nothing before great whales that have devoured all our young. Moses Jesus was crucified in the most horrible manner. Mother Every day, our streets are a ceremony of crucifixion for our loved ones in the most horrible manner! Moses And Jacob, whose eyes turned white from grief? Mother All mothers' eyes have turned blind, and their hearts and souls have turned gray together. Moses And the well of Yusuf... Mother ( Laughs. ) Much easier than this darkness. Moses O mother, I cannot comprehend the fire in your words. Mother O prophet, I cannot comprehend the coldness in your words. Moses I still carry my staff... It may work at any moment. Mother A sword of wood! Moses ( Rising, speaking to the staff. ) No, you will see it work. It will work at any moment. ( To the staff :) Speak, do something, by the permission of God stop the killing, stop the fires and bullets and smoke and explosions, O staff. Dry up the seas and bring their children out safely, unharmed. What is wrong with you? I do not want you to be a serpent crawling on the earth... [x] I want you to be a balm that soothes the hearts of those mothers. What has happened to you? ( Raising it high. ) O staff... I am Moses the prophet, commanding you to extinguish every fire on earth... ( Raising it higher, then stopping. ) Oh, how disappointed I am. Mother ( Sarcastically. ) Are you confident that you are the Prophet Moses? Moses You doubt everything, even my existence. Mother Then how come your staff isn’t working? Moses And who do you think I am? Mother I don't know. Moses ( Raising his voice. ) You must have faith and not let Satan strip it away, O mother. Perhaps God wishes to test your patience and that of mothers through the loss of their loved ones. Mother Did they ever tell you about a mother who sang or danced at her son's funeral? Have you heard of such madness? ( Shouting. ) We, the insane, did that... ( Her mobile rings, and she answers. ) Yes... What do you want? I am still in the Valley of Tuwa, His word... Yes, I spoke to Him, but He did not respond. What should I do? Be a little patient. Tell me, how many mothers are there now? Oh... more than a million mothers... Yes, yes, go now. ( She hangs up. ) It will be a strike of cloaks and black garments, tears. Worship will stop until further notice... Moses You stand in a sacred valley... You must speak with kind words, for God hears what He wills from His servants. Mother And when does He will? Tell me, please... When does He will? Moses I do not know. Mother Then go... Leave me here alone with those cloaks. Moses We haven't found a solution, O mother. Mother And we won't, O prophet. Moses I fear for you the anger of God. Mother There is nothing new... Anger is spreading in our streets in the form of explosive devices, designed to kill our children... And you come to warn me of impending anger? Moses How can I negotiate with this mother? What a dilemma! She's a stubborn woman, O Lord. ( Changing the subject. ) Perhaps your children are now in paradise. Mother ( Laughs. ) And what are they doing there? Moses They live a happy and luxurious life, rivers flow beneath their feet, wide-eyed maidens and eternal youths, food of their desire, and fruits... Mother ( Interrupting. ) You are wrong, O prophet... The true paradise for our children is in our warm embrace! Moses You must now pray to the mothers... and stop them from the idea of striking against prayer and fasting, for this contradicts the essential idea that the creature worships the Creator Mother The decision has been made by consensus between the mothers of the homeland and cannot be reversed. Cease the death of our children in this way or we strike until our demands are met. Moses You have removed God from your heart, and whoever does that turns their heart into nothing but a pump. Mother Our hearts left with our children who left without notice. Moses ( Raising his head. ) It is difficult to negotiate with a woman like this, O Lord. ( Calmly. ) Faith, O mother, is to thank God when He gives you nothing. Mother Say something else, Moses. Moses Faith is... Mother ( Interrupting. ) How can we continue to believe and resist the sight of our children turned into sheep slaughtered, skinned, roasted, and consumed every moment, while God Almighty watches our little sheep? Moses God Almighty is beyond what you describe, what kind of mothers are you? There is nothing in your bodies but your hearts, which speak, scream, cry, decide, and have left the mind dry, lifeless. What happens to this universe? God always wants good for His servants! Mother Where is this good, O prophet? Where? Where do I find it? In which market is it sold? Four children are all I have in this world, three of them burned by explosions, and the remains of their limbs scattered, and you simply speak of good? Moses Death in this way is a dramatic, affecting, but mothers' minds do not comprehend that God wants good by returning children to their rightful place! Mother We have turned from flesh and blood mothers into strange tales of sorrow and blood. Moses And I, too, my staff, have stopped working and turned into a spectator with nothing but applause! Mother You are an unemployed prophet. Moses And unemployed in negotiation. Mother You can watch more, wait, O spectator, watch me for a moment... Moses But I am unable to applaud. Mother Just watch, for free, let the one who does not buy watch our goods without applause... Moses withdraws, watching, the Mother wraps her cloak around her waist, performing the role of Mother 3, bringing a set of "cups" - containers - of water, placing them in at center. Mother 3 I have a thousand cups of water. [xi] Every day I sprinkle them behind my children, one cup so that they return safely from the homeland, one cup so that they walk on their feet in the streets of the homeland, one cup for their souls that the homeland wants to steal, one cup for their hearts, stopped every moment by the homeland's bullets, one cup for their faces, washed with the smoke of the homeland, one cup for their dreams that escape every day in the homeland. ( She cries out. ) All these cups are witnesses that I have never forgotten to sprinkle water behind my children so that evil is expelled from their path, and my heart cools and is reassured so that they return swiftly to my spirit. They haven't returned for years, but as long as their cups are here and I sprinkle water behind them, there must be joyful news that warms the heart. Oh, my sorrow... All the news has stopped... And turned: She mourns, hitting her head with her hands . O mother, remember me, Witnessing a wedding's spree, [xii] Deprived of wedding's glee, My henna turns to blood, tragedy I see. Candle of youth's bright fire, Who will quench its desire? My henna is my blood, My brow lies still in the mud. [xiii] She stops performing the role of Mother 3 . Mother Ha... What do you think, O spectator? Moses My soul hasn't heard of these water cups at all, nor seen the secret of those cloaks, nor understands all this pain! What is happening in this land where my staff has failed me and there are no other goals left for me? Split, O sea, to contain the worries of those mothers. [xiv] Mother ( Smiling. ) You were asleep in heaven, O Prophet, unaware... While we pray every day amidst a blaze. Moses ( Withdrawing. ) What prophecy in me is helpless to wake from its slumber? What dead manhood resides in my soul now? What remains of the dry heart beats within me? What story do I hear? What myth? What pain, what hell, what trivialities, what lies? What homeland? ( Stops. To the mother :) I feel the need to understand this death surrounding you. Mother Speak to God, tell Him to stop this farce. Moses And how will He stop it? Mother You ask me how He will stop it? Is He not God who says to death "Be," and it is, and to life "Be," and it is, and to our children "Return safe," and they return, and to killing "Stop," and it stops? What has happened? Don't tell me that God is no longer capable of everything! Moses ( Yells at her. ) These are the limits set by Allah, so do not approach them. He is capable of everything. Mother We don’t need everything, just one thing. Moses Stop, seek forgiveness and repent to God. Mother What have I done wrong to seek forgiveness? And what have I done to repent for? I have lived a long life as punishment in a prison where there is nothing but the forbidden, loss, hunger, bullets, and waiting. I seek forgiveness though I've done nothing, and I repent though I don't know what to repent for! My life has passed between seeking forgiveness and repentance. ( She cries out. ) I'm tired, do you know what it means to be tired? Wait a moment, please... ( Answers her phone. ) Do not ask me anything, O mother, and listen to me well. Tell all the mothers to prepare for a million-person protest where we call for a strike from prayer and fasting. Yes... we will declare sacral disobedience if our demands are not met by God Almighty! ( Raises her head. ) My Lord, forgiveness. ( Continues her call. ) This is the last solution, yes... and listen to me also: do not leave the Facebook page for a single moment, share all strike slogans with pictures because we are at a historic crossroads, a historic moment, do you know what 'historic' means? Oh, yes... I don't know either, never mind... yes, act now, O mother, act... ( Hangs up. ) Moses What historic moment are you talking about? Mother About today. Moses Yesterday was Pharaoh and his soldiers... Mother ( Interrupts him. ) Today, fear and his soldiers are here. Moses Perhaps my mother is one of those mothers! Mother ( Points to the cloaks. ) Yes... your mother, O Moses, is one of those cloaks. Moses ( Surprised. ) My mother? Mother They took you from her and placed you in the sea… They took away her life, O Moses, and you did not know. Moses I still smell her scent. Mother But our children did not get their fill of a mother's scent... because God did not save them from the sea as He saved you. Moses I suggest you pray here... and raise your hands to Him with a burning heart... and wait. Mother The last prayer you mean? Moses A final attempt. Mother I will pray. ( Stands to pray. ) I will try, so that you don't reproach me on Judgment Day, asking about my prayers and fasting. I will pray, and after that, I have nothing left for you, for I am weary, truly weary. I will try to say: La ilaha illallah ... [xv] but after that, I want You to dry my tears, Subhan Allah... but after that, You extinguish the fire of this heart with a single word from you, Alhamdulillah... [xvi] but after that... Moses ( Interrupts her. ) Pray, O mother... pray. Mother ( Bows down .) I am praying as you see... Moses Pray as people pray! Mother ( Prostrates. ) This is my prayer... I don't know anything else. Moses ( Yells. ) Stop, I've never seen anyone pray like this. Mother ( Stops. ) Only grieving mothers pray like this. Moses With all this madness. Mother Every mad person has their own prayer. Moses I will go mad too. ( Shouts. ) What is happening here? All streets throughout the world are valleys of Tuwa, sacred places that are tainted by even a single drop of blood. No, no, no... silence cannot prevail over a new history of slaughter, and Pharaoh is multiplying in your streets. I will speak to God. Indeed, I will plead with Him for the sake of the mothers... Mother This is the solution... speak to God, please, He hears from His prophets. Moses He has never denied me a request. Mother Go ahead, what are you waiting for? Tell Him about us, our waiting, our stations, our trains that never stop... Moses I will do that. ( Raises his head ) My Lord... I am Moses, the Prophet whom You spoke to in this valley, making me Your spokesman and prophet and Your sign on earth, and making my staff a miracle with which I conquered Your enemies. I come to You today imploring You to stop the river of blood in the land of mothers. Send Your rain upon the streets so it may cleanse and prepare for the prayer of love that You taught us. There is no salvation except through You, for the sake of those weary hearts. O Lord, stop this bleeding, give a sign or speak to me with a single word, tell me, "I will do it." I am Your prophet Moses, whose prayers You have always answered; it is inconceivable that You would not answer me now. It is inconceivable! O Lord, say something, please... O Lord. (Stops in disappointment. ) Mother What happened? Moses Nothing. Mother Even you, O Prophet? Moses Even I, O mother! Mother What do you mean? Moses He did not answer my prayer. Mother And you are a Prophet?! Moses Yes... and I am a Prophet. Mother So how about us, mere cloaks walking the earth? Moses I don't know. Mother Hasn’t Allah sent you to negotiate with us? Moses All in vain. I will abandon this task... it seems the curse of killing has settled here and won't stop. Mother You witness it, O Prophet... we have no choice but to strike from prayer and fasting. Moses ( To himself. ) No choice... death is a law of life but turned into a law for death! Azrael [xvii] no longer takes souls as usual... graves relinquished their boundaries, and Munkar and Nakir [xviii] ceased their lengthy questioning... It is inconceivable for them to question bodies whose souls have been torn into a thousand pieces. Mother ( On the phone .) Listen, O mother... unfortunate news: Allah did not answer our demands. Let's begin by declaring our strike from prayer and fasting until our rightful demands are met. Next Friday will be under the slogan: "O Lord: Save Our Children, Or No Prayer/Fasting." ( Hangs up. ) Moses ( To himself. ) O Lord: Save Our Children, Or No Prayer/Fasting! Mother Go, O Prophet, to your paradise and leave us alone with the, go... Moses I will not go. Mother What do you mean? Moses I will stay here. Mother But you are a Prophet living in paradise. Moses Paradise, as I see it, is to share in these cloaks' demands. Mother What do you mean to say? Moses I will be with you. Mother With us? How? Moses ( Raises his head. ) Your pardon, O Lord. I have spent my entire life close to those tormented souls on earth. I will not return to paradise until this pain ends. I cannot live in a paradise where rivers flow beneath it, [xix] while here is a homeland where hellfire runs below. It is not possible... ( Firmly to the mother. ) Listen... I will join you in striking from prayer and fasting! Mother How will you join us while you are a Prophet? Moses I will pause my prophethood for a while to stop this farce. Mother Aren't you afraid of Allah's anger upon you as a Prophet? Moses He will not be angry with me. He knows there is nothing in my heart and soul except Him. Mother ( On the phone. ) Yes... listen, O mother... the Prophet Moses will join us in the strike. ( Shouts. ) Moses will be with us! Post urgently on Facebook: Moses the Prophet joins the mothers in striking from prayer and fasting until the killing of our children stops... ( Hangs up. ) Moses ( Loud. ) O Lord, I plead to You to stop this killing. Mother ( Loud. ) Mothers want to stop the bloodshed. Moses O Lord, stop this darkness. Mother There is no one for us except You, O Lord. Moses There is no one for us except You. Mother and Moses ( Shouting together, scattering the cloaks around them. ) Stop this death, O Lord. Stop the fire, stop the sorrow, there must be a solution, we beg You. Stop the dismemberment of our children. O Lord, Your mercy, Your compassion, You who created us and are responsible for our protection. O Lord, O Lord, O Lord... ( They continue shouting, then they leave the valley, but their voices turn into thousands of voices, indicating a massive protest flooding the streets. ) The End [i] A wailing sound Iraqi woman make when hearing bad or sad news, especially death. [ii] "Allahu Akbar" (God is great) is a common expression used by Muslims in various contexts, including when receiving terrible or sad news. [iii] Similarly to the biblical story, in the Islamic tradition Moses’s mother leaves him in a basket on the Nile in order to protect him from the danger of the Pharaoh who killed new born Israelites, and the basket is recovered by the Pharaoh's wife, who adopts Moses. Quran 20:39 and 28:3-4, 7-9. Here and throughout the play Moses’s being cast into the river (imagined as the sea) in order to escape mass death and his forced separation from his mother are paralleled with the experiences of the mothers and their children. [iv] The grieving mother has wandered the streets waiting for the return of her son. [v] Quran, 2:34. Iblees (or Eblīs) corresponds with the biblical figure of Satan. [vi] Quran, 90:4. [vii] From Prophet Muhammad’s hadith, “Heaven lies beneath the feet of your mother.” [viii] In Arabic, Saeed means happy. [ix] While the story of Job in the Islamic tradition is similar to that of the biblical story of the Book of Job, in the Islamic tradition Job is steadfast in his suffering and does not entertain the same doubts that the biblical Job does. [x] As in the biblical story of Moses, in the Quran the staff of Moses miraculously turns into a serpent. Quran, 28:31. [xi] A practice among mothers in Iraq involves sprinkling water behind their children as they leave the house, believing it protects them from evil and misfortune and ensures they will return [xii] “Spree” here refers to the wedding procession and celebration, the Zaffe (or Zaffa), a Middle-Eastern tradition of bringing the newlyweds into their reception hall surrounded by music and dance. [xiii] These are famous verses written by poet Kadhim al-Karbala’i and recited in memory of Al-Qasim, son of Imam al-Hassan, who was killed in the battle of Karbala in 680 CE. The verses express his wish for his mother to remember him when she witnesses a wedding ceremony. He died young, and his mother did not have the chance to see him marry. Instead of the tradition of henna adorning his hands during weddings, his blood stains him, and his body rests beneath the soil. [xiv] Referring to the story of Moses in the Quran, 26:63. [xv] “There is no god but Allah”: a fundamental declaration of faith in Islam, known as the Shahada. Muslims recite this phrase to affirm their belief in the oneness of Allah and the central tenet of Islam that there is no deity worthy of worship except Allah. [xvi] Subhan Allah means “Glory be to God” or “He be glorified and exalted,” declares God to be above any fault, shortcoming, corrupt notions, or false idea. Alhamdulillah means “Praise be to God.” [xvii] The Angel of Death is present and the name Azrael appears in both Christianity and Judaism. However, Azrael is more established in Islam, where he is one of the archangels alongside Mikhail (Michael), Jibril (Gabriel), and Israfil. [xviii] In Islamic belief, Munkar and Nakir are two angels who are tasked with questioning the deceased in the grave about their faith and deeds. [xix] A reference to Quran, 9:72. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes References About The Author(s) Bios : Author: Ali Abdel-Nabi Al-Zaidi was born in Nasiriyah in 1965 and graduated from the Teachers’ Institute of that city in 1987. His plays have been performed on stages across Iraq and the Arab world and internationally, earning him numerous national and international awards. His play collections include The Eighth Day of the Week ( Thāmin Ayām al-ʾUsbu’ ; 2000), The Return of the Man Who Has Not Been Absent (ʿ Awadat al-Rajul alladhi lam Yaghīb ; 2005), A Show in Arabic (ʿ Arḍ bil ʿArabi ; 2011), The Divine Plays (Al-ʾIlāhiyāt; 2014), and Plays of the Corrupt City ( Nuṣūs al-Madīna al-Fāsida ; 2021). Translator Amir Al-Azraki is a playwright, literary translator, Theatre of the Oppressed practitioner, and Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Studies in Islamic and Arab Cultures Program at Renison University College, University of Waterloo. Among his plays are: Waiting for Gilgamesh: Scenes from Iraq , The Mug , and The Widow . Al-Azraki is the translator of Africanism: Blacks in the Medieval Arab Imaginary , author of The Discourse of War in Contemporary Theatre (in Arabic), co-editor and co-translator of Contemporary Plays from Iraq , “A Rehearsal for Revolution”: An Approach to Theatre of the Oppressed (in Arabic), and co-editor and co-translator of Arabic poetry in Consequence , The Common , Poetry Foundation and Talking Writing . Amir Al-Azraki, PhD, (he/him) Program Coordinator, Studies in Islamic and Arab Cultures Associate Professor, Culture and Language Studies Renison University College, affiliated with the University of Waterloo aaliazraki@uwaterloo.ca 519-884-4404 ext. 28671 Editor of the English translation: Jeff Casey is Associate Professor of Theatre and Theatre Director at Norwich University. His scholarly articles have appeared in Theatre Topics , Quarterly Review of Film and Video , Modern Drama , and Ecumenica . He works extensively as a theatre director, producer, designer, dramaturge, and playwright. His directing credits include Cabaret , Chicago , Kafka’s The Trial , Voices from a People’s History of the United States , Harold Pinter’s Party Time and The New World Order , and Neil Simon’s Rumors. Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents O Lord! By Ali Abdel-Nabi Al-Zaidi Mothers Challenging the Divine: Ali Al-Zaidi’s Ya Rab! The 31st Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre. September 1-11, 2024. ARTIFICIAL HEART. By Mohammad Basha and Firas Farrah. LEILI & MAJNUN. Written and directed by Torange Yeghiazarian SHAHADAT (THE TESTIMONIES) Adapted by Fouad Teymour Review: TO THE GOOD PEOPLE OF GAZA: THEATRE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE Staging Revolutions and the Many Faces of Modernism: Performing Politics in Irish and Egyptian Theatre Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 16 Fall 2024 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Review: PLAYS OF ARABIC HERITAGE. By Hannah Khalil By Kari Barclay Published: November 1, 2024 Download Article as PDF PLAYS OF ARABIC HERITAGE. By Hannah Khalil. Edited by Chris White. London: Methuen Drama, 2022; pp. 280 + xvi. This collection features six plays by the Palestinian-Irish writer Hannah Khalil, framed with supporting material by editor Chris White and Khalil herself. The plays, Plan D, Scenes from 76* Years, A Negotiation, A Museum in Baghdad, Last of the Pearl Fishers, and Hakawatis , experiment with forms ranging from naturalistic drama to solo performance to kaleidoscopic vignettes to a radio play. One of a few collections of Arab diasporic drama by a single author, the book shows the playwright’s range and how her work has shifted based on changing contexts. Alongside recent collections of plays by Mona Mansour, Heather Raffo, and Yussef El Guindi, Hannah Khalil adds a thematically rich and carefully crafted contribution to an emerging canon of published works by MENA playwrights. Chris White’s introduction situates each of Khalil’s plays in the context of Khalil’s biography and frames her work as intersectional feminist interventions, presenting “women telling stories the way they want to, ‘free as birds’” (xvi). A forward by actor and producer Alia Alzougbi similarly connects Khalil’s work with matrilineal storytelling traditions across generations of Arab women. Indeed, Khalil’s work often present Arab women protagonists trying to navigate the specifically gendered dimensions of colonization, warfare, and sexual violence and to survive through storytelling. Khalil herself adds intros and outros to every play in the collection, revealing how she developed each play and how responses to one production often led to the next. The book’s first play, Plan D, depicts a family of farmers fleeing violence when military bombardment leaves a crater on their land. The title alludes to Plan Dalet, the Zionist military campaign of 1948 that displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians and killed numerous others leading up to the founding of the state of Israel, but Khalil avoids temporal or geographic landmarks. Instead, she is deliberately “non-specific” and lets the play resonate with various audience experiences (4). As Khalil emphasizes, the play’s first production at London’s Tristan Bates Theatre led audience members, both Palestinians and others, to confide in her their stories of war and displacement. These stories emerging from Plan D led directly to Khalil’s next play, Scenes from 76* Years. This series of interwoven vignettes depicts—among other scenes—women defiantly picnicking in front of IDF soldiers, a man returning to see his pre-Nakba home and discover its new settler inhabitant, and an Israeli activist teenager telling her family about her decision to reject university and join in Palestinian struggle. Khalil fragments these stories, and some of the most poignant scenes are wordless stage pictures of Palestinians waiting at checkpoints. Past and present collide, as Palestinian life continues in stops and starts. The title’s “years” reference the time elapsed since 1948, and its asterisk indicates that artists should update its title to reflect the ongoing count of years passed since the Nakba. The next two plays in the collection, A Negotiation and A Museum in Baghdad, are companion pieces reflecting on museums and colonial plunder. The first is a short solo play about an Iraqi English woman who comes face-to-face with the Mask of Warka, one of the earliest representations of the human face, in the British Museum. As she experiences wonder and gratitude that Britain has kept it “safe,” her father feels sorrow that his daughter overlooks its expropriation. The daughter starts to wonder if she, like the mask, has been removed from her Iraqi context. With its focus and scale, the play is one of the strongest in the collection and uses one person’s encounter to unpack conflicting interpretations of “ tarath ” [sic]—heritage (122). A Museum in Baghdad continues this reflection by focusing on two figures—Gertrude Bell, a real-life British archaeologist involved in founding the Museum of Iraq in Baghdad in 1926, and Ghalia Hussein, a fictional Iraqi archeologist trying to reopen the museum in 2006 following looting during the Iraq War. Co-commissioned by the Royal Lyceum Theatre and Royal Shakespeare Company, the play imaginatively collides timescales. Despite its high-stakes context, the play often leaves its characters’ tough decisions up to the flip of a coin tossed by Abu Zemen, a kind of Father Time figure. Although sometimes caught up in its ideas, the play spotlights women trying to preserve heritage as regimes rise and fall “through the hubris and mismanagement of men” (170). In Last of the Pearl Fishers, Khalil effectively uses the radio play format, which serves her writing style of quick jumps across space and time. Commissioned by BBC 4, this radio play is set in a community of wealthy ex-pats in Dubai, where Khalil grew up. The play follows Lillian, a white-collar English housewife, as she searches for her Filipina maid Celeste, who has disappeared without a trace. Khalil creates similar whodunnit structure to that found in Susan Glaspell’s 1916 classic Trifles, as gendered objects reveal clues to the mystery. However, instead of merely highlighting gendered solidarity, the play exposes Lillian’s inability to understand Celeste’s position. Through Lillian’s search, we witness the inequities of migrant labor in the UAE and the legal structures that uphold them. The final play, Hakawatis: The Women of the Arabian Nights, is a playful subversion of 1001 Nights. Leaving Scheherazade and King Shahryar offstage, the play imagines the king’s other would-be wives awaiting their execution and spinning stories to help Scheherazade hold Shahryar off. The play’s title refers to the Arab tradition of oral storytelling, and here women continue that tradition as a part of their survival. With stories ranging from dark to uproarious, Hakawatis is excellent, and it self-referentially comments on theater as a space of hope for women to build community, escape violence, and fight for their communities. Demonstrating range in form and content as well as insights from the playwright, Hannah Khalil: Plays of Arabic Heritage offers a beautifully intimate reading experience where one gets glimpses into a playwright’s journey and her artistic decision-making. Foregrounding stories about Palestine in Plan D and Scenes from 76* Years, the collection offers much-needed representation to complement anthologies such as Stories Under Occupation and Inside/Outside: Six Plays from Palestine and the Diaspora . Meanwhile, Khalil’s work models coalitional thinking with other struggles in the Arab world and depicts women, like Khalil herself, trying to navigate injustice with humor, care, and a belief in power of artistic imagination. The book will be of great service to scholars and artists interested in Khalil’s work, Palestinian and MENA diasporic drama, and plays that use history to explore our unwieldy present. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes References About The Author(s) Kari Barclay (they/them) is a writer, director, and researcher who serves as Assistant Professor of Theater at Oberlin College. Their scholarship on theater, sexuality, and politics has been published in Theatre Journal, Theatre Topics, and The Journal of Dramatic Theory and Criticism, among other journals. Their book Directing Desire, out from Palgrave Macmillan in 2023, charts the history and politics of intimacy choreography and consent in contemporary U.S. theater. kari-barclay.com . Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents An Interview with the Iraqi-born British playwright Hassan Abdulrazzak by Hadeel Abelhameed Review: GUERNICA, GAZA: VISIONS FROM THE CENTER OF THE EARTH. By Naomi Wallace and Ismail Khalidi Performance Review: The Tutor Review: OF KINGS AND CLOWNS: LEADERSHIP IN CONTEMPORARY EGYPTIAN THEATRE SINCE 1967 By Tiran Manucharyan. Review: PLAYS OF ARABIC HERITAGE. By Hannah Khalil Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 17 Spring 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage SHAHADAT (THE TESTIMONIES) Adapted by Fouad Teymour By Suzi Elnaggar Published: May 12, 2025 Download Article as PDF SHAHADAT (THE TESTIMONIES) . Adapted by Fouad Teymour from Women Resisting Sexual Violence and the Egyptian Revolution: Arab Feminist Testimonies (2020) by Manal Hamzeh . Directed by Tina El Gamal . Silk Road Cultural Center in partnership with the International Voices Project and New Mexico State University, Chicago . 4 November 2024 . A (Re)view From The Inside: Silk Road’s Shahadat Shahadat (The Testimonies) was adapted by Egyptian playwright Fouad Teymour from Resisting Sexual Violence and the Egyptian Revolution: Arab Feminist Testimonies (2020) by Manal Hamzeh. Hamzeh’s scholarship aims to “provides unique insight into women’s experiences during the Egyptian Revolution, and into the methods of resistance these women developed in response to sexual violence.” [1] Her book centers the verbatim accounts of three Egyptian women—the shaaheda [2] (“women who give testimonios”) Ola S., Samira I., and Yasmine E., who experienced sexual violence during the 2011 Egyptian Revolution ( suwret yanayer ) and shared their stories publicly, from social media posts to television interviews, seeking justice on their own terms. Through her ongoing work, Hamzeh aims to preserve and represent the shahadat (testimonies) while documenting her conversations and relationship with the three women over the past decade. Egyptian playwright Teymour’s adaptation marks the first time Hamzeh’s work on the shahadat has been adapted for the stage. Previously, she collaborated on a graphic art representation of the testimonies, which, like the play, was developed with the women’s knowledge and consent. [3] Teymour’s script highlights the women’s voices, amplifying their strength, resilience, and unwavering demand for justice. Co-produced by Silk Road Cultural Center and New Mexico State University, Shahadat was presented as a work-in-progress reading at the International Voices Project (IVP) in Chicago at the Instituto Cervantes. [4] Shahadat found its home with Silk Road as part of a long-time friendship and collaboration between Hamzeh and its founders, Jamil Khoury and Malik Gillani. In addition to Teymour’s involvement, this first developmental reading was shaped by Egyptian and Egyptian-American perspectives, with direction by Egyptian-American theatre artist Tina El Gamal and script dramaturgy by myself, Egyptian-American dramaturg Suzi Elnaggar. To bring Hamzeh’s work to the stage, Silk Road prioritized assembling a team of primarily SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African) and Egyptian artists, ensuring the adaptation honored the power of these testimonies while exploring how the reading could evolve into a fully realized production. Shahadat . Adapted by Fouad Teymour . Directed by Tina El Gamal . Left to Right: Samira played by Tina El Gamal, Yasmine played by Anelga Hajjar, Ola played by Marielle Issa, Manal/Hewar played by Annalise Raziq . Photo: IVP and Scott Dray , provided by Silk Road Cultural Center . From Book to Stage: The Text of Shahadat Teymour and Hamzeh worked through multiple drafts of the script, refining the adaptation to balance textual authenticity with theatrical cohesion. From the outset, Teymour aimed to maintain the fidelity of the women’s words while shaping a structured narrative that could sustain dramatic momentum onstage, a goal that director El Gamal supported in rehearsal through her actor-led process. Another notable aspect that reinforced the authenticity of the shahadat and honored the specificity of the women’s experiences in their own words was the extensive use of colloquially transliterated Arabic throughout the script. No elements were added to the testimonies, though some small translation adjustments were made for flow (Hamzeh originally translated the testimonies for her book from colloquial Egyptian Arabic into English). Additionally, Teymour’s script introduces two framing characters, where in the book Hamzeh’s scholarship frames the testimonies. These framing characters help add narrative cohesion and dramatic subtext: Hewar (Arabic for dialogue or conversation), a narrator and context-giver, and Rajul (Arabic for man), a composite character representing all the male voices. In this first reading, both were voiced by actors seated at the periphery—Rajul and the oud player stage right, and Hewar and the stage directions reader (separately) stage left—though they initially were written as off-stage voices. Hewar is doubled with the character of Manal (the dramatic representation of Hamzeh, played by an actor), creating an element of metanarrative when the ‘narrator’ comes on stage as Manal. Teymour has expressed interest in further developing these characters and their narrative and structural function in a future workshop, particularly by bringing Rajul onstage as a physical presence and exploring Hamzeh’s role as the character Manal. Apart from translation and framing the verbatim text, a key challenge for Teymour was weaving the three testimonies together—each woman’s experience was independent of the others, yet the script had to find a way to bring them into a shared space. With that challenge in mind, the first act unfolds as individual yet interwoven testimonies, capturing the fragmentation of their experiences, before transitioning to the second act that focuses on their collective relationship with Hamzeh, as an on-stage character Manal. This shift in structure mirrors the real-life process that led to the creation of Hamzeh’s book, the disparate testimonies of women drawn into conversation through Hamzeh’s work and scholarship, creating lasting relationships. Using Hewar as a narrator, Teymour provides necessary context for audience members who may not be familiar with the 2011 Egyptian Revolution while also moving back and forth through time to have the characters meet at the pivotal moment of the protests, the “day of rage” Friday, January 28th, 2011 (Teymour 1). Teymour continues to use this technique of hewar (conversation), so the narrative slips between the characters conversing with each other, the audience, and Hewar, who weaves throughout. The method of storytelling that Teymour uses builds on the methodological ideas in Hamzeh’s book, shahadat (public testimonies) , and haki , (the building of strong relationships and having conversations over time) (Hamzeh 13-18). Haki is rooted in the Arabic verb haka, meaning to weave or to tell, calling to a tradition of oral storytelling [5] . Teymour begins the narrative on Qasr al-Nil bridge, during January 28th, 2011, “the Friday of Indignation”(1). The ‘narrator,’ Hewar, sets the scene, situating the audience in a revolution in progress: The revolution was afoot. Three young women converged independently onto this historical event, seeking, alongside others, “freedom, bread, and Social Justice!” Unaware that their lives would be permanently upended in the process, and that they would end up teaching the world a lesson in courage, resistance, dignity, and [sic]self-respect. These are their stories told through their own Testimonies... Shahaddat! ( Shahadat , Teymour 1) Shahadat. Adapted by Fouad Teymour. Directed by Tina El Gamal. Yasmine played by Anelga Hajjar (foreground,) Ola played by Marielle Issa. Photo: IVP and Scott Dray, provided by Silk Road Cultural Center. Ola steps forward, recalling the protest in midan etahrir (Tahrir Square): “I was on the frontlines” (1). Hewar notes, at that same moment, Samira had been released from detention the day before and was amid the protesting crowds. Time shifts, and Samira recounts her decision to join the protests on January 24th: “I took the train from Sohag to Cairo knowing something was building up” (2). Hewar remarks that she is unsure of the location of the third protestor, Yasmine; Yasmine clarifies that she made the decision to join the protests, having only begun to be politically active: “I was living in the heart of Cairo when the revolution started. I began my political activism during the 18 days of essuwra ” (3). The three women continue their introductions, explaining what drew them to Tahrir Square, moving together to become the crowd of protestors chanting “3eish, Horreya, 3adalah egtema3eyeh!” [6] which Teymour translates as “Freedom, Bread, and Social Justice!” ending the first scene (4). This narrative interweaving of the testimonies, which exemplifies the idea of haki is a key part of the dramatization of the verbatim text. Hamzeh played a vital role in the development and reading, commenting on the process as it related to her methodology and sharing her first-hand knowledge of the three women. Because director El Gamal’s rehearsal process was collaborative, Hamzeh often shared her thoughts while also enjoying learning more about a developmental process as a non-theatre maker and academic. While Hamzeh provided insights, the creative team consciously decided not to attempt direct reconstruction of the women but to approach the script through an interpretive lens. The actors engaged with the text as it appeared on the page, informed by the contextual details in Hamzeh’s book, which were mediated through dramaturgical presentations, handouts, and exercises. El Gamal led the actors in crafting the characters through discussion and some devised work in the room. This process allowed the actors to discover the characters organically, balancing fidelity to the testimonies with the needs of the stage and the material’s emotional weight. Shahadat. Adapted by Fouad Teymour. Directed by Tina El Gamal. Left to Right: Rajul played by Faiz Siddique, Yasmine played by Anelga Hajjar, Samira played by Tina El Gamal, Ola played by Marielle Issa, Manal/Hewar played by Annalise Raziq. Photo: Gordon Chow, provided by Silk Road Cultural Center. Staging and Theatricality A staged reading has inherent limitations—minimal set, little movement, and a focus on the text—but El Gamal’s direction found ways to use these constraints to the production’s advantage. The actors began offstage before moving into a staggered formation at their music stands. Throughout the reading, the actors alternated positions, with different actors stepping forward to emphasize key moments, echoing the dynamic movement of a protest as it becomes a revolution. The fluidity reflected the activity of Tahrir Square on those January days, immersing the audience in the tumult and hope of a revolution as it unfolded. A particularly striking use of movement came during the testimony of Ola, an active political organizer during Mubarak’s presidency; she opens the play clashing with police over tear gas canisters. Recalling the clash, Ola moved forward downstage as if tossing a canister back, then fell in line again, embodying the rhythm of protest. On the other hand, Yasmine, recounting being surrounded and assaulted by a mob, retreated upstage, mirroring her sense of entrapment. Of the three women, her staged testimony was the most physically dynamic, emphasizing the fear and disorientation of her experience. Stillness, too, played a crucial role. At the end of act one, all three women raised their voices as they declared, “STOP!” (24). The shift from motion to stillness punctuated the act’s conclusion, reinforcing the strength of their testimonies. In act two, when Manal transitions from Hewar, the staging shifted from a triangular formation to a living room-like arrangement, which created an intimate and conversational setting that complemented the act’s reflective tone. For the play’s epilogue, the actors repositioned themselves into a straight line behind music stands, visually echoing the format of a Zoom call, reinforcing the theme of remote yet connected testimony. These staging shifts marked the passage of time, guiding the audience through the play’s evolving emotional landscape. Another element that added to the theatricality of the reading was live oud music. On the oud, Lucia Thomas underscored the reading by performing compositions by Yasmine. This addition, requested by Teymour, added emotional depth and texture to the piece. Throughout the staging, the music did not simply accompany the performance; it actively shaped the atmosphere. Swelling at moments of intensity and retreating to allow spoken words to resonate, the oud wove through the testimonies like an extension of their voices. In all, El Gamal’s use of clever yet minimal staging used the constraints of a staged reading to their best effect; at the end of the performance, multiple audience members commented on the effectiveness of those choices. Following the reading, Khoury led a talkback featuring Teymour, Hamzeh, El Gamal, myself, and most of the cast and creative team. The audience reported that the strength of the women’s testimonies deeply resonated with them and that they found connections to their own experiences. A significant Egyptian audience was present, and many expressed how the play captured the trauma and resilience of those who lived through the Revolution. However, the events of the shahadat themselves were difficult to hear, as some audience members expressed, though they relayed strong support for a full production to come to fruition. The script, which Teymour, Hamzeh, and Silk Road seek to develop further, hopefully with a local partner, was extremely well-received. Shahadat. Adapted by Fouad Teymour. Directed by Tina El Gamal. Stage Directions/ Samira stand-in played by Jamila Tyler, Yasmine played by Anelga Hajjar, Ola played by Marielle Issa. Photo: Gordon Chow, provided by Silk Road Cultural Cente Next Steps The developmental reading of Shahadat at IVP marked a critical step in developing this powerful piece, highlighting the resilience of women in the region through their testimonies and the importance in the contemporary American theatre of their being able to represent themselves and their experiences. Moving forward, the creative team is committed to refining the production, deepening its theatrical elements, and expanding its reach to broader audiences. As a work-in-progress reading, Shahadat demonstrated the power of these testimonies and the potential for a full production. With a more extensive workshop, there would be an opportunity to explore richer staging, sound design, and immersive projections to realize the play’s impact more fully. The ultimate goal is to transition Shahadat from a staged reading into a fully realized production that continues to amplify these voices and spark critical conversations, furthering the representation of SWANA, Arab, and Egyptian stories in the American theatre while honoring the voices of the shaaheda and their goal of promoting justice for women in Egypt and the region. Shahadat is not just a recounting of past events—it is an active engagement with memory, justice, and resistance. [1] Hamzeh, a scholar of gender and ethnicity and co-founder of the Department of Borderlands and Ethnic Studies, describes her research as “rooted in Arab feminist research methodologies.” Manal Hamzeh, “Manal Hamzeh Bio,” n.d., https://best.nmsu.edu/manal-hamzeh.html . Her book can be found here: “Women Resisting Sexual Violence and the Egyptian Revolution,” Bloomsbury, n.d., https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/women-resisting-sexual-violence-and-the-egyptian-revolution-9781350333321/ . [2] The translations and transliteration styles used in this review are pulled from Hamzeh’s text, except where drawn from the workshop playscript. She describes her approach as “Arabic terms and names transcribed into Latin alphabets with lay and popular spelling”; here, her use of shaaheda , a noun which does not usually have a feminine plural form in Arabic dictionaries, is an intervention through translation (145). [3] Hamzeh organized an initial reading of act one of Teymour’s script at NMSU, which myself and other creative team members attended virtually, called “Shahadat Theatrical Readings”; the page for the reading contains more of Hamzeh’s perspective on the work, as well as links to the graphic representations created with Ola and Yasmine: “Shahadat Theatrical Readings,” n.d., https://best.nmsu.edu/shahadat-theatrical-readings.html . [4] The International Voices Project serves as an incubator for international work, featuring commissions, translations, and new productions from playwrights representing countries from across the globe. This year, five playwrights were produced in partnership with local Chicago theatres and organizations, with each project championed by a group of artists who deemed the plays to be relevant to their communities; this method has led the International Voices Project to have an exceptional track record of their selected readings which go on to have full productions afterward. Over its 14 years, the International Voices Project has produced readings of multiple Arabic and Egyptian plays. To learn more about the project and past seasons visit the website: https://www.ivpchicago.org/ [5] For Hamzeh, haki , which has not been previously used as a research methodology, has been used by Palestinians “for decades” and is grounded in an “Arab methodology of oral storytelling.” Drawing on Palestinian scholar, Faiha Abdulhadi, who wrote, as quoted in Hamzeh’s book, “When we have our own narratives, with all details, then we can face the world with it. ” Manal Hamzeh, Women Resisting Sexual Violence and the Egyptian Revolution: Arab Feminist Testimonies (New York, NY: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2020), 13,14, https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350224087 . [6] This transliteration reflects a colloquial Egyptian style and is pulled from a workshop version of Teymour’s text. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes References About The Author(s) Suzi Elnaggar Northwestern University; Freelance Dramaturg Suzi Elnaggar is an Egyptian American performance scholar, freelance dramaturg, and theatremaker. Her work has been published in Asian Theatre Journal, Arab Stages, and Theatre Times. Her interests include recontextualizing tragedy, myths, and folklore, postcolonial theatre contexts, decoloniality in performance, theatre of social change, the intersection of trauma and performance, transnational and migrant stories, and work that centers SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African) experiences. Suzi’s scholarship and practice center community, collaboration, and context. As a dramaturg, she is experienced in both production and developmental work. She is the artistic director of Backstitch Story Project, and the founder and creative director of the Digital Development Project. She has read scripts for PlayPenn, Playwright’s Center, Rattlestick’s Van Lier New Voices Fellowship, SHELA, and Sparkfest, among many others. Selected dramaturgy credits (Production & Developmental Workshops): Silk Road’s Shahadat ; Backstitch Story Arts Off-White: The Arab House Party Play ; Clamour Theatre’s Lived Experience ; TACTICS Ottawa’s ANANSI V. GOD(S) ; Jubilee Theatre Waco’s Fairview (Texas Premiere); Wild Imaginings’ Jesus and Valium (World Premiere), The Way He Looks at You , Cardboard Castles Hung on Walls (World Premiere); Northwestern University Theatre’s The Great Sea Serpent . Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents O Lord! By Ali Abdel-Nabi Al-Zaidi Mothers Challenging the Divine: Ali Al-Zaidi’s Ya Rab! The 31st Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre. September 1-11, 2024. ARTIFICIAL HEART. By Mohammad Basha and Firas Farrah. LEILI & MAJNUN. Written and directed by Torange Yeghiazarian SHAHADAT (THE TESTIMONIES) Adapted by Fouad Teymour Review: TO THE GOOD PEOPLE OF GAZA: THEATRE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE Staging Revolutions and the Many Faces of Modernism: Performing Politics in Irish and Egyptian Theatre Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 19 Spring 2026 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Performance Review: DODI AND DIANA, by Kareem Fahmy. Directed by Reginald L. Douglas. Mosaic Theater, DC. September 23, 2025. By Jovita Jacob Selwyn Published: May 11, 2026 Download Article as PDF Kareem Fahmy’s premiere of Dodi and Diana , directed by Reginald L. Douglas and produced by the Mosaic Theater in DC, was broadly advertised as a “sexy, thrilling new play, where fate, royalty, and passion collide!” This collision took the form of “astrological doubling”, using astrology as a non-realist dramaturgical device to link the titular royals to its central characters. Through this device, Fahmy evokes a sort of mystic, almost mythical sense of reincarnation, using it as a lens to examine “the most intimate aspects of marriage and love” (Mosaic Theater trailer). The production certainly primed the audience for seduction: the entire stage was a dimly lit, opulent Paris Ritz hotel room, brilliantly designed by Shartoya R. Jn. Baptiste. The space was bathed in gold shades; brass frames adorned the walls, textured drapes lined the windows, and at the center, a king-size plush bed was draped in luxurious silk sheets and pillows (Image 1). The space felt both indulgent and claustrophobic, a gilded chamber where seduction and entrapment coexisted. Married couple Jason (Jake Loewenthal) and Samira (Dina Soltan), whose simmering sexual tension was undeniable, find themselves confined inside this lavish yet liminal space, at Jason's instigation. Under the guidance of an astrologer, Jason repeatedly insists that leaving the room at any time during a mysterious 72-hour convergence—culminating in a solar eclipse—will bring their relationship ill fortune. The eclipse, in Fahmy’s narrative world, intentionally coincides with the twenty-fifth anniversary of Princess Diana and Dodi Fayed’s fatal car crash. This reference is subtly foregrounded in the opening scene: the space remains concealed behind curtains and darkness while projected car headlights cut through the stage. There is a sudden flashing of lights followed by the sound of a crash, reenacting the trauma of the accident. A few minutes later, the curtains open and Jason walks up on stage. This performance sets up Jason and Samira as mirrors to Dodi and Diana’s infamous interracial relationship. Fahmy takes this doubling a step further by linking the couple to Diana and Dodi through astrology, labeling them “astrological doubles” to imply that their relationship is governed by the same celestial forces and perhaps destined for a similarly dramatic or scrutinized fate. Image 1: Dina Soltan as Samira and Jake Loewenthal as Jason, on day one of being trapped in the hotel room. Photo Credit: Chris Banks. Jason and Samira’s forced confinement within this box of a hotel room reveals a great deal about who they are, what they want, and how their repeated patterns reflect signs of an unhealthy marriage. On the surface, their relationship appears to be laced with overflowing love and devotion to one another. The graceful and smooth choreography of their intimacy, directed by Sierra Young, plays a huge part in shaping the overly saccharine image. Their bodies move with elegance, each anticipating and responding to the other’s speed and momentum. Their arms and legs intertwine in a series of twists, turns, and movements that feel sexually intimate, rushed yet tantalizing, rough yet delicate. The constant kissing, caressing, and touching in seemingly alluring ways (Image 2), evoke a sense of unease to witness these intimate moments. It feels voyeuristic, as if one were invasively peering into the private life of this intensely in-love pair, whose constant physical affection borders on the cloyingly enviable. However, this abundance of physical affection paradoxically reveals an underlying emotional hollowness. The incessant need for touch and proximity begins to feel like a desperate attempt to fill a void. Whenever Samira wants more than just kissing and caressing, Jason finds a way to interrupt the moment and withdraw, as if deliberately avoiding sleeping with her. They often lie half-naked, sprawled across the bed and entangled with one another, but the encounters always end on an awkward note. Throughout the play, Fahmy consistently makes us wonder if their attraction alone is powerful enough to sustain their relationship. After a certain point, the couple slip into a relentless loop of attempted intimacy so repetitive and insistent that it becomes painful and unbearable to watch. This loop reveals the deep imbalance in their desires: Samira craves deep emotional and physical connection, often initiating sex, while Jason, racked with insecurity, cannot bring himself to sleep with her while sober. Alcohol and drugs become important in exposing the fractures within the relationship. Jason strikes a clandestine deal with the hotel bellboy, slipping him a generous sum of money to procure drugs. When the substances finally arrive, Jason and Samira consume them along with copious amounts of alcohol, and the scene transforms into a woozy, altered state. This shift is rendered vividly through expertly executed lighting, designed by Sage Green. The hotel room lapses into a nightclub-like atmosphere, saturated with electric blues, neon pinks, and chartreuse greens that pulse across the stage. The fast- shifting lights paired with booming pub music create a sensory environment that mimics the dizziness of intoxication, making the audience feel as though the room itself is spinning. Within this heightened atmosphere, Jake’s and Dina’s performances expand physically and emotionally. Their movements become looser, more urgent, and more reckless, allowing the scene to surge towards a feverish climax. In their intoxicated haze, the couple finally collapse together, spent. But when the light and sound shift again to the ordinary hotel room, indicating the start of a new day, sobriety returns and so does stark clarity. The fragile connection they briefly achieve during inebriation disintegrates once again. Restless attempts at connection, failed stabs at intimacy, and the slow surfacing of frustrations, insecurities, and long-buried resentments create the play’s momentum: a cyclical, suffocating rhythm that mirrors the eclipse’s slow movement toward totality. The play’s engagement with astrology places it in conversation with a long lineage of theatrical cosmology. In Greek mythology and even Shakespeare, eclipses were understood as omens, especially for rulers, and horoscopes were thought to reveal one’s innate character (Sondheim). And yet, even in that world, sometimes the will remains free. Fahmy gestures toward this tension between fate and agency by tethering Jason and Samira to the royal love story of Diana and Dodi. The dramaturgical premise suggests that while the interracial, hyper-public couple of the 1990s were undone by forces far beyond their control, Jason and Samira, who remain confined, anonymous, and ordinary, might yet choose differently. And yet, to my utmost chagrin, this play refuses that resolution. Instead of embracing each other with renewed clarity, Jason and Samira remained mired in their unresolved resentments, leaving the allusion provocatively incomplete. Image 2: Dina Soltan as Samira’s astrological double, Princess Diana, and Jake Loewenthal as Jason’s astrological double, Dodi Fayed. Photo Credit: Chris Banks. While frustrating, this uncertainty does lead to a limited degree of dramaturgical success. Astrology fills the world of the play, but it never fully controls the story: the idea of Jason and Samira as “cosmic doubles” nudges them toward repeating a tragedy, yet it does not seal their fate. Instead, the play forces both characters to confront the insecurities and secrets that gradually pull them apart. Jason carries guilt over accidentally killing Samira’s dog, and that Samira weaponized the incident. Samira in turn has hidden her potential overseas acting opportunities, knowing that they would sharpen Jason’s sense of inferiority and that he would not want her to go. These layers of messy toxicity prevent them from building the secure and healthy relationship they both desire. Their point of breakdown comes from the discovery of fractures within their relationship, not from the stars. In this way, astrology functions as both a mythic frame and a psychological alibi: in the claustrophobic environment of the Ritz Paris suite, the astrological layer creates a formal tension that holds the production together. This friction is imperative to the play’s design, mirroring the instability of the marriage itself; the setting is glamorous and yet restrictive, because it turns out that Jason and Samira’s relationship is, too, a beautiful trap (Image 3). In the end, the play Dodi and Diana does not deliver a fully resolved mythic parallel nor a neatly coherent naturalistic drama. Instead, it offers a fractured portrait of two people caught between who they are and who the world tells them they might be. The play succeeds best when showing the grinding pressure that external narratives and internal wounds exert on an intercultural marriage. Even if it fails in uniting its loftier ambitions, it remains a compelling exploration of how the sexy and thrilling collision of fate, royalty, and passion conspire to shape, and sometimes destroy, the intimacies we build. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes Works Cited Mosaic Theater. “Dodi and Diana Teaser.” YouTube , www.youtube.com/watch?v=ouO5fOZJMow . Accessed 12 Feb. 2026. Sondheim, Moriz. “ Shakespeare and the Astrology of His Time. ” Journal of the Warburg Institute , vol. 2, no. 3, 1939, p 243–59. JSTOR, https://doi.org/10.2307/750101 . References About The Author(s) Jovita Roselene Jacob Selwyn is a PhD candidate in performance studies at the University of Maryland. She holds a BA in English literature from Lady Doak College, Tamil Nadu, and a dual Master’s degree (M.Litt & MFA) in Shakespeare and Performance from Mary Baldwin University, Virginia. Her current research interests include cultural amalgamation of Shakespearean and Indian performances, diasporic studies, and adaptation theory. Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Reframing the Past: Situating Mesopotamian Theatrical Traditions Within a Cross‑Cultural Performance Continuum Gen Z Theatre from Turkey Taps into Repertoires of Millennial Resistance: A Comparison of the Short Festival Plays 'Helezoni' and 'Orange' Performance Review: THE CLOWN, by Mariam Basha. Directed by Kamal El Basha. El Hakawati Theatre, Jerusalem. August 28, 2025 in person, September 11, 2025 via WhatsApp video. Performance Review: DODI AND DIANA, by Kareem Fahmy. Directed by Reginald L. Douglas. Mosaic Theater, DC. September 23, 2025. Performance Review: ALMONDS BLOSSOM IN DEIR YASSIN, by Hanna Eady. Directed by Hanna Eady. Cherry Street Village, Seattle. October 25, 2025. Book Review: Samer Al-Saber. A Movement’s Promise: The Making of Contemporary Palestinian Theatre (Stanford University Press, 2025). Pp. 328. Hardcover, Paperback, E-book. Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 17 Spring 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Review: TO THE GOOD PEOPLE OF GAZA: THEATRE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE By Marina Johnson Published: May 12, 2025 Download Article as PDF TO THE GOOD PEOPLE OF GAZA: THEATRE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE. By Jackie Lubeck and Theatre Day Productions. Edited by Samer Al-Saber. London, UK: Methuen Drama, 2022; pp. 282 +vii. By Marina Johnson The title of the anthology of Jackie Lubeck and Theatre Day Productions’ plays, To the Good People of Gaza , speaks back to a world that has seen the dehumanization of Palestinians in mainstream media for centuries and, in the past year, seen an escalation of this during the genocide on Gaza. The anthology, edited and with an introduction by Samer Al-Saber, allows readers a glimpse into theatrical productions in Gaza from 2010-2015. Theatre Day Productions in Gaza had an agreement with the United Nations Refugee and Works Agency (UNWRA) to give students a “theatre day” during the summer of 2010 as a summer camp. Summer camps at the time were filled with activities like sports, painting, and music, but did not have any theatre, arguably one of the more complicated summer camp programs because theatre necessarily requires rehearsal time, a performance venue, and additional storytelling elements like props, set, and lighting. Once it began, this camp continued in 2011, 2012, and 2013. The Israeli attacks on Gaza prevented a summer camp from happening in 2014, but Lubeck worked with the students during the academic year of 2015 instead. To the Good People of Gaza: Theatre for Young People contains the plays that were produced during those trying years. This anthology is more than a historical record of Gazan theatre—it is a testament to the vital role performance plays in shaping identity, resilience, and community under siege. In this review, I examine how Lubeck’s plays engage with daily life in Gaza, balancing humor and hardship, and consider the anthology’s significance as both a cultural document and a call to action. The creation, rehearsal, and performance of these plays in Gaza demonstrates the dedication of Lubeck and the team behind Theatre Day Productions. The education system in Gaza is complicated, with not enough buildings to accommodate all students simultaneously. For that reason, students would often attend school in shifts. Theatre Day Productions adopted this shift model, rehearsing in multiple locations across Gaza with two completely different groups of students per day. Over the course of the 10- to 16-week program, they reached tens of thousands of students each summer. In a four-play series, each play was performed by three separate teams, with two performances daily for audiences of 200 to 250 children, six days a week for several weeks. This anthology, for the first time, presents these plays, which capture dual forces shaping Gazan life—an urge for joy and freedom alongside the pervasive presence of destruction and death. To the Good People of Gaza provides theatremakers, educators, and those reading the collection with a privileged view into life in Gaza from 2010-2015. These plays reflect elements of daily life that the makers deemed important for the youth to participate in, grapple with, and process through live performance. Reading them now honors the creative and educational forces behind each play, as well as the youth performers who invested their time and energy into plays that speak directly to their life experiences. Jackie Lubeck wrote the plays herself and then made edits based on the actors’ contributions in the rehearsal room. In the anthology, the plays are divided into five sections by the year they were written, and several plays comprise each section. They were performed by and for Palestinian refugee youth. While they are each worth reading in their entirety, I want to note two stand-out pieces, The Electricians and The Shop . The play The Electricians begins with a King responding to emails he has received from his subjects. The Wazir is a comedic character whose first answer to any problem is to threaten arrest. The King calls for the Wazir as he wonders why his emails won’t send. After threatening to arrest the computer mouse, the Wazir reveals that there is a power outage. The King and the Wazir head to people’s homes directly to respond to their emails in person. The first man they visit, Man with the Event, is proposing an event in response to the King’s past request to keep the kingdom clean. His event will focus on education around sorting garbage and proper disposal of materials such as batteries and medicine. Next, they visit the Shopkeeper with Extra Candy who has ordered too much candy and wants to distribute it to children to make them happy. After all: “Life is not only bitter. Life is sweet. And candy makes it sweeter” (123). The King and the Wazir finally visit The Brothers Electric who are a site to behold. The first brother is holding potatoes connected by wire and the second brother has a garden hose wrapped around his body and holds a large watering can. Both of them have cables attached to their ears. They seek to find new sources of electricity to make life easier in the kingdom. They inspire the King and Wazir to keep trying to find ways that they can make the kingdom a better place to live, by using their hearts and minds. The play is an allegory that deals directly with issues that people face in Gaza. Power outages were not unusual in Gaza as Israel has limited electricity and water usage in Gaza for years, so this moment would have resonated with the audience. Lubeck wrote Man with the Event as a character who both entertained and educated the audience about keeping the country clean as the responsibility falls on them as citizens since the Israeli siege makes even supposedly simple matters like garbage disposal complicated. It is easy to imagine the play inspiring those who participated in it and saw it to think twice about alternative sources of energy and their own roles in keeping their cities clean. Other plays are more directly related to life under Israeli bombardment during that time and are set more literally in Gaza, like the play The Shop , which features three girls who are making a video for their father who is presumably hospitalized after his shop is bombed. Three of his daughters go about cleaning the damage and debris in order to be able to re-open the shop for customers, all the while reassuring their father, via the video they are recording, that life will go on and that Salwa, the oldest sister, will be able to get married once their father is well enough. As they search through the debris, they bring the reality of life in Gaza to the forefront, as many in the audience would have been intimately familiar with the circumstances shown in front of them. The Shop shows the destruction that has become normal in Gaza as an area besieged by Israel while also reflecting on the Palestinian resilience and hope that has long been a defining feature of the Palestinians in Gaza. The last series of plays in the anthology are grouped together under the collection “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” Inspired by the Wallace Stevens poem of the same name, Lubeck picked thirteen images to explain Gaza that would resonate with residents: “siege, religion, family, sand, prison, birds, noise, sandwiches, depression, sea, heat, smiles, and phones” (viii). Lubeck adds in her preface, “to these qualities, I add a stubborn desire to hope, to go on, and to assume that something might one day change” (viii). The plays in this section are One Thousand Questions , The Snow Trip , The Boys in the Mirror , and The Boys Who Can’t Sit Still . Like the poem with whom they share a name, these plays engage with a multiplicity of perspectives, contradictions, and paradoxes to provide a minimalist and occasionally surreal view of Gaza. The texts in this section invite the reader to grapple with the literal and metaphorical reality of life in Gaza alongside the youth who performed the pieces. When the summer camp project with UNRWA began in 2010, Gaza had been under siege since 2007, leaving the two million plus people there virtually trapped, and the 2008-2009 Israeli bombardments of Gaza, which lasted for 22 days and killed approximately 1400 Palestinians, were still fresh in everyone’s minds. [1] In the preface, Lubeck writes that she felt herself and those around her become sick of complaining about their circumstances and the “dire political situation” in the Gaza Strip. Lubeck wanted to write plays that recognized the “good people” of Gaza with whom she lived and worked daily. Not originally from Palestine, Jackie Lubeck arrived in 1972 and worked there until her recent retirement. In 1995, she co-founded Theatre Day Productions with her husband and collaborator, Jan Willems. Lubeck’s nearly five-decade career in Palestinian theatre meant that she was deeply embedded in the community, writing Palestinian plays with and for Palestinians. Jackie Lubeck is a playwright who writes across genres in a witty, nuanced, and deeply heartfelt way; her plays show a deep engagement with the children of Gaza. Written between 2010 and 2015, these plays amplify the heart and soul of the Palestinian youth who performed them. These plays remind the reader of the realities that Palestinians in Gaza have known for years as they faced death and destruction and, simultaneously, these texts highlight the longing for laughter and freedom they felt, too. The collection serves not only as a testament to the strength of Gaza’s youth, but also as a powerful tool for humanizing a population too often reduced to headlines and statistics. Through these plays, the voices of young Palestinians emerge with clarity and force, inviting readers to engage with their personal stories, dreams, and struggles. To the Good People of Gaza ultimately calls on its audience to witness, reflect, and, perhaps most importantly, to act—to recognize the humanity that endures in the face of immense hardship, and to stand in solidarity with those striving for justice and dignity. To the Good People of Gaza is a necessary book for theatre makers who work with youth, advocates for the Palestinian cause, educators, Palestinians in the diaspora, and anyone who seeks to understand more about the people of Gaza. Engaging with this book is an act of bearing witness to Gaza as it was before, and taking in the stories that Lubeck and the performers felt were crucial to audiences in Gaza. Now, as we are confronted with a Gaza that has faced unspeakable horror through genocide, those of us outside of Gaza have this book to reflect on and use in our education, solidarity work, and continued advocacy for Palestine and the Palestinian people. Marina Johnson is a Ph.D. candidate in TAPS at Stanford University (M.F.A in Directing, University of Iowa). Her dissertation research focuses on Palestinian performance from 2015 to the present. Johnson is the co-host of Kunafa and Shay, a MENA theatre podcast produced by HowlRound Theatre Commons, and they are also a member of Silk Road Rising’s Polycultural Institute. Johnson’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Theatre/Practice , Arab Stages , Decolonizing Dramaturgy in a Global Context (Bloomsbury) , Milestones in Staging Contemporary Genders and Sexualities (Routledge), Women’s Innovations in Theatre, Dance, and Performance, Volume I: Performers (Bloomsbury). Prior to her Ph.D., she was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Beloit College for three years. Select recent directing credits include: The Wolves (Stanford) The Shroud Maker (International Voices Project), Shakespeare’s Sisters (Stanford), The Palestinian Youth Monologues (Stanford), Five Lesbians Eating a Quiche (Beloit College), and In the Next Room (Beloit College). www.marina-johnson.com [1] Al Jazeera. “Timeline: Israel’s Attacks on Gaza since 2005.” Al Jazeera, August 7, 2022. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/8/7/timeline-israels-attacks-on-gaza-since-2005 . Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes References About The Author(s) Marina Johnson is a Ph.D. candidate in TAPS at Stanford University (M.F.A in Directing, University of Iowa). Her dissertation research focuses on Palestinian performance from 2015 to the present. Johnson is the co-host of Kunafa and Shay, a MENA theatre podcast produced by HowlRound Theatre Commons, and they are also a member of Silk Road Rising’s Polycultural Institute. Johnson’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Theatre/Practice , Arab Stages , Decolonizing Dramaturgy in a Global Context (Bloomsbury) , Milestones in Staging Contemporary Genders and Sexualities (Routledge), Women’s Innovations in Theatre, Dance, and Performance, Volume I: Performers (Bloomsbury). Prior to her Ph.D., she was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Beloit College for three years. Select recent directing credits include: The Wolves (Stanford) The Shroud Maker (International Voices Project), Shakespeare’s Sisters (Stanford), The Palestinian Youth Monologues (Stanford), Five Lesbians Eating a Quiche (Beloit College), and In the Next Room (Beloit College). www.marina-johnson.com TO THE GOOD PEOPLE OF GAZA: THEATRE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE. By Jackie Lubeck and Theatre Day Productions. Edited by Samer Al-Saber. London, UK: Methuen Drama, 2022; pp. 282 +vii. Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents O Lord! By Ali Abdel-Nabi Al-Zaidi Mothers Challenging the Divine: Ali Al-Zaidi’s Ya Rab! The 31st Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre. September 1-11, 2024. ARTIFICIAL HEART. By Mohammad Basha and Firas Farrah. LEILI & MAJNUN. Written and directed by Torange Yeghiazarian SHAHADAT (THE TESTIMONIES) Adapted by Fouad Teymour Review: TO THE GOOD PEOPLE OF GAZA: THEATRE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE Staging Revolutions and the Many Faces of Modernism: Performing Politics in Irish and Egyptian Theatre Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 16 Fall 2024 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Performance Review: The Tutor By Hala Baki, California Polytechnic State University Published: November 1, 2024 Download Article as PDF The Tutor by Torange Yeghiazarian. Cast, Left-to-Right: Lawrence Radecker (Kayvon), Debórah Elizer (Azar) & Maya Nazzal (Baran). Photo by Lois Tema. THE TUTOR. By Torange Yeghiazarian. Directed by Sahar Assaf. New Conservatory Theatre Center, San Francisco. 5 May 2024. Reviewed by Hala Baki, California Polytechnic State University In this refreshingly raw three-hander, playwright Torange Yeghiazarian challenges American audiences — including those who may identify as Iranian— to acknowledge their deeply problematic biases about Iranian culture, sexualities, and women. The Tutor , which was commissioned by San Francisco’s New Conservatory Theatre Center in association with Golden Thread Productions and directed by Sahar Assaf, takes a magnifying lens to prejudice and vulnerability in the diaspora. Through a painfully dramatic love triangle, it demonstrates the costs that people must pay for revealing and owning their truth to others. The Tutor follows the story of Baran, a young Iranian woman recently immigrated to the United States amidst the Woman, Life, Freedom protest movement in Iran in 2022. Her home away from home is defined by two people: her arranged Iranian-American husband Kayvon, 25 years her senior; and Azar, an Iranian-American woman who is Kayvon’s lifelong friend. This relationship triangles when Kayvon asks Azar to become Baran’s tutor upon her arrival and help her settle into her new life. Little did anyone know that the two women would end up falling madly in love, complicating the threesome’s relationship along with a dash of bad luck and worse choices. The play contained several excellent moments of emotional tension, helped by Assaf’s masterful staging. From the beginning, the newlyweds Baran (Maya Nazzal) and Kayvon (Lawrence Radecker) crack the facade of a picture-perfect couple with their backgammon competitiveness laced with hints of sexual dissatisfaction. They dance around each other in their own home, staged intimately in the round at the Walker Theater with a backgammon board patterned on the floor. The actors frequently break through the. Thus, from the beginning, The Tutor implicates the audience as participants in the intimacy of the space and its unfolding drama. The first scene hints at the intense cat and mouse game to come, punctuated at the end with the shocking discovery of Kayvon’s mother dead on the floor of her room next door. The following scene complicates the situation by revealing the affair between Baran and Azar (Debórah Eliezer) as well as its unexpected connection to the mother’s death— at the deceased woman’s memorial, no less. The scene opens on the modular set transformed into the home’s kitchen. The space teems with unspoken tension as Baran busies herself with preparing food for mourners and Azar nervously fidgets nearby. Just when the silent and heavy air becomes unbearable, the two snap into action. They berate one another for their conduct after the mother’s death and ultimately let their pent-up sexual frustration result in oral sex under the kitchen table. Of course, Kayvon walks into the room just then, and the women tactfully play off the tableau as a “dropped spoon” scenario. The whiplash of emotion and tone in this scene, from heated pain and frustration to sitcom-style humor and back, does not always flow smoothly or land on its mark. However, it does force the audience to sit in the discomfort of the situation, not quite sure how or with whom to sympathize. The more successful examples of this delicate balance are in the penultimate scenes of the play, where truths finally come out and the characters must face each other’s violations head on. Kayvon grapples with the affair between his queer wife and best friend, as well as his retaliatory one-night stand with Azar. Azar feels torn between her lover and her best friend, as well as the guilt implicating her in Kayvon’s mother’s death and Baran’s heartbreak. Meanwhile, Baran struggles with the betrayal she feels from both and the unraveling life she has barely started making for herself as a recent immigrant in the US. All of this complexity manifests with beautiful and volatile staging that leaves the audience feeling like an intruding guest witnessing some sacred reckoning, wishing to disappear into their seats instead. All three characters, like backgammon players, navigate their love triangle disaster with calculated strategy, tactics, and a dash of helplessness in the face of chance. Baran is viewed as a pawn in the game by the other two, who are more interested in competing with each other than facing their own poor judgments. These diasporic individuals project their prejudices and political lenses onto Baran, pigeonholing her as an impressionable young Iranian woman who is confused and in need of rescuing by older, more “liberated” Iranians. Yet Baran ultimately takes matters into her own hands and frees herself of both of their grips. Her actions assert that she is neither victim nor pawn and that she is comfortable enough with her own vulnerability to burn familiar bridges and boldly seek the unknown. In doing so, she disrupts the others’ outdated expectations of Iranian culture and gender norms, as well as any romanticized notions they may have had about rebellious Iranian youth. The Tutor challenges audiences to disrupt similar biases within themselves. It displays the diversity of the global Iranian population and their worldviews, especially as it pertains to the ideas of freedom and owning one’s truth in the face of judgment or suppression. The production’s dramaturgical note, penned by the playwright, brings direct attention to the little-known activist history of the Iranian diaspora from the days of the 1979 Revolution to the Woman, Life, Freedom uprisings. It particularly highlights the progressive Iranian American community in Berkeley, CA that serves as the inspiration for the characters of Kayvon and Azar. Yeghiazarian thus draws attention to the disconnect and misconceptions that can exist both within and between global communities. Through painfully raw emotion and discomforting intimacy, The Tutor draws audiences into a heated game in which, arguably, everyone ends up a loser. It’s an example of diasporic theater that takes for granted the ignorance and biases of its audiences, whether or not they share the playwright or characters’ cultural background. It strategically plays with them, pushing them to consider how one’s path can be determined by a combination of fate and agency. In some ways, this idea is a quintessentially immigrant one in that all who seek a new start, or some form of liberation, have to contend with both of these factors. Regardless of how they relate to the play, The Tutor reminds audiences to be self-critical and aware lest they themselves make a move that can cost them the game. PHOTOS The Tutor by Torange Yeghiazarian. Cast, Left-to-Right: Maya Nazzal (Baran) & Lawrence Radecker (Kayvon). Photo by Lois Tema. The Tutor by Torange Yeghiazarian. Cast, Left-to-Right: Debórah Elizer (Azar) & Maya Nazzal (Baran). Photo by Lois Tema. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes References About The Author(s) Hala Baki (she/her) is a lecturer in the Theatre and Dance Department at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. She earned her PhD in Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her research interests include Arab and MENA American theater, conditions of theatrical production, and diaspora theories. She has presented her work at IFTR, ASTR, and ATHE, and has published in Modern Drama , Theatre Journal , Theatre Topics , and Asian Theatre Journal. She co-edited The Vagrant Trilogy: Three Plays by Mona Mansour (Methuen Drama) and authored a chapter in the volume Arabs, Politics, and Performance (Routledge). She is also a director and dramaturg whose recent credits include Raeda Taha’s Where Can I find Someone Like You, Ali? (2024), Yussef El Guindi’s Wife of Headless Man Investigates Her Own Disappearance (2023), Mona Mansour’s unseen (OSF 2022), the devised ensemble play Writer’s Block (2021), and Kareem Fahmy’s American Fast (2021). Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents An Interview with the Iraqi-born British playwright Hassan Abdulrazzak by Hadeel Abelhameed Review: GUERNICA, GAZA: VISIONS FROM THE CENTER OF THE EARTH. By Naomi Wallace and Ismail Khalidi Performance Review: The Tutor Review: OF KINGS AND CLOWNS: LEADERSHIP IN CONTEMPORARY EGYPTIAN THEATRE SINCE 1967 By Tiran Manucharyan. Review: PLAYS OF ARABIC HERITAGE. By Hannah Khalil Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 18 Winter 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Performance Review: IRAQ, BUT FUNNY by Atra Asdou By Suzi Elnaggar Published: December 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF Sometimes, you can judge a book by its cover, and rarely, a thing is precisely what it says on the tin. This is one of those moments because Iraq, But Funny is indeed very funny. The second play in the comeback season of the nationally recognized and Tony Award-winning regional ensemble theatre, Lookingglass Theatre Company, Iraq, But Funny is a meta-theatrical romp through Iraqi history, from the fall of the Ottoman Empire to the present day. In her world premiere at Lookingglass Theatre, playwright and performer Atra Asdou, a company ensemble member, accomplishes what every theatre artist dreams of – putting on stage a deeply personal story that audiences connect with across demographics and experiences. Iraq, But Funny is a meta, satirical, and incisive caper through the family tree of an Assyrian family, intertwining with the larger narrative of Iraq's history. This sharp comedy covers such (not) easy subjects as Mandatory Iraq and Palestine, the Iran-Iraq war, and the displacement of the Assyrian people -- and is genuinely side-splittingingly funny throughout. The initial storyteller is The English Gentleman (goes by TEG), a colonial officer from the British army stationed in Iraq at the turn of the century. TEG is brilliantly played by writer Atra Asdou, who showcases her comedic chops as the pouty, mustachioed meanie attempting to write himself into the narrative of Iraq. However, his efforts to demonstrate his colonial acumen (and perhaps get stationed somewhere more tropical! Like Papua New Guinea!) are interrupted by five generations of an Assyrian Iraqi family who refuse to let him tell Iraq’s story. Younger and older versions of the mother/daughters are played by Susaan Jamshidi and Gloria Imseih Petrelli, both excellent in their roles as matriarchs and rebels who boldly speak their minds. James Rana and Sima Pooresmaeil portray the husbands and fathers in alternating roles, also stellar. Not to be outshone by the locals, TEG puts on quite a show to entertain and educate the audience (and occasionally cajoles them into participation), while slowly losing control as the narrative travels in time through the history of Iraq. Atra Asdou’s Iraq, But Funny , directed by Dalia Ashurina. The English Gentleman (TEG), played by Atra Asdou, phones home with a request to be stationed elsewhere. Photo by Ricardo Adame and courtesy of Lookingglass Theatre Company. Maintaining a booked multi-week run in Lookingglass’s 200+ seat theatre, Iraq, But Funny challenges both dominant narratives and the ones that tell them, no matter how charming or winsome they are (or think they are in TEG’s case). In the role of TEG, Asdou is the funnybone and connective tissue of the show, bringing an impotent, yet dangerous frustration to TEG’s turn strutting the boards. She utilizes her comedy skills to their full measure, incorporating audience interaction, song and dance numbers, and multiple costume changes (which occur atop TEG’s colonial fatigues and include a moment of double-gender-bending hilarity as TEG impersonates Jennifer Coolidge). TEG seems to control all aspects of the show, from the lights to the sound, a conceit that works well to demonstrate the actual power of the diminutive gent as a representative of colonial power. He reads the welcome and instructions to the audience at the top, establishing the metatheatrical stance of Iraq, But Funny from jump. However, the beating heart is the Assyrian Iraqi family, who are based on amalgamations of tales and people from Asdou’s own family history. The balance of these two aspects, the funny, educational mode of TEG and the moving, real pain of a family surviving at the edges of his monologues is what makes Iraq, But Funny stand out. Asdou and her collaborators do not hesitate to go deep and difficult with their journey through history, exploring with humor some of Iraq’s and the Assyrian people's darkest moments. The family joins the narrative, stepping on stage from a photograph of fleeing Assyrians displaced around the turn of the century, which TEG projects on the back wall doors as he monologues; the excellent projection design in the show, done by Michael Salvatore Commendatore, is essential to making the complex century of history parseable for the audience. Iraq, But Funny purposefully centers the Iraqi Assyrian experience as the diasporic team of Asdou (writer) and Dalia Ashurina (director, who was involved with the script since an early workshop at Lookingglass) shows obvious care in their portrayal of Iraqi people. The Lookingglass playwright-led devised ensemble approach is evident, as it feels like every aspect of the production is firing on all cylinders. While the narrative focus is on one Assyrian family in Iraq, But Funny weaves in the diversity of Iraq and its neighbors, mentioning Jewish, Muslim, Arab, Persian, and other communities; Asdou and her collaborators do not shy away from historical moments of conflict among these different groups of people, but continually bring the narrative back to the colonial and interventionist policies of the West, embodied by the clownish TEG. While Iraq, But Funny includes many moments of Middle Eastern and Iraqi history that may be unfamiliar to the average American audience, it never feels bogged down or pedantic, even at its current two-hour and thirty-minute runtime with an intermission. Atra Asdou’s Iraq, But Funny , directed by Dalia Ashurina. TEG opens the play, monologuing in front of a projected photograph of fleeing Assyrians. Photo by Ricardo Adame and courtesy of Lookingglass Theatre Company. Beginning with the regional alliance with the British against the Ottomans, each generation of the Assyrian family is forced to uproot their lives in a constant struggle for survival. Drawing from that initial moment, Iraq, But Funny argues that history is complexly intertwined and recursive. Significant points of Levantine history are covered, including the Mandates, both Mandatory Palestine and Iraq (originally Mesopotamia). I especially applaud the choice to include Mandatory Palestine, as well as the British promise to grant it and other parts of the Levant to the Arab people in return for assistance against the Ottomans. Asdou pulls out all the stops to keep the levity going during the Palestine segment (the Jennifer Coolidge moment occurs here) while never punching down or shying away. In this moment, and others, she fulfills her philosophy that laughter “is a very vulnerable and rebellious act”, necessary for survival amid genocide and displacement. As a scholar familiar with these histories, I know how easy it would have been to focus solely on Iraq and tiptoe around the rest, while still including Faisal. However, the choice to include Palestine is what led me to realize that this show was special; Asdou, her collaborators, and Lookingglass should be commended for their artistic integrity and authenticity by not taking the easy way out in the sake of audience appeal. Iraq, But Funny does a lot in terms of historical narrative, including informing many Americans who are still unaware of the harm caused by the policies of the Mandates, which have echoed forward in Iraqi history, and by extension, also Palestine. Atra Asdou’s Iraq, But Funny , directed by Dalia Ashurina. TEG, dressed as Jennifer Coolidge, educates the audience on the Mandates. Photo by Ricardo Adame and courtesy of Lookingglass Theatre Company. To successfully strike a balance between fact and story, Asdou and her collaborators jaunt through about a century of Iraq’s history, stopping at pivotal moments to ground the audience and draw connections, often using projections of historical photographs and videos, hilariously narrated by TEG. These moments include Faisal, as mentioned above, and the establishment of the Kingdom of Iraq, the rise of the Ba’ath Party, and subsequently, Saddam Hussein, including a focus on the Iraq-Iran War, as well as the 2003 Invasion of Iraq under George W. Bush. The Iraq-Iran War is given plenty of room as a zanily staged boxing match featuring the two female actors, Jamshidi and Petrelli, in paste-on mustaches and beards, fully kitted out in an on-stage ring, egged on by TEG (of course). As the Assyrian family later emigrates through the immigration lottery, Asdou cleverly brings the United States into focus as TEG jumps across the pond, reveling in gaudy Americana garbed in a bedazzled blue jumpsuit and cowboy hat. Atrou states that her impetus towards comedy is to honor those who came before her, who used humor to survive in incomprehensible tragedy, while also inviting the audience to grow comfortable with topics usually reserved for “Very Serious Plays” (Playbill; Iraq, But Funny ). The greatest demonstration of the success of Iraq, But Funny, is that I had so many different people recommend it to me before I slid into a (packed) 2:30 pm showing on a Thursday during the last week of its run. I have rarely seen a show about the SWANA region receive such universal praise. First, I had a good friend and theatre artist from the Levantine region tell me that I had to see the show. They felt it was one of the best productions they had seen this year. Then, a non-theatre industry acquaintance rushed to tell me about it; they had tagged along with a friend and had no idea what to expect (in fact, they revealed their only other theatrical experience was a recent jukebox musical). In their words, they had never realized theatre could be so funny while being so current and incisive. Finally, not a recommendation to me, but to the world, I overheard two older white patrons gushing after the show that they felt the show could be on Broadway. Iraq, But Funny possesses the ultimate power to amuse, thrill, and engage multiple audiences as a genuinely good play that people feel compelled to recommend. It has received rave reviews, and just recently, three regional Jeff Awards for Atra Asdou as Performer In A Principal Role; Michael Salvatore Commendatore for Projection Design; and recognition for Asdou as a writer for New Work - The Libby Adler Mages Award (57th Anniversary Jeff Awards For Equity Theaters Announced). Cutting past everything outside the stage, the heart of Iraq, But Funny is the Assyrian Iraqi family story. The focus on the imperative “to live for the next generation,” as well as the struggle of each woman to conform to her parents' values comes to fruition as the final generation (corresponding to present day) breaks the cycle, realizing that it is also permissible to live for herself, as well as for those who came before and those who will come after. This generational story of sacrifice and longing, staged with aplomb by Asdou and her collaborators, is profoundly moving to me as a diasporic Egyptian, and I believe it has resonated with the SWANA and other marginalized communities. Asdou says, “I hope that [the audience] learn something, and most of all, I hope no matter their background, that they see themselves, which means they see the human in themselves and each other. That they see their stories in us. And that Assyrians see themselves. I really hope I make them proud”(Playbill; Iraq, But Funny ). With Iraq, But Funny Atra Asdou and Lookingglass accomplish something rare—a culturally specific, timely show that covers difficult topics and draws in many types of audiences. Atra Asdou’s Iraq, But Funny , directed by Dalia Ashurina. The Assyrian family (L to R) James Rana, Susaan Jamshidi, Gloria Imseih Petrelli and Sina Pooresmaeil, listen to the news on the radio. Photo by Ricardo Adame and courtesy of Lookingglass Theatre Company. lookingglasstheatre.org/event/iraq-but-funny/ lookingglasstheatre.org/iraq-but-funny-playbill/ https://jeffawards.org/home https://www.jeffawards.org/sites/default/files/assets/images/57th%20Jeff%20Awards%20for%20Equity%20Theater%20-%20Awards%20Announcement%20-%209-29-25%20.pdf From the June 7, 2025 press release by Lookingglass Theatre Company: "When you think of Iraq, you don't usually think of comedy. I started writing Iraq, But Funny four years ago because I needed a place to put my family's stories and wanted to share a side of my people audiences rarely see: their sense of humor,” said Playwright Atra Asdou . " Iraq, But Funny explores the cyclical nature of mother/daughter and familial/generational relationships and how they relate to the cyclical nature of invasions, war and world history. And who better to give voice to Assyrian women than a British guy who narrates the whole thing. I'm also in the cast of Iraq, But Funny and we hope to make you laugh, learn and feel like you're part of the family, too. Who knew colonialism could be so fun!" Atra Asdou’s Iraq, But Funny , directed by Dalia Ashurina. Atra Asdou in the promotional photo from Iraq, But Funny . Photo by Sandro Miller and courtesy of Lookingglass Theatre Company. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes lookingglasstheatre.org/event/iraq-but-funny/ lookingglasstheatre.org/iraq-but-funny-playbill/ https://jeffawards.org/home https://www.jeffawards.org/sites/default/files/assets/images/57th%20Jeff%20Awards%20for%20Equity%20Theater%20-%20Awards%20Announcement%20-%209-29-25%20.pdf From the June 7, 2025 press release by Lookingglass Theatre Company: "When you think of Iraq, you don't usually think of comedy. I started writing Iraq, But Funny four years ago because I needed a place to put my family's stories and wanted to share a side of my people audiences rarely see: their sense of humor,” said Playwright Atra Asdou . " Iraq, But Funny explores the cyclical nature of mother/daughter and familial/generational relationships and how they relate to the cyclical nature of invasions, war and world history. And who better to give voice to Assyrian women than a British guy who narrates the whole thing. I'm also in the cast of Iraq, But Funny and we hope to make you laugh, learn and feel like you're part of the family, too. Who knew colonialism could be so fun!" References About The Author(s) Suzi Elnaggar Northwestern University; Freelance Dramaturg Suzi Elnaggar is an Egyptian American performance scholar, freelance dramaturg, and theatre maker. She was a 2021 Kennedy Center Dramaturgy Intensive Fellow and works as a developmental and community-focused dramaturg. Her work has been published in Asian Theatre Journal , Arab Stages , Review: The Journal of Dramaturgy , and Theatre Times . Her interests include exploring postcolonial theatre contexts, decoloniality in performance, the intersection of trauma and performance, transnational and migrant stories, recontextualizing Greek tragedy, myths, and folklore, and exploring work that centers on Southwest Asian and North African (SWANA) experiences. Suzi’s scholarship and practice center community, collaboration, and context. As a dramaturg, she is experienced in both production and developmental work. She is the artistic director of Backstitch Story Project, and the founder and creative director of the Digital Development Project. She has read scripts for PlayPenn, Playwright’s Center, Rattlestick’s Van Lier New Voices Fellowship, SHE-LA, and Sparkfest, among many others. Selected dramaturgy credits (Production & Developmental Workshops): Avalanche Theatre’s Next Draft series and Grape Leaves , Silk Road’s Shahadat ; Backstitch Story Arts’ Off-White: The Arab House Party Play ; Clamour Theatre’s Lived Experience ; TACTICS Ottawa’s ANANSI V. GOD(S) ; Jubilee Theatre Waco’s Fairview (Texas Premiere); Wild Imaginings’ Jesus and Valium (World Premiere), The Way He Looks at You , Cardboard Castles Hung on Walls (World Premiere); Northwestern University Theatre’s The Great Sea Serpent (Workshop Premiere). Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Practicing Place: Site-Specific Performance and the Reinscription of Memory in Palestine Resisting the Unleashed Evils of the US- Invasion of Iraq in Amir Al-Azraki’s The Widow (2017) Dina Mousawi’s RETURN: a Compelling site of representing Women’s Status of Agency Under Occupation Renewed Awareness Toward Salvation: The Journey of The Story of Zahra from Page to Stage Site-Specific Performance and Theatrical Memorialization of the Nakba Performance Review: WAILING SONGS OF THE PAST, MIGHT THEY GROW OUR RESILIENCE. By Maya al-Khaldi. Performance Review: DUMMY IN DIASPORA. By Esho Rasho. Performance Review: ENGLISH. Written by Sanaz Toossi Performance Review: THE CAVE. By Sadieh Rifai Performance Review: IRAQ, BUT FUNNY by Atra Asdou Performance Review: COSMOS/AWALEM by Ashtar Muallem and Emile Saba. Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 17 Spring 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Mothers Challenging the Divine: Ali Al-Zaidi’s Ya Rab! By Amir Al-Azraki Published: May 12, 2025 Download Article as PDF Mothers Challenging the Divine: Ali Al-Zaidi’s Ya Rab! By Amir Al-Azraki Introduction to Ya Rab! (O Lord!) Ya Rab! , written in 2013, premiered in 2015 at the Fine Arts Institute Theatre in Baghdad. It was subsequently performed at the Fine Arts College Theatre in Babylon and was later staged at the National Theatre in Baghdad in 2016. The year of 2013 was marked by the emergence of the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), following the withdrawal of U.S. combat forces in 2011. Between 2014 and 2016, ISIS rapidly expanded its control, seizing large swathes of territory, including the major cities of Mosul and Tikrit, as well as critical infrastructure such as hydroelectric dams and oil refineries. By June 2014, the group declared the establishment of a caliphate, with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi proclaimed as its caliph, claiming leadership over Muslims globally. The group's actions resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians and precipitated a severe humanitarian crisis, displacing hundreds of thousands. That period was defined by escalating terrorism and violence, which incited widespread protests against death and injustice. The protests in Iraq, evolving from the Arab Spring in 2011 to the Tishreen Revolution in 2019, were sparked by issues that included terrorism, national security concerns, unemployment, corruption, displacement, and inadequate public services. Throughout this turmoil, women emerged as crucial figures, leading efforts to advocate for justice and human rights amidst the chaos. Ya Rab! depicts an Iraqi mother who breaches Tuwa Valley, sacred within Islam, to appeal to God; Moses (Musa) appears as an intermediary. The mother demands that God halt the violence and chaos in her country that is causing the death of children, and replace it with love and harmony. She vows that if her conditions are not met, she will put a stop to all prayer, fasting, and other acts of worship. Moses, as God’s intermediary, argues that the earth’s misfortunes are brought on humankind by its own acts, and that her proposition is equivalent to rebellion against God. The mother, however, convinces Moses to leave Paradise to join her on earth in protest against God. It is surprising that the play was staged in a prominent theatre, given its provocative subject; within the conservative religious political ecology of Iraq, the playwright and those involved opened themselves to accusations of sacrilege. More importantly, Ya Rab! critically engages with the role of “mother activism in Iraq,” intertwining Islamic theodicy and themes of divine justice and human suffering, while juxtaposing the sacred and profane within the revered context of the Tuwa Valley, ultimately challenging religious and political authority through the powerful confrontation of a grieving mother with God’s inaction. Mother Activism [1] Ya Rab! explores the emerging role of mother activism in Iraq in recent years. The mother-protagonist embodies a powerful form of mother activism that integrates maternal essentialism with emotionalism to challenge patriarchal, religious, and divine authorities while asserting her political agency. Her protest can be seen an example of “activist mothering”, “maternal activism”, and “political motherhood”. By taking her grief and turning it into a public plea for peace, she reconfigures her maternal identity from a passive, private role into a potent, public force. Her actions are characterized by a powerful performance of maternal dedication that extends beyond traditional caregiving to include political advocacy. Seen through Natalie Wilson’s notion of "activist mothering," the mother is depicted as reasonable, argumentative, outspoken, and confident. She uses her personal experiences of loss and grief as catalysts for political activism. Her public protest against violence demonstrates how personal and emotional experience can be transformed into powerful political statement. The mother’s refusal to accept traditional constraints of motherhood and her engagement in activism underscores the concept of activist mothering, where maternal roles are integrated with political advocacy. Islamic Theodicy Ya Rab! explores themes of divine justice, human suffering, and the relationship between the divine and human actions. Islamic theodicy, the discourse that addresses the paradox of a benevolent and omnipotent God who allows suffering and evil, typically emphasizes the notions of free will, the testing of faith, and the idea that suffering can be a means of spiritual growth or a consequence of human actions. By demanding an end to violence and chaos and threatening to cease all acts of worship if her demands are not met, the mother embodies a profound struggle with the problem of evil and divine silence in the face of suffering. Her insistence on justice and peace reflects a deep sense of moral outrage against the suffering inflicted on innocent lives. Her vow to halt worship signifies a radical protest against what she perceives as divine inaction or complicity in the suffering of her people. This stance brings her into direct conflict with the traditional Islamic understanding that suffering has a divine purpose, whether as a test of faith, a means of purification, or a consequence of human free will and sin. Moses's role as an intermediary is significant. In traditional Islamic theodicy, the belief is that human suffering is often a result of human actions rather than divine arbitrariness. Moses’s argument reflects this view, suggesting that the earth’s misfortunes are a product of human misdeeds rather than direct divine intervention. This aligns with the Islamic perspective that suffering is not always a direct punishment from God but can reflect human moral failings. The dramatic twist which occurs when the mother convinces Moses to leave Paradise and join her in protest challenges both the character's traditional role and the broader theological implications. By persuading Moses—a prophet and a figure associated with divine communication—to side with her protest, the play suggests a radical reinterpretation of the relationship between the divine and human spheres. It implies a form of divine dissatisfaction or disconnection, where even a prophet feels compelled to align with human suffering and injustice. The Sacred and the Profane Set against the backdrop of the Tuwa Valley, a revered site where Moses conversed with God, Ya Rab! portrays the dichotomy of the sacred and profane, in which protest serves as a critique of religious and political powers in Iraq. It challenges established hierarchies and confronts the sanctity of divine authority with compelling urgency and sociopolitical critique. At its heart are revered figures like Moses who, anchored by the omnipresent God, becomes a stage for profound theological inquiry and existential reckoning. The narrative's power lies in its exploration of the profane—the earthly and the maternal—as embodied by the mothers who dare to breach the sacred confines of Tuwa Valley, demanding an end to death and violence with the threat to cease worshiping. Their audacious intrusion disrupts the established order, symbolizing a defiance that challenges the very essence of religious authority. Mirroring Moses's barefoot approach to God as described in the Quran (20:12), the mother’s presence signifies a radical departure from conventional norms, asserting the mothers’ agency in the face of perceived divine injustice. Their dissent extends beyond mere rebellion to a direct confrontation with the divine. They engage Moses in heated dialogue, invoking Quranic verses to justify their grievances and asserting the primacy of their earthly suffering over the sanctity attributed to prophets. Their protest, situated within the socio-political landscape, critiques how those in power manipulate religious rhetoric to justify oppression and maintain control. Moses, embodying religious authority, uses familiar discursive platitudes, such as “God wishes to test your patience” and “death is a law of life” to quell the mother’s anguish and dissent amid violence and death. These statements not only normalize her suffering but also encourage passivity, framing any resistance as a challenge to divine will. By suggesting that her deceased sons are “in paradise,” he offers comfort while dismissing her grief, reinforcing the notion that enduring injustice is part of a divinely ordained fate. He advises her to be patient and strong, pray, and not revolt against God’s will. This rhetoric ultimately serves to maintain the status quo, silencing dissent under the guise of religious reassurance. Breaking Religious Taboos Ya Rab! stirs controversy primarily through its bold interrogation of religious taboos. The play directly challenges divine authority by depicting a grieving mother who confronts God’s perceived inaction regarding her suffering and that of her community. This confrontation is controversial because it deviates from traditional religious reverence, which typically holds God as an omnipotent and untouchable figure. By having the mother threaten to abandon prayer and fasting unless her demands are met, the play questions the efficacy of these sacred practices, which can be seen as an affront to deeply held beliefs. Another contentious aspect is the portrayal of the prophet Moses. Instead of representing Moses as a revered messenger of God, the play uses him as a mediator who struggles to address the mother’s grievances and answer her questions. This depiction potentially diminishes the sanctity and authority of prophetic figures, making it problematic for those who view such portrayals as disrespectful. By showing Moses as somewhat ineffective in negotiating with God, Al-Zaidi disrupts traditional views of the prophetic role and its perceived divine authority. The play’s depiction of divine inaction or detachment is also controversial. Islamic religious traditions teach that God is actively involved in human affairs and responsive to human suffering. Al-Zaidi’s portrayal of a seemingly indifferent or silent God challenges this belief, presenting a divine being that does not intervene in the face of injustice and violence. This representation can be perceived as offensive by those who see it as undermining the concept of a benevolent and involved God. Finally, the play’s reception reflects its controversial nature. Critics praised its daring approach and its critique of how religious and political authorities exploited sacred narratives. The play’s radical approach to sacred themes and figures provoked strong reactions, highlighting the tension between artistic expression and religious respect. [1] In this section, I draw upon the scholarship of Hadeel Abdelhameed and Ghyath Alkinani, who provide a performative model of mother activism in Iraq. For more details, see their work, "Mothering the Protest: Gender Performativity as a Communication Mechanism in the Iraqi Protest Movement," in The Palgrave Handbook of Gender, Media and Communication in the Middle East and North Africa (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2023). Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes References About The Author(s) Amir Al-Azraki is a playwright, literary translator, Theatre of the Oppressed practitioner, and Associate Professor and Coordinator of the Studies in Islamic and Arab Cultures Program at Renison University College, University of Waterloo. Among his plays are: Waiting for Gilgamesh: Scenes from Iraq , The Mug , and The Widow . Al-Azraki is the translator of Africanism: Blacks in the Medieval Arab Imaginary , author of The Discourse of War in Contemporary Theatre (in Arabic), co-editor and co-translator of Contemporary Plays from Iraq , “A Rehearsal for Revolution”: An Approach to Theatre of the Oppressed (in Arabic), and co-editor and co-translator of Arabic poetry in Consequence , The Common , Poetry Foundation and Talking Writing . Amir Al-Azraki, PhD, (he/him) Program Coordinator, Studies in Islamic and Arab Cultures Associate Professor, Culture and Language Studies Renison University College, affiliated with the University of Waterloo aaliazraki@uwaterloo.ca Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents O Lord! By Ali Abdel-Nabi Al-Zaidi Mothers Challenging the Divine: Ali Al-Zaidi’s Ya Rab! The 31st Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre. September 1-11, 2024. ARTIFICIAL HEART. By Mohammad Basha and Firas Farrah. LEILI & MAJNUN. Written and directed by Torange Yeghiazarian SHAHADAT (THE TESTIMONIES) Adapted by Fouad Teymour Review: TO THE GOOD PEOPLE OF GAZA: THEATRE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE Staging Revolutions and the Many Faces of Modernism: Performing Politics in Irish and Egyptian Theatre Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 15 Spring 2024 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Interview with Nasser Rahmaninejad by Babak Rahimi By Babak Rahimi Published: June 15, 2024 Download Article as PDF Nasser Rahmaninejad. Photo courtesy of the author. Interview with Nasser Rahmaninejad By Babak Rahimi The introduction of theatre under the Qajars (1789-1925) marked a new era in the cultural history of Iran. First, the theatre played a pivotal role in shaping new cosmopolitan spaces, mainly among the middle-class population who viewed the new art form as a civilizing means to become modern. Second, considering the complex ways in which theatre developed as an aesthetic medium for critical thought during the Constitutional Revolution (1905-1911), a political movement aimed to limit monarchical despotism by establishing a representative government, cities from Rasht to Tehran saw staged performances by growing independent theatre troupes and ensembles, who actively produced plays for political progress. As in the late Qajar period, however, various new theatre groups performed plays mainly for an educated and elite audience, many of whom saw translated European performances in “Clubs” and small theatres with limited public access (1). This was to change under the Pahlavi regime (1925-79) when theatre's popularity grew with the nationwide eruption of theatrical productions. Many productions, mostly translated American and European plays, were staged by an emerging generation of independent theatre makers who showed a deep intellectual interest in drama in a reflective search for the modern experience. The most significant development in the Pahlavi-era theatre productions took place between 1947 and 1949 when the Ferdowsi Theatre, under the directorship of Abdolhossein Nooshin (1906-71), staged European plays for a wider audience, who saw a brief period of openness after the forced abdication of Reza Shah by the Anglo-Soviet invasion in 1941. Earlier in 1939, Lalehzar Street in Tehran saw the opening of Honarestan-e Honarpishegi-e Tehran (The Tehran Acting School), where director and playwright Seyyed Ali Nasr (1894-1962) established the first permanent troupe and a school for acting. By the mid-twentieth century, theatre represented one of the most popular cultural practices in an increasingly modernizing Iran. With the 1953 U.S.-led coup that toppled the government of Mohammad Mossadeq and brought back the monarchy of Mohammad Reza Shah, Iranian theatre, like other artistic spheres of activities, encountered increased state censorship. The mid-1950s and late 1970s marked more organized attempts to regulate theatre production as part of a broader campaign by the State Organization for Intelligence and Security (SAVAK) to stifle dissent across the country. While industrialization and, by extension, urbanization gave way to a robust middle class, a broader perception of social inequality implied a critical response to the growth of frivolous consumerism and unfettered wealth. By the 1960s, a vibrant and politically conscious youth viewed the despotic regime of the Pahlavi dynasty as an impediment to an equal and just political order. While the Pahlavi state continued to build artistic and cultural centers, the independent theatre offered an alternative medium for cultural life, particularly in its modernist manifestation. Inspired by the new European intellectual trends and global revolutionary movements, post-coup playwrights and theatre directors staged translated and original plays, displaying a mix of realist and surrealist genres as critical commentary on a rapidly changing society. The proliferation of independent theatre groups and the emergence of innovative playwrights such as Bahram Beyzaie (b.1938), Abbas Nalbandian (1947-1987), Akbar Radi (1939-2007), and Gholam-Hossein Sa’edi (1936-85) represent a vibrant Iran-based theatre culture that sought to carve out new cultural spaces while under increasing state censorship. In this post-coup context, Nasser Rahmaninejad’s contributions to Iranian theatre reflect this dynamic shift led by a new generation of dramatists. Rahmaninejad also represents a generation of theatre actors and directors whose interest in staging performances of varied theatrical genres not only challenged Pahlavi consumerism, especially the escapist theatres of Lalezar Street in Tehran, but offered a critical expression for political change among the masses. Rahmaninejad’s theatre activities mirror the ideals of an era when experimentation and translation of theatre entailed the revolutionary conviction that to do theatre is to engage with the emancipatory possibility of performance. While the publication of his 2020 memoir, A Man of the Theater: Survival as an Artist in Iran , provides a detailed account of Rahmaninejad’s professional and political experience, in this interview we aim to discuss a range of topics that reveal the complex relationship between politics and theatre in the Pahlavi period (2). The following interviews were conducted via email and Zoom on January 10, 2024. They have been edited for length and clarity. Babak Rahimi: Our interview takes place just weeks before the forty-fifth anniversary of the 1979 Revolution in Iran. Before we discuss your views on the relationship between theatre and revolution, I’d like to ask you about your experience as a theatre producer, director, and actor in pre-revolutionary Iran. As you explain in detail in your A Man of the Theater: Survival as an Artist in Iran (2020), you began your life in theatre by attending the Anahita Acting School in Tehran in 1959. Established in 1958, the Anahita acting school was the first educational center where the Stanislavsky system was taught amid an emerging independent theatre culture that sharply contrasted with the escapism of what you call “commercial theatre.” Could you expand on your early training at the school and the role of Konstantin Stanislavsky in modern Iranian theatre? Nasser Rahmaninejad : As you mentioned, I began my theatre career and training at the Anahita Theatre School in 1959. The Anahita Acting School was the first training center to systematically teach Iran's Stanislavsky system. The training school was founded in 1958 by a couple named Mustafa and Mahin Oskui, both of whom were trained in Moscow under the supervision of Yuri Zavadsky. Of course, teaching this system in Iran was not comparable to what was taught by government-funded facilities in the Soviet Union. Still, the basis of the concept and philosophy of training, which mainly emphasized acting as experience, in contrast to mere representation, was the same. Before the Anahita Acting School, there was limited understanding of the Stanislavsky system in Iran. It was taught for Iran's growing theatre when Anahita School enrolled students and trained new actors. As for drama education, the first acting school in Iran, called Honarestan-e Honarpishegi-e Tehran [The Tehran Acting School], was established in 1939 and was active until 1958. The instructors of this school were trained in the French acting style. But before that, theatre actors in Iran had mainly been trained experimentally and almost spontaneously, mostly by Abdolhossein Nooshin, who studied theatre in France and taught his students in the French acting style. There were attempts to initiate a modern theatre in the mid-1930s. But the dictatorship of Reza Shah, despite his apparent efforts to modernize Iran, severely suppressed such attempts, and other progressive artistic, cultural, and social activities. It was after World War II, that is, with the removal of Reza Shah from the throne and the end of his dictatorship, coupled with the anti-fascist atmosphere around the world, that Iran's social and political atmosphere opened, albeit briefly. Many talents dormant under the dictatorship, including in the theatre field, emerged during this period. Nooshin’s activities appeared during this time, as he established his theatre group and trained his actors, as I mentioned, according to the modern French method. So, Iran’s modern theatre was influenced by the French theatre school from the beginning and continued to be so for many years into the Pahlavi period. After the CIA-led coup of 1953, commercial theatre grew in popularity. There are two reasons for this development. First, the new censorship policies, which primarily involved the suppression of leftist activists, limited the development of intellectual and progressive theatre. Second, the sponsorship of escapist and reactionary theatre performances became a dominant form of theatrical production after the coup. This situation continued until the early 1960s, when the Shah was forced to make economic and social reforms, known as the “White Revolution,” primarily because of the Kennedy administration’s policy to limit Soviet influence in Iran. During this era, Lalezar Street, which was the center of a robust leftist and progressive theatre, and also the central meeting place for intellectuals at cafes before the 1953 coup, gradually changed into a cultural space of entertainment. After the coup, Lalezar Street became the symbol of superficial theatre, staging vulgar and worthless comedies. Connected with this development, the audience of these theatres also changed, as owners and producers of such theatre venues introduced a range of Turkish and Arab belly dancing and juggling. Theatre became a small part of the performances. Meanwhile, the Administration of Fine Arts established a branch of theatre called the Office of Dramatic Arts in 1957, which supported apolitical performances while censoring leftist theatre. BR: Your first professional experience with theatre came six years after the 1953 U.S.-led coup that toppled the government of Mohammad Mossadeq and restored Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as the country’s monarch. Could you describe the burgeoning independent theatre groups during the post-coup period as Iran experienced heightened Pahlavi state repression and an increasing regime of censorship? Rahmaninejad : After the CIA-led coup of 1953, the theatre groups that had emerged and matured during the 1940s, mainly under the influence of the progressive and leftist movements, were destroyed by state crackdowns. Even those groups that could potentially be formed into political organizations were quickly suppressed one by one by the security forces, preventing their activities from forming and hence making them disappear. On the day of the coup d’état, Saadi Theatre, for example, which was the most influential theatre at the time and had inspired a new generation of progressive theatre makers, was burned down by thugs and lumpen, who were recruited by the police. They destroyed the buildings and offices of the Tudeh party, the Iranian Communist party, nationalist organizations, progressive publishing houses, and bookstores, beating people who resisted and so on. After the restoration of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi’s monarchy, brutal repression, and insular censorship ensued, and for several years, no one dared to raise their voices in opposition. Cultural and intellectual meeting places were closed. Even gathering five or six people for poetry reading or storytelling became impossible. Society came to a standstill. However, in the second half of the 1950s, we see limited signs of opening. After the 1953 coup and the political suppression that followed, groups that formed in the relative freedom of the 1940s, or that were inspired by the theatre of that period, disappeared . One of these groups, for example, was the Oscar Theatre group, which was forced to disband in 1956 after only two years of activity. Many of its actors later joined the Anahita Theatre School. During the 1950s, after the coup, we faced a contradiction in the field of artistic, cultural, and political activities. On the one hand, the Tudeh Party was dismantled as the only well-organized and influential political organization and the most crucial oppositional force. The Party’s many members were arrested, while all branches of the Party were destroyed. All other cultural and political activities with nationalist orientation and critical of the regime were also shut down. The worker unions also refrained from activism. A reign of fear permeated throughout the country. But, on the other hand, a few years after the coup, there were theatre groups here and there, including at the University of Tehran, which started to take shape. For example, Mohammad Ali Jafari, an actor who was a member of the Tudeh Party, worked with Saadi Theatre, most of whose actors were also members of the Party. The theatre was burned down on the day of the coup by thugs who were supported by the Pahlavi regime. Jafari was released from prison in 1956. Later, he established his theatre called “Jafari Theatre Troupe.” Despite the repression, the theatre continued to be alive. It was in such a precarious situation that I grew up. I was lucky to know a few survivors of the previous generation who described to me good stories of life before the coup and terrible stories that followed the coup. So, with these historical events in mind, when I started my involvement with theatre, I had an idea of the theatre in my imagination that I wanted to do. And I was not alone, as others like me formed theatre groups. This is how independent and progressive theatre, or I should say opposition theatre , was born. In Iran, each generation had to begin afresh with a new experience, often with a tragic ending. If the harsh and bitter reality of that time is any indication, our growth has always been limited by repression, hardly ever simply handing over the flag to the next Iranian generation. For the most part, in Iran, not a single generation has tasted the stability to continue creating its art. Life and the artistic career of our youth have always been interrupted midway. This is the sad fate of Iranian theatre. Look at my life, for example. At the height of my artistic bloom, I was arrested and imprisoned several times, and my works were censored. Though I was released during the revolution (1979), I could not work for more than two years after the revolution. The atmosphere of terror forced me to flee my homeland and, once again, my life and career were interrupted. Even in exile, despite all my efforts, due to dispersion of Iranian compatriots because of ideological and political differences, the necessary connection between the artist and the audience never took form. Broadly speaking, the community support for continuity and coherence, which is essential for the growth of artists and their creative activity, never materialized. BR: You founded The Mehr Theatre Group (1966). How did your theatre group contribute to Iran’s independent theatre culture? Rahmaninejad : When I founded Mehr Theatre Group in 1966, there were still a limited number of independent theatre groups. Of course, I must say that most of them did not influence the theatre nor did they establish a stable venue to stage performances, due to lack of financial support or producing a coherent mission statement. For the most part, the theatre of this period was primarily amateurish since theatre needs continuity of stage performances. This was one of the reasons why, after two years of working under the name of Mehr Theatre Group, I inevitably changed the group’s composition and invited those friends who saw theatre as a serious activity and not just as a hobby. Those who saw theatre as a hobby had other ambitions in their lives than theatre. With a clear mission statement and a reliable theatre group, the Iran Theatre Association was founded in 1968. So, to answer your question, I must say that the Iran Theatre Association truly identified as an independent theatre group and, at times, the only independent theatre group that aimed to make an effective contribution to the field of theatre in Iran. We Can't Pay? We Won't Pay! by Dario Fo, directed by Nasser Rahmaninejad, produced by Iran Theatre Association, 1980. Photo courtesy of the Iran Theatre Association. BR: What were some of the productions of note that were staged by your theatre group and how were they received? Rahmaninejad : Our productions were generally well received. The problem is that we were limited in our activities because we didn’t have venues to rent, long-term, for our performances. Even after the 1979 Revolution, when we staged Bertolt Brecht’s epic parable Round Heads and Pointed Heads, the provisional government gave us the prominent Sangelaj Hall for one month. Later, when the performance was moved to the larger Rudaki Hall, despite the agreement that the venue would be available to us for two months, we faced opposition from the management and, following several meetings and intense discussions, they finally agreed to lend us the hall for two weeks. We then only had sixteen performances. Mohsen Yalfani’s The Teachers in 1970, directed by Saeed Soltanpour, was among the most notable productions. Bertolt Brecht’s The Visions of Simone Machard in 1972, again directed by Saeed Soltanpour (I was in prison at the time), was also successful. Maxim Gorky’s The Petty Bourgeois , the Persian translation of The Philistines , which was first staged in Rasht, capital city of Gilan, a progressive province in north of Iran, was received enthusiastically. BR: In A Man of the Theater , you portray your experience with post-coup theatre as deeply political. Would you describe your theatre activities, as an actor and director, as revolutionary? Rahmaninejad : This is a difficult question! First, let me say that I have never claimed to be a revolutionary. I have always considered myself an independent member of the left and in the revolutionary opposition. I did not imagine theatre could make a revolution, but I believed, and still do, that it could contribute to the idea of a revolution. In my opinion, art, literature, and, broadly, cultural activities do not lead to revolution by themselves but as mental factors that could help bring about a revolutionary moment. Revolutions require other, more important, and necessary factors and conditions. In the first place, the chaotic economic condition of the working class and the poverty of the masses, the repression and violence of the government against the people, the irresponsibility of the government failing to protect the people, and many other objective and necessary, concrete factors lead to the disruption of the social order. Revolution occurs in a complex setting and a long process. We see the same factors in the revolutions that have occurred so far. These factors contribute to popular dissatisfaction and protests, demonstrations, strikes, and resistance as people organize themselves to change the status quo for something different. In such a situation, art, literature, and theatre can enrich and strengthen the idea of a revolution. There are distinct and specific situations where theatre can play a more prominent role. For example, in the revolutionary period, theatre played a role in strengthening the idea of revolutionary movements and the larger urban protests and strikes. This is the kind of theatre that politically and openly challenges the status quo in the spreading of political ideas, which is known as agitprop theatre. With other names such as guerilla theatre and street theatre, such forms of political performances take place among the people, on the streets, in the factories, universities, and at heart of a social movement. As I mentioned, this type of theatre appears in certain political situations, such as the October Revolution of 1917 in Russia, the student revolts of 1968 in England, France, and the United States. It played a role in the 1979 Revolution in Iran too. However, in the case of Iran, the presence of agitational theatre was very weak and mostly affiliated with political organizations, which lacked independence. All in all, to answer your question, art in general and theatre in particular can enrich the human aspect of a revolution, but it cannot alone make revolution. So, theatre can be a creative force in a revolution, but it cannot create revolution on its own. BR: In your book, you write about various censorship measures that you and your theatre group had to deal with. What was censorship like before and after the revolution? And how, if at all, did you circumvent censorship? Rahmaninejad : The main difference between Pahlavi, a secular dictatorship, and the Islamic Republic, a religious despotism, lies in the type of censorship applied to shape public opinion. These forms of censorship can be shown, if not accurately and in detail, with specific examples. Let me expand on this. During the Pahlavi period, a critic or a dissident of the regime was censored, threatened, and imprisoned. This was the general policy of the regime. Now there were cases that some were murdered, mostly under Reza Shah (1925-1941), and under the pretext of political activity deemed a threat to state power. Broadly speaking, under the Pahlavi regime, censorship had unwritten rules, which the artists and writers already knew. We could circumvent censorship by simply deleting or modifying certain content. We could then proceed to stage a performance mostly without the knowledge of the censors. We did this by first showing the work to our close friends, who discussed the content of a play, suggesting what could be included or edited. We had to be clever about what could be presented to the censors. For the most part, though, the criteria for censorship were clearer in the Pahlavi period, and because the monarchy was not a theocracy, we had more flexibility with our publications and staging a performance. This was the case in 1970 with Mohsen Yalfani’s play Kenar zendegi [By the Side of Life]. After a private performance for a group of friends, a discussion ensued that led to changes with the content of the play. With modification with the content, Yalfani then decided to change the title to The Teachers . In anticipation of the censors objecting to the revised version, I then submitted a letter to the Supervisory Council without presenting the new play but only explaining that due to change of the title, The Teachers, we kindly request to issue a new performance license. We then got the permission and staged the play. The Pahlavi censorship bureaucracy was hardly meticulous or able to detect and understand the changes. But there were other times when censorship could not be avoided. For example, b efore appearing on stage in Tehran in 1974, The Parasites by Maxim Gorky was shut down, as all members and actors of the Iran Theatre Association were arrested and sentenced to nearly fifty years in prison. In this case, censorship included imprisonment to prevent critical art. Yet, despite censorship, in terms of production before the revolution, the Iran Theatre Association was successful in staging several plays. Under the Islamic Republic, however, censorship of theatre became broader, prohibiting especially themes that may be deemed a threat to religion. Such a form of censorship has consisted of two important features: first, effective techniques in monitoring theatre production and, second, a consistent ideological campaign to clamp down on secular culture. First, as an effective technique, the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance, a government organ in charge of censorship, has adopted the extra procedure of viewing a performance before being staged. Sometimes, the censors would view a play several times, asking the director to change dialogue, words, content, and movement. The most effective way to censor has been to inhibit performances and make arrests to create an atmosphere of fear in the theatre community. Second, since 1979 and mainly under the leadership of Ayatollah Khomeini, repression against intellectuals, particularly secular leftists, became more effectively institutionalized. This anti-secular repression continues to operate under the Islamic Republic, with victims ranging from poets and songwriters to cinematographers, playwrights, and theatre directors. Regarding this aspect of censorship, the Islamic Republic is innovative with measures to regulate the language of the public sphere, especially of a secular kind. We could call it “lexical censorship,” or regulation of speech in what could be said and published in print or live production of plays. Censors have significantly impacted the meaning of artistic works, changing the author’s language, and sometimes rendering the language meaningless. All in all, censorship under the Islamic Republic, though complex, is inherently contradictory, which sometimes seems to be pointless or simply madness. BR: The following question is sensitive since it involves your imprisonment experience under the Pahlavi regime. In recent months, a revisionist discourse, led primarily by monarchists, has depicted the notorious intelligence and security force, SAVAK, as a patriotic institution heroically defending Iran against domestic and foreign foes. In a recent documentary, Parviz Sabeti , the former director of SAVAK, Parviz Sabeti, who now resides in the U.S., has denied that his security force committed torture. He has also broadly described the use of force necessary for protecting national security. You were arrested for your political activities during a period when Sabeti played an integral role in consolidating SAVAK as an intelligent institution, implementing security measures that clearly included torture. If possible, could you explain why you were arrested? Were you tortured? Also, what is your response to Sabeti? Rahmaninejad : Our arrest occurred during a critical period when the armed struggle had spread in response to growing repression. Armed struggle was ultimately viewed as a vital threat to the regime’s existence. So, SAVAK decided to adopt harsh measures against armed organizations. The security campaign implemented by SAVAK was as follows: first, extending confinement of prisoners whose sentences had ended and were expected to be legally released; second, the arbitrary imprisonment of anyone deemed suspicious, which included those who appeared leftists or intellectuals. This might sound odd, but decisions to arrest people included how a person wore a particular mustache, a pair of glasses, jeans or velvet pants, sports shoes or boots, long hair, or simply a stylish or patterned t-shirt or shorts. The securitized atmosphere advanced a view that if one leftist or dissident was arrested out of a hundred, the government had made a significant accomplishment. The campaign also included the detainment of young people who entered Iran from abroad or students who came to visit their families during the summer. The objective was to determine if they were affiliated with the Confederation of Iranian Students or political groups abroad. At universities, anyone who questioned or engaged in suspicious discussions could be identified and arrested by SAVAK informants operating among the students. In prison, torture was done to the point of death. After arrest, the prisoner would be taken directly to the torture chamber without any investigation or interrogation, and to crush the will to resist, the interrogator or torturer would first beat up the victim, punch, kick, and then use electric cables. While torture had been used before, its intensity and extent changed. In such a situation, we were among the first suspicious individuals with the potential to be arrested. Obviously, not all members of the Iranian theatre community were Communists or members of a leftist political organization. But the government viewed artists with suspicion. As for our relations with intellectual circles, such as the Iranian Writers’ Association, and the production of critical art, the government saw us as a threat. Such perception of threat was essentially because of our independence. At that time, there was no independent organization in any field, artistic or otherwise. The only independent organizations were the Iranian Writers’ Association, which was not allowed to be active, and the Iran Theatre Association, which staged only one play a year. Moreover, we were not members of a political organization and had no political activity other than doing theatre from a political perspective. Our work in theatre followed the regimes’ legal procedure, albeit our subversive attempts to bypass censorship. That is, the plays we staged had proper license by an official censorship commission. None of the actors or directors in the Iranian Writers’ Association were political activists, and, in fact, the state did not convict them on political charges. But the sad truth is that SAVAK fabricated lies about us. For example, in my case, if the agency needed evidence, they would come up with fabricated documents so as to accuse me of “forming a communist group under the guise of theatre.” And this was applied to theatre actors who faced imprisonment. Such accusations implied that we were members of a Communist organization and therefore acted against national security. It is no exaggeration to say that nearly 80 to 90 percent of Iran’s political prisoners during the Shah’s era were not political activists in the true sense of the word. Now, one should ask Mr. Sabeti, in defense of which national security did he execute all those innocent young people and turn the existence of thousands of families into ashes? As the head of the third department within SAVAK, Sabeti was directly responsible not only for killing and torturing many prominent and talented young people of Iran, but also for the death of hundreds of innocent people during demonstrations during the revolution. Mr. Sabeti should be handed over to the International Court of Justice for his crimes against humanity! Moreover, the government of the United States had no compunction about hiding its own complicity with crimes that occurred during the reign of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, who was supported by Washington. It is a legitimate question to ask. Give me one example, just one example, of a politician who has committed crimes during his or her career and has freely confessed to those crimes. Sabeti is no exception. For the moment, the extremist right-wing government of Israel continues to massacre the Palestinian people while the United States along with other Western countries defend such atrocities with all their might. Do you think the perpetrators of such gruesome crimes, particularly Netanyahu, will be brought to justice? I doubt it. We live in an upside-down world. . BR: These two broad questions follow your experience with dissident politics. What was the shared view, if at all, amongst theatre practitioners about the role of theatre in political transformation in the 1970s? Broadly speaking, how do you see theatre’s contribution to the 1979 revolution? Rahmaninejad : Before the revolution, most theatre practitioners in Iran were employed by the Theatre Programs Administration, a Ministry of Culture and Arts section. As a government employee, a person in a theatre production played an important role in following state laws and regulations, including, of course, censorship. When you are employed by the government, you inevitably must comply with the imposed regulations, including censorship, and especially when in need of a job, you are completely at the disposal of the government. In this way, artistic, creative work becomes a job like any other governmental profession. And since the nature of the regime was dictatorial, censorship was widely and severely implemented within the press, publications, cinema, literary, cultural, intellectual fields, and theatre. This explains why conservative approaches in art and culture were widespread during this period. The plays that had a critical aspect were, first, limited in terms of production and, secondly, involved shallow and superficial content. If a play included a severe criticism of the regime, SAVAK would immediately react. As I mentioned earlier, this was the case with Mohsen Yalfani’s 1970 The Teachers. The show was closed after ten nights of performances, followed by the arrest of its author, Yelfani, and its director, Saeed Sultanpour. In the 1970s, the Iranian theatre saw an increase in the number of productions but not in political change. For the most part, theatre had become more and more conservative, primarily because of censorship. As for the rest of your question, I must say that, unfortunately, the theatre’s contribution to the 1970 revolution in Iran was very limited. Only in the final months leading up to February 1979, when the insurrectionary phase saw its completion with the regime's collapse, a small segment of the theatre community openly supported the revolution. BR: In 1983, you left Iran for the U.S. Could you briefly discuss your theatre activities in the diaspora? Rahmaninejad : Yes, in early 1983, I escaped Iran and traveled through Kurdistan to Turkey, then to Paris, France, where I became a political refugee. I was in France for almost four years, and during this time, I produced four plays. Then, I migrated to the United States to join my family. Working in the diaspora involves many problems, especially in the beginning. Apart from the basic problems of living in a new country, a new culture, a new language, and a new set of laws, being unfamiliar with everything, it is a major challenge to resolve everyday problems and requires a lot of effort. As for theatre in the diaspora, the first problem is finding the right play for an audience no longer in the homeland. This audience now lives in a different environment and deals with different problems, so it demands different subjects. The second is the financial problem. As an artist, how do you meet your financial needs? Then there is the problem of finding a place for performance. Where do you go to rehearse and meet with your group? Then there is the problem of finding people who are willing to devote their time to theatre without expectation of financial reward. The reality is that theatre in exile does not facilitate financial support. I have never been able to support myself through theatre during all the years that I have been active in theatre outside of Iran. In many instances, I have even paid from my own pocket to produce theatre. But in some European countries, Iranian diasporic theatre has thrived due to the financial support of the state. For example, two annual theatre festivals are held in Germany (“Iranian Theatre Festival”) in which Iranians and, most recently, Afghani theatre groups have participated. The continuation of these festivals is only due to the financial support of the local municipalities; otherwise, like many other theatre groups, they would disappear. In general, the theatre activities of the Iranian diaspora have decreased compared to the early waves of exile following the 1979 revolution. And especially since Covid-19, the number of theatrical productions has decreased even more. BR: What do you plan to do next? Rahmaninejad : In terms of producing plays, I must say that there is no clear perspective. When I imagine working on a play and the exhausting process of rehearsals along with the problems that come with it, such as the actors being late for rehearsals, sometimes the absence of some, providing the budget of the show, determining a suitable performance date that is acceptable to everyone, finding the right venue, and dozens of other problems, I can only describe it as a nightmare. In recent years, I have focused on writing and translating, and I am satisfied with this work. Writing usually needs considerable research, which is a learning and enjoyable process for me. BR: A final rather broad question: How do you see the future of theatre in Iran? Rahmaninejad : As long as the Islamic regime is ruling, theatre has no future in Iran, nor anything nor anyone. Iranian theatre has a high capacity for creative transformation and development, but it must be provided with suitable conditions for it to grow. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes On Iranian theater of the Constitutional Revolution, see Babak Rahimi, ed, Performing Iran: Culture, Performance, Theatre (London: I.B. Tauris, 2021), 12 and Willem Floor, The History of Theater in Iran (Washington D.C., Mage Publishers, 2005), 222-258. See Nasser Rahmaninejad, A Man of The Theater (New York: New Village Press, 2020). References About The Author(s) Babak Rahimi is the Director of the Middle East Program and Associate Professor of Culture, Communication, and Religion at the Department of Literature, U.C. San Diego. He is the author of Theater-State and Formation of the Early Modern Public Sphere in Iran: Studies on Safavid Muharram Rituals, 1590-1641 C.E. (Brill 2011) and Senses of Mourning: Muharram Performances in Iran, 1868/9-2022 (forthcoming). Rahimi is also the editor of Theater in the Middle East: Between Performance and Politics (Anthem Press 2020) and Performing Iran: Culture, Performance, Theatre (I.B.Tauris 2023). Rahimi’s research interests concern the relationship between performance, religion, and technology. The historical and social contexts that inspire his research range from early modern Islamicate societies to the Global South . Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Carving a Path: Desiring-Production in Displaced Syrian Theatre Interview with Nasser Rahmaninejad by Babak Rahimi Arab American Drama: Five Books that Inspired My Journey Five Arab American Plays Everyone Should Read MIDNIGHT IN CAIRO: THE DIVAS OF EGYPT'S ROARING '20S. By Raphael Cormack (REVIEW) Previous Next Attribution:

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 18 Winter 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Performance Review: DUMMY IN DIASPORA. By Esho Rasho. By Suzi Elnaggar Published: December 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF A slight young man (Esho Rasho) sits on a white couch, alone, contemplative. Behind him, deep red and gold carpets hang; the shifting lighting takes on an eerie tone. Tension envelopes him; finally, he speaks to us in a conversational, almost chipper voice. He leans forward, “My name is Essa, and I think something is really wrong with me.” In Dummy in Diaspora , a “coming-of-age solo play” written and performed by Esho Rasho, insistent, personal storytelling is the centerpiece of a semi-autobiographical narrative of diasporic longing and familial love. Making his US premiere after a run with Dummy in Diaspora at the 2024 Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Rasho, a first-generation Assyrian American writer/performer, comes to the Chicago theatre scene with an achingly earnest performance that reminds us that home is the people we love as much as the place we live. Esho Rasho in Dummy in Diaspora , by Esho Rasho, directed by Karina Patel for Jackalope Theatre. Photos by Joel Maisonet. Part of an emerging cohort of SWANA artists (many of whom are writing and performing their own work) embracing the specificity and complexity of their identities in new and bold ways, Rasho has refined Dummy in Diaspora over the last few years. First germinated during his time obtaining a BFA in Acting from The Theatre School at DePaul University in 2023, Dummy in Diaspora showcases an emerging SWANA artist willing to experiment with form and content. A refraction of his personal narrative, the queer diasporic tale is successful as a solo performance supported by strong, yet restrained production design at Jackalope Theatre, where it was directed by ensemble member Karina Patel. Rasho’s Dummy is one of two recent new Assyrian Iraqi plays in Chicago ( Iraq but Funny at Lookingglass as well). Rasho’s Dummy is a non-linear, interlocking series of vignettes that follow Essa's (who is Rasho’s funhouse mirror reflection) emotional journey and growth from childhood to high school through early adulthood in a SWANA immigrant household. Rasho weaves together various threads: Essa’s coming of age as a young queer SWANA person, his learning English as a second language as a child, his struggle with addiction to nicotine, and his mother’s cancer diagnosis. Dummy is a series of monologues directly addressed to the audience, punctuated with reenactments of conversations that have shaped him. Rasho inhabits Essa’s mother, his European clubbing friends, and his white therapist, among others; these interspersed quasi-dialogues serve a rhythmic change in the performance, often lending a comedic tone to painful revelations. Throughout Dummy , Rasho aptly handles the challenge of a solo act with multiple characters and narrative threads. The scenic design from Scenic/Prop Designer Olivia Volk, Lighting Designer Maaz Ahmed, and Sound Designer Newton Schottelkott support Rasho’s storytelling through both aethetic abstraction and by creating specific zones: a couch in the family home, a chair in the therapist’s office, and a clothes rack in an apartment are situated in front of layered, hanging red carpets and bronze clocks which seem to levitate behind Rasho. Both literal and liminal in representation, the stage exists as a space between reality and surreality. Ahmed’s lighting design exemplifies how Dummy plays with the boundaries of what is real; Essa’s nicotine addiction coalesces as an auditory and luminous green presence named Nic. The addictive entity disrupts Essa’s storytelling, the lighting becomes alien, bathing in Rasho in green; Nic speaks to him through recorded, distorted audio. The various parts of the production work together, using the intimate space to its full extent, highlighting the deft direction by Jackelope Theatre ensemble member Patel. In the narrative of Dummy , Rasho investigates and digs into specificity; Essa is the child of an Iraqi Assyrian father and Lebanese mother who met at immigration; both are now proudly American. Children of the post 9/11 era, Essa and his sister struggle with their parents' patriotism. Rasho touches on feelings about immigration, becoming a citizen, and the census as a young Middle Eastern person in the United States. His Essa reflects on the legacies of his parents’ homelands and migrant experiences, from which he feels he is profoundly disconnected. Essa wonders, struggling with a gnawing internalized second-generation diasporic guilt, that if just a bit, if his parents are right-- he is privileged to grow up as a young queer man in America. To me, this sentiment is made even more bittersweet as rights and protections for both immigrants and queer folx are attacked in today’s America in the months since the production. Throughout Dummy , Rasho also draws on themes of dysmorphia and queerness in the explorations of Essa’s warped body image and his growing addiction to nicotine. Rasho’s Essa isn’t perfect or always sympathetic; his choices are sometimes fraught and many times unhealthy. His mother’s sudden cancer diagnosis parallels his struggles with body image; Essa fights to take care of himself, going to therapy even though he finds it cliché and very American, while admiring the strength of his mother, her own body wasting away during chemo treatment. This dissonance and disruption, as Essa compares himself to his parents, wondering if he can live up to their expectations, is where the narrative shines; Rasho gives an extremely human performance of diasporic longing. Rasho’s Dummy sometimes overflows narratively, skipping from snapshot to snapshot. All of these disparate stories dovetail in Essa’s recollection of learning English in a public school ESL class, where he is assigned to retell his favorite movie, The Wizard of Oz , as an exercise. The eerie green Nic, the bravery of his mother, the advice of his therapist, and the friends he has met along the way mark his own journey. For Essa, home is something we are always looking to return to, though finding the way can be confusing. Dummy in Diaspora is a smart and poignant solo performance highlighting an exciting new artist, Esho Rasho. He is a vibrant part of a cohort of SWANA artists in Chicago, making a strong entrance with stories that are human, complex, and timely. I know I’ll be looking for what Rasho does next with anticipation. Esho Rasho as Essa in Dummy in Diaspora , by Esho Rasho, directed by Karina Patel for Jackalope Theatre. Photos by Joel Maisonet. Esho Rasho as Essa in Dummy in Diaspora , by Esho Rasho, directed by Karina Patel for Jackalope Theatre. Photos by Joel Maisonet. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes References About The Author(s) Suzi Elnaggar Northwestern University; Freelance Dramaturg Suzi Elnaggar is an Egyptian American performance scholar, freelance dramaturg, and theatre maker. She was a 2021 Kennedy Center Dramaturgy Intensive Fellow and works as a developmental and community-focused dramaturg. Her work has been published in Asian Theatre Journal , Arab Stages , Review: The Journal of Dramaturgy , and Theatre Times . Her interests include exploring postcolonial theatre contexts, decoloniality in performance, the intersection of trauma and performance, transnational and migrant stories, recontextualizing Greek tragedy, myths, and folklore, and exploring work that centers around SWANA (Southwest Asian and North African) experiences. Suzi’s scholarship and practice center community, collaboration, and context. As a dramaturg, she is experienced in both production and developmental work. She is the artistic director of Backstitch Story Project, and the founder and creative director of the Digital Development Project. She has read scripts for PlayPenn, Playwright’s Center, Rattlestick’s Van Lier New Voices Fellowship, SHE-LA, and Sparkfest, among many others. Selected dramaturgy credits (Production & Developmental Workshops): Avalanche Theatre’s Next Draft series and Grape Leaves , Silk Road’s Shahadat ; Backstitch Story Arts Off-White: The Arab House Party Play ; Clamour Theatre’s Lived Experience ; TACTICS Ottawa’s ANANSI V. GOD(S) ; Jubilee Theatre Waco’s Fairview (Texas Premiere); Wild Imaginings’ Jesus and Valium (World Premiere), The Way He Looks at You , Cardboard Castles Hung on Walls (World Premiere); Northwestern University Theatre’s The Great Sea Serpent (Workshop Premiere). Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Practicing Place: Site-Specific Performance and the Reinscription of Memory in Palestine Resisting the Unleashed Evils of the US- Invasion of Iraq in Amir Al-Azraki’s The Widow (2017) Dina Mousawi’s RETURN: a Compelling site of representing Women’s Status of Agency Under Occupation Renewed Awareness Toward Salvation: The Journey of The Story of Zahra from Page to Stage Site-Specific Performance and Theatrical Memorialization of the Nakba Performance Review: WAILING SONGS OF THE PAST, MIGHT THEY GROW OUR RESILIENCE. By Maya al-Khaldi. Performance Review: DUMMY IN DIASPORA. By Esho Rasho. Performance Review: ENGLISH. Written by Sanaz Toossi Performance Review: THE CAVE. By Sadieh Rifai Performance Review: IRAQ, BUT FUNNY by Atra Asdou Performance Review: COSMOS/AWALEM by Ashtar Muallem and Emile Saba. Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 18 Winter 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Site-Specific Performance and Theatrical Memorialization of the Nakba By Hala Khamis Nassar Published: December 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF Site-Specific Performance and Theatrical Memorialization of the Nakba By Hala Khamis Nassar In such trying times and in the face of eradication, there is an urgent need to counter the Israeli-settler colonial hegemonic narrative. This article demonstrates how Palestinian theatre in recent years adamantly organized site-specific festivals to reclaim Nakba stories. These selected sites, all built before 48, have their own stories to tell, albeit ones that accentuate remembrance of the past. Concerning such site-based performance, McAuley writes, “the site becomes the dominant signifier rather than simply being that which contains the performance, as the theatre building does in traditional theatre practice. Site-based performance engages more or less deeply with its chosen site and as a result tends to be drawn into engagement with the social and political issues that seem inseparable from place” (McAuley 2005: 30). The combination of a Nakba story with pre-1948 sites evokes and highlights the Palestinian past, reminding the audience of its uninterrupted lineage. On the Palestinian stage, enactments of the Nakba and its ongoing significant repercussions are being revisited, dominating the cultural scene. A very recent example is al-Harah's experimentation with Site-Specific Theatre in Beit Jala. Site-specific theatre is not new to the Palestinian context. The late Iraqi director Awni Karumi introduced it to Palestine at the Palestinian National Theatre Festival in 1993. Ashtar Theater, based in Ramallah, embarked on experimenting with sites and produced Richard II in 2012 at Hisham Palace in Jericho. [1] In July 2021, Al-Harah Theatre, in cooperation with Grid Iron Theatre in Edinburgh and supported by leading EU countries, organised its first Site-Specific Theatre Festival in Bethlehem and Beit Jala [2] . Grid Iron Theatre conducted two weeks of rigorous workshops for aspiring young playwrights and directors in the winter of 2020. After the final selection, five plays were picked and developed into a performance under Grid’s mentorship. [3] In the festival’s First Edition, the play Dar 13 reflected the ongoing resistance against the Israeli eviction orders of Sheikh Jarrah residents; Al-Hosh lamented about destroyed sites and dispersal of its inhabitants due to 1948 War; The Perfect Crime investigated a murder that still hovers the corridors of an abandoned house; The Port recalled a lost culture and a country, and Buldozer shed light on Israeli house demolition orders in Jerusalem and the West Bank. The festival also included storytelling, some based on fairy tales, others like Animal with Plague subtly narrating the Nakba. Scouting locations in Beit Jala and Bethlehem, Dar-al Sabbagh Center played a crucial role in selecting sites for the festival and in performing the plays. [4] The chosen sites reveal their own stories. Some sites are already abandoned, with their inhabitants in the diaspora; others are dilapidated or being restored and renovated as part of Bethlehem’s two-thousand-year-old Cultural Heritage. [5] Yet, the selected buildings in the old cities reveal a unique style of pre-1948 architects. Large spacious houses, with cathedral windows, carpet design floor tilings, high ceilings, and green courtyards in the midst where there is either a well or a water fountain; a fitting atmosphere, and a space to tell a story. The plays in the festival portrayed life before and after 1948, the brutality of Israeli occupation, and the threats to Sheikh Jarrah residents against the backdrop of the Israeli onslaught on 10 May 2021, when Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) launched air strikes on the Gaza Strip lasting eleven days. While Hamas called the ensuing conflict the Sword of Jerusalem Battle, the IDF officially dubbed the military campaign in the Gaza Strip Operation Guardian of the Walls. The aggression on Gaza comes after Hamas’s ultimatum to Israel to remove its security forces from the Temple Mount complex and from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood. In this charged atmosphere, storytellers, independent artists, directors from the West Bank and Israel, and the Freedom Theatre were the main participants in the festival. The 2 nd Edition of the Bethlehem Site-Specific Theatre Festival took place from the 26 th to the 30 th of July 2023 in the cities of Beit Jala, Bethlehem. This time, it expanded its participation to the southern part of the West Bank, including the city of Hebron. Grid Iron Theatre in Scotland conducted a training workshop for a new cohort of aspiring directors and playwrights. However, the performances in the Second Edition of the festival were “based on personal stories of older people in Bethlehem and Hebron governorates being documented by the researcher and storyteller Sally Shalabi” (al-Harah Theater, 2023 Playbill). Shalabi collected memories and narratives by interviewing older people from different backgrounds and rewrote them in the form of stories. Through the Capacity Building Program for Young Artists implemented by al-Harah Theatre in collaboration with Grid Iron, six directors and three storytellers presented their productions during the festival in the three above-mentioned cities. On 26 July 2023, the old alleys of Hebron hosted the performances of The Almond Flower and Heaven Door is Open , and the storytelling of The Qazzazin Neighborhood Boy , and Struggle and Success based on interviews with refugees from the 1967 War with Israel. In the old hosh/alley compounds of Beit Jala, the plays and stories from Hebron were also performed in addition to the play Equivalent and storytelling of Boqja . As for Bethlehem and at the Center for Cultural Heritage Preservation, two other performances were added: The Freedom Fabric and I Was There . It is worth noting that at the end of each festival day, the interviewees were acknowledged by Al-Harah Theatre and presented with the theatre’s logo, carved from olive wood. One major difference between the first and the second editions of the festival is that the latter aims to “shed light on the importance of historical and heritage spaces in the old cities to show the richness of these cities that are full of stories since thousands of years” (ibid.). Nonetheless, one cannot overlook the fact that the most outstanding plays in both festivals are storytelling monodramas documenting Palestinian life pre- and post-1948 and 1967. The discerning illustrations of such enactments are biographical plays, for they never cease to be relevant, nowadays more than ever. Al-Harah’s Site-Specific festivals document memory accounts of the Nakba survivors. In Masalha’s words, “compiling and recording oral history and encouraging annual commemorations [is] designed to preserve the memory of the catastrophe, while emphasizing the link between refugee rights, collective identity, and the challenge to return” (Masalaha 2012: 254). The biographical stories Buqja and The Country that Loses its Birds Loses its Goodness draw the audience “into engagement” [6] with life under occupation. The stories document the Zionist aggression on historic Palestine, resulting in the erasure of entire villages, depopulating them and displacing their inhabitants, making them internal refugees or forcing them to migrate outside the geographical borders of Palestine. They document Palestinian life before 1948, the ramifications of refugee displacement, and the Judaization of the Palestinian landscape, villages, towns, and cities, particularly Jerusalem. The above selections delve into the collective memory of Palestinians and use it as a political weapon in the process of a national struggle when wars and peace agreements have proved to be ineffective. It also aims to remind, educate, politicize, and inform the public that the Zionist project is ongoing (Nassar 2023) Buqja Buqja ( Bundle ) [7] is based on the life of my mother, Faiza Tawfiq Nasser Nassar (Um Hanna), interviewed by the well-known Sally Shalabi and performed by Majeda Subhi. The performance took place on 26 July at Ma’an lil Hayat/L’Arche Bethlehem, and on 30 July 2023 at Khalilieh Arch/hosh in the old city of Beit Jala. Left to right, Sally Shalabi, Faiza Tawfiq Nasser Nassar, Hala Nassar in the audience for Bundle. Courtesy of al-Harah Theatre. The play begins with the narrator welcoming the audience and explaining that she is going to tell my mother’s story. Seated on the old hand-carved stone stairs in the Kahlilieh Arch Compound in the old city of Beit Jala, the narrator points to my mother in the audience, thanking her for agreeing to be interviewed and for the chance to tell her story. Subhi starts narrating, telling the audience that she wanted to tell Um Hanna’s story as she is also from the suburbs of Jerusalem. Um Hanna, born in Nazareth, grew up in an upper-class landowners’ family. Her father then relocated to Jerusalem to become one of the personal guards to the commissioner of the British Mandate in Palestine. They lived in what is now known as West Jerusalem on Saint Julian Street, a couple of streets down from the YMCA. In 1948, British forces started to withdraw from Palestine. [8] Um Hanna’s father, Tawfiq, received orders to deploy to Cyprus with the remaining British troops, which he flatly refused, insisting that Palestine “is my country, I live and die in it!” [9] fully knowing that his pension benefits would be stopped, and his British passport revoked (al-Harah 2023). The last troops left Palestine on 15 May 1948. On that day, “they heard a lot of shooting in Jerusalem and the Jewish loudspeakers telling the Arabs to surrender” (ibid.). Out of fear, they remained inside the house and comforted themselves with the fact that there were enough provisions to sustain them for some time. After “two days, the Stern and the Hagenah gangs come and surround the neighbourhood […] Faiza does not forget what they looked like” (ibid.). The Stern separates men from women. They blindfolded the men, loaded them into trucks, and drove away to an unknown destination. They tell the women to go home. Many families, at this point, start abandoning their houses and streets. Teta Christina, a neighbour, comes and stays with them. A month passes confined in the house then the gangs come again. Hearing the commotion in the house yard, Teta Christina asks Faiza’s mother, Haneh, “What are we going to do now?” Haneh responds, “sssh, pointing with her fingers to the mouth, be quiet, do not stir, let us wait it out” (al-Harah 2023). Majedah Subhi as the narrator. Courtesy of al-Harah Theatre. While they are standing silently against the wall, the gangs storm in through the door, they turn the house upside down, throw the oil and wheat on the expensive imported hand-made woollen Iranian carpets, gather the remaining food from the pantry, and force them to lock the door with clothes on their back and take the keys with them. They blindfold the women, load them onto trucks, and drop them off at Piccadilly Square in Jerusalem at 10 o’clock in the evening. The families are asked to ride the trucks, and after driving around for some time, they are again dropped off at the YMCA and into the gymnastics hall. Haneh is shocked to see so many people, some she knew, others not, from different backgrounds. Scared to death, she does not get a wink of sleep that night and hugs her three children until morning. The next day, trucks come to carry the families to locations outside Jerusalem, which will constitute the nucleus of refugee camps in the West Bank. As for Teta Christina Shiber, since she descends from one of the affluent families of Jerusalem at that time, the Red Cross arranges for her to join her family in Lebanon, leaving behind vast wealth and real estate all over the western part of the city only to be confiscated by the new state of Israel. Haneh asks Mr. Miller, the YMCA director at the time, to help her go to Nazareth to stay with her family, only to be told that Nazareth has fallen. [10] Relentless and depending on her social connections, Haneh manages to relocate to al-Jawzi’s office in the YMCA with her family, thereby evading relocation. The narrator, Subhi, takes a deep breath and continues to tell us how Haneh and her three children remain hidden in the YMCA. Then, she decides to go and check on her home. Haneh informs Mr. Miller, who refuses her request multiple times and forbids her from leaving the compound. Haneh is still anxious about the fate of her home, and she attempts to sneak out. Fire S hots are heard in the surroundings, but she decides to keep walking towards the house, only to be stopped by people running away while the body of Count of Wisborg, Folke Bernadotte is ushered into the YMCA. [11] Undeterred, Haneh secretly attempts a second dangerous venture towards home. There are shots fired; nevertheless, she makes it, collects whatever she can carry, and wraps everything in a bedsheet, making a bundle. As she is about to leave, she notices the sewing machine lying on the floor and picks it up. Walking in Jerusalem is dangerous as the city is already divided into zones, and one cannot cross from one to another without having the proper papers. “The more she runs on the streets towards the YMCA, the more gunshots are fired. As she is about to reach the YMCA, she counts eleven bullets aimed at her, but makes it to the front entrance. Her daughter, Faiza, sees her and runs to Haneh, screaming, ‘Mama mama.’ Faiza is hit with a bullet that scratches her arm” (al-Harah 2023). At this point, Faiza stops the storyteller, corrects her, and tells her: “It was not me, it was my older sister Aida who was shot” (ibid.). Such is an example of how the spectators engage with the site as the story is being told. As McAuley asserts when discussing Segments from an Inferno , “the way performance can impact upon a place, activating memories and permitting the past to resonate in the present, and of the way the spectator’s experience may exceed what the performer’s intended” (McAuley 43). Incidentally, Faiza was the only spectator who interrupted the performance and corrected the storyteller in the festival’s performances! Hence drawing the attention of the other spectators to the then and now, when the “aesthetic experience of the performance is always, for good or ill, embedded with the social reality,” (ibid 47) where the individual spectator, in this case, Faiza, experiences the performance in the company of other audiences. Being in the performance, Faiza becomes part of the performative experience, where “the aesthetic is enmeshed in complex ways within the social, the fictional within the real; but in site-based work […] the social reality is foregrounded” (ibid.). After Faiza’s correction, Subhi continues the story. Witnessing the incident, Mr Miller shouts at Haneh and says in a hoarse voice, “What if something happens to you? Who is going to take care of your children!” (al-Harah 2023). Subhi, as if reading from a book, continues to chronicle Faiza’s life story to a very attentive audience and describes how the Red Cross starts to collect the Christian families from the YMCA and distribute them among the churches in the Old City of Jerusalem. Faiza’s family is put up in the Lutheran Church. After spending six days on the benches of the church with little to nothing to eat, they are eventually given an empty room in the German Hospice in the Christian Quarter of the Old City. Faiza recalls how humiliating and painful it is to fall from grace. From a spacious multi-room in a two-floor villa, with lovely furniture, abundant food, beautiful clothes, and a private German school, to an empty room with no furniture, no food, and rags for clothes. She also recalls how her mother, Haneh, puts the sewing machine to work, making shirts for the refugees. “It did not pay much as all of us are now refugees and our pockets are empty” (ibid). In site-specific theatre pertaining to -Nakba, the engagement among the narrator, the audience, and the interviewee is immersive; the site and the story become one and the same. Subhi, at this point in the performance, looks towards my mother, Faiza, among the attentive audience, as if seeking approval to continue. She then recounts how the family receives a word through the Red Cross to go to the Mandelbaum Gate crossing. [12] Life of struggle, poverty, displacement, and survival continues in the storytelling of the play, as Subhi tells us another trauma in Faiza’s life: Tawfik’s return from detention. While they are standing at the checkpoint under the scorching sun, a tall skinny man appears, much like a vagabond with buried eyes, long hair, and a beard. Aida and Haneh run toward the man, but Faiza does not. When Tawfiq approaches her and says, “I am your dad, you do not want to hug me?” Faiza shrinks away, screaming, “I do not know you; you are not my dad!” Faiza recalls how Tawfiq squeezes her in a way only a father and daughter know; only then does she welcome her father’s hugs. Living in poverty and deprivation continues for Faiza, and it reaches a turning point in her life when the Lutheran Church offers to send one girl from each newly refugee family to a German boarding school, run by the nuns: Talitha Kumi in Beit Jala. Faiza cries her eyes out but is forced to go, as Aida, the older sister, is helping Haneh with the sewing. Also, Yoel is born in that lowly room, and Faiza’s departure leaves space for the newborn to be fed. Despite the harsh treatment, cold dormitory, measly food, strict nuns, and unkind teachers, Faiza studies hard, passes her GCE, and becomes a teacher at the same school. There, she meets the electric engineer Khamis from Beit Jala, and they marry. Another chapter of displacement occurs in the life of the key characters. Faiza’s story continues as her husband gets a job offer as the head of engineers in a newly built chemical factory in Amman, Jordan. The couple move to Jordan with their baby boy. During that time, they travel every month back and forth between Amman and Jerusalem until the 1967 War, when traveling over the bridges becomes too dangerous. Unable to visit her family in Jerusalem, Faiza is sad and anxiously waits for news. Political tensions between the Palestinians and the Jordanians escalate, leading to the bloody events of Black September in 1970. As the Palestinian fedayeen militant’s stronghold is in Zarqa, the Jordanian army runs house-to-house to search for them. Khamis and Faiza send the two older children to Aunt Angail’s house, and with the two younger ones, they stay with their neighbors, hiding in the basement under a table as the battle rages on outside. Faiza describes the screams of the fedayeen as they are being slaughtered in the streets. Afraid of being expelled from Jordan with the PLO, thus becoming, yet again, refugees in Lebanon, they remain in hiding until the Jordanian army discovers and interrogates them. Life becomes unbearable for the new family in Jordan, and they decide to move back to Palestine. Moving back home has not been easy since the 1967 Israel occupation of the West Bank, and they need a family reunion military permit, which is hard to obtain. After four years, the permit is issued, but for the West Bank only, while Faiza’s request to join her family in Jerusalem is denied. Such a denial of entry makes Faiza angry as “she always has held Jerusalem in her heart” (al-Harah 2023). As Edward Said eloquently describes, the Palestinian story is “not a narrative… but rather broken narratives, fragmentary compositions, and self-consciously staged testimonials, in which the narrative voice keeps stumbling over itself, its obligations and its limitations” (Said 1986, 38). Like many Palestinians, Faiza always defines her life in terms of major political events overshadowing Palestine since the Nakba of 1948. During the first Intifada of 1987, Faiza’s husband’s work deteriorates, and, as the children are already scattered across the Americas and Europe, Khamis decides to try his luck this time in Honduras. Reluctantly, Faiza is uprooted once again and goes to Honduras. Still, she studies Spanish and becomes a citizen. In 2009, due to Khamis’s declining health, they return to Beit Jala, only to witness the impact of the signing of the Oslo Peace Accords of 1993: the Separation Wall, the bypass road carving the landscape to make safe roads for Israeli settlers, the checkpoints, and the need for permits to move between zones A, B, and C. Refusing up till this moment to issue a biometric identity card and apply for permit to go to Jerusalem or Nazareth to visit her family, Faiza prefers being smuggled into Jerusalem. Up until now, Faiza refuses to acknowledge the existence of the State of Israel. Her act of defiance is loudly articulated when a priest in her Lutheran Church gives a sermon about forgiveness and reconciliation. When asked if she is willing to forgive someone, Faiza stands tall and says: “I will never forgive or reconcile with the Zionists. They have deprived me of my childhood, and they have expelled me from my home more than once. My family has led a harsh life of poverty, and as refugees because of them. During my lifetime, I will never forgive them.” Faiza’s parents lived and died in that room in the German Hospice, now turned into a hostel. They never went home. The keys to the house on Saint Julian Street are still with Faiza. My mother’s story is one of thousands of stories of Palestinians, who were driven out of their homes by force, with only the clothes on their backs. No trace of my mother’s parents’ house can be found today. Palestinian Nature and Settlers: The Country that Loses its Birds Loses its Goodness As Buqja documents the steadfastness against the Zionist aggression and Judaization of Jerusalem, The Country that Loses its Birds Loses its Goodness is hitherto another testimony of the ongoing Nakba in the southern regions of historic Palestine . In its Second Edition, al-Harah Theatre contributes to al-Makhrour’s festival and presents the biographical storytelling The Country that Loses its Birds Loses its Goodness , performed by Nicola Zreineh and Sally Shalabi about the life of Carlos Barham, Abu Saliba. It is a fitting choice, not only as a striking example of employing site-specific theatre but because al-Makhrour’s land is constantly under threat of being cordoned off to the adjacent settlement of Har Gilo, which is also built on illegal confiscation of Beitjalian’s lands and, as a consequence, strangling the town. [13] Inad Theatre in Beit Jala has organised its Second Edition of Al-Makhrour Festival to begin on 7 September 2023. The three-day program usually takes place after the harvesting of Al-Makhrour’s almonds, apricots, plums, pistachios, and grapes, and before the start of olive picking in late October. Al-Makhrour is a vast valley, and the peaky green hills belong to the people of Beit Jala. Since the Oslo Peace Accords, the area has been carved under Israeli control as it is surrounded by the large settlement of Har Gilo, hence confiscating Beitjalian’s fertile agricultural lands. Celebrating the harvest in Al-Marhrour and even with an Israeli settler seizing the highest hill, the festival’s program usually includes musical shows, stand-up comedians, theatrical performances, workshops, camping, guided walking tours, and storytelling. “ The Country that Loses its Birds Loses its Goodness ” is site-specific theatre in the strict sense of the word, given its location in al-Makhrour, for the storytelling “emerges from a particular place and engages with the history and politics of that place, and with the resonance of these in the present” McAuley, 32). Carlos’ story exists in the site where it is produced and performed. Shalabi starts telling us the story by saying, “If you search for Carlos, you will find him in his castle amidst the valley surrounded by the beautiful nature and accompanied by cats. From there, Carlos reminisces” (al-Harah 2023). Carlos remembers the good old days before 1948, when the townspeople of Beit Jala started the journey to al-Makhrour on the 5 th of May after celebrating Saint George’s Festival in the nearby village of al-Khader, named after the saint. The townsfolk bring furniture, bedding, food, and herds and remain in the green valley and hills until the first rain and the petrichor fill the air. Only the sickly and those who cannot walk to al-Makhrour stay back in town. Carlos recalls how every clan in Beit Jala owned at least a plot of land, which they planted with olives and fruit trees, including grapes, figs, almonds, apples, and plums. Such a tradition lasted until 1967, and to this day, Carlos can name the owner of each piece of land in the valley. In the summer, al-Makhrour is buzzing, as the townspeople build a small Qaṣr (a castle) to spend the season in the green valley. Usually, the castle is built out of hand-carved stones; it has two floors and a window called Ṭāqa . The family occupies the upper level, and storage and the livestock are kept at the lower level. Back then, families would put a lantern in the window so people in the valley could see the light and come over to visit during the cool summer nights. Remembering, Carlos stresses the fact that in the old days, the sky was full of stars, and you could even read the Milky Way. Now smog is filling the sky, and you can hardly spot any stars even on a clear night. Carlos enthusiastically explains how the remaining green area surrounding the city of Beit Jala is named al-Makhrour. It is due to the steepness of the valley connecting to the village of Batir’s valley and the abundant water springs, where you could hear the gurgle of the running water seeping loudly in the valley to Jaffa and into the Mediterranean Sea. Lamenting, Carlos says, the springs and groundwater have dried up, and the climate has changed; however, once the rain comes down, it fills some of it, and you can still hear the purl of water. Here, Carlos does not mention how the adjacent settlement of Har Gilo has installed water pipes in the valley and pumps the water all year round up into the settlement. Still evoking the past, Carlos spends time telling us how his grandfather built the Qaṣr and says, “We are a chain of a longer one. He built it and lived in it, my father did too, and I am only a caretaker of the land and trees, leaving it to my children… such is life” (al-Harah 2023). Since the signing of the Oslo Accords II in 1995, the city of Beit Jala has been divided into ABC areas. [14] Al-Makhrour is part of the C area; thus, Israel maintains full control of the valley and its hills. Therefore, it is forbidden to restore a ruined castle, a stone hedge, or even a well of water, since you need a special Israeli military permit for construction in the valley. Nonetheless, Carlos maintains the well and the small pond near the spring, which his father built. In the past, they used to water the trees and the plants from the spring. Now it has dried up. Although there is no electricity in the castle, and the well is only full of rainwater, Carlos prefers to stay on his land, taking care of the trees, running away from the hustle and bustle of Beit Jala and its congested air. At a young age, Carlos’ father not only taught him how to take care of the land, trim the fruit trees, harvest the olives, and sew all kinds of plants, but also how to use a hunting rifle. Pondering, Carlos recalls how Beit Jala’s residents used to hunt birds, and how the grandmother would wrap them in dough and cook them over a fireplace. Now, the “Israelis, if they spot you holding a slingshot, you are immediately arrested, so how about owning a hunting rifle? Decades ago, the skies were full of migrating birds; now we hardly see any” (ibid). Carlos sighs and says, “The country that loses its birds, loses its blessings” (ibid). Taking over the narrative from Shalabi, Zreineh tells us that in 1966, Carlos is drafted into the Jordanian reserve army. He is taken to Nuweihmeh Camp in Jericho for training. In 1967, and still in the training camp, Israeli aircraft bombs the trainees, and everything goes ablaze. After the airplanes fly away, Carlos notices something still glittering on the ground. He touches it and it burns his finger. He instantly realizes that they have been hit with Napalm bombs. Once the West Bank of the River Jordan falls from the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan int Israeli hands, Carlos’s family starts to worry about their son’s fate. Zreineh keeps narrating Carols’ fate in Jordan. The family sends word to Hanna Salman to find Carlos. Salman moves from one camp to another until he finds himself in the city of Zarqa’s military camp. Once spotted, Salman tells Carlos to take off his military uniform, then rides in the car pretending to be a labourer. Salman hides Carlos in Amman; however, his name is on the list of the deserters. Later, he is moved to Madaba to avoid arrest. Although the fighting has stopped, the bridges between the two banks of the Jordan River are either closed or destroyed due to the 1967 War. Carlos’ uncle drives him to the border to be smuggled by a Bedouin, who carries people on his back and crosses the Jordan River. Zreineh, as the narrator, tells us it is an arduous journey and full of danger, as the river’s water is rapid, and if you do not know how to swim, you can easily drown. Carlos makes it to Jericho, seeks the Greek Orthodox Church, and hides. With the help of Orthodox clergymen, Carlos arrives home to Beith Jala, meets his friends and family. His father cries as he hugs him (al-Harah 2023). Zreineh continues narrating as Carlos. He goes back to the land after changing jobs, getting married in 1971, and building a family home. More than once, he is offered a job in Israel, as Carlos is known in Beit Jala for having a green thumb, but he always declines. Nothing deters Carlos from al-Makhrour, no siege of area A and B, or curfews imposed on Beit Jala and Bethlehem, nor the first intifada of 1986, the second intifada of 2001, or Covid -19, he always walks through the old alleys of the city, down the valleys of Beit Jala and up the mountain to go all the way to his castle. Now and then, the Israeli soldiers stop Carlos and ask for an identification card, his response to the occupation is always the same “Look at my grey hair, this is my identity, why would I need to carry one when I am going to my land” (al-Harah 2023). The soldiers always let him pass to al-Mkahrour. As I am writing this article, Carlos is still seen walking towards al-Makhrour. He recalls that now the road is paved and wide enough for cars to drive on, while before it was a narrow dirt pathway barely wide enough for one donkey to pass. Intervening in the narrative, Shalabi sighs and tells us that Carlos thinks “Oslo” has caused a lot of damage in terms of the land swap with Israel. Al-Makhrour is under Israeli control, area C, and “there is a settler, who seized a fertile plot of land on the top of the mountain four years ago, watching everyone’s movement. You cannot build, renovate, or even dig out the oak or fir trees, and if you leave your land unworked for five years, the occupation confiscates it under the absentees’ law of 48” (al-Harah 2023). To Carlos, the land is wealth as is his children to whom he taught the love of the land. Carlos conjures his father’s words “if you would ask the land how are you doing? The land could answer: I am doing well if you visit me. If you will stop visiting me, then there is woe!” (ibid.). The above performances, with storytelling and dramatic play, are based on interviews with elderly Palestinians who witnessed, survived, and are resisting the impact of the 48 Nakba and the 67 War. Additionally, experimenting with Site Specific Theatre and performing in spaces that predate 1948 is revealing as the Palestinian sites themselves also have stories to tell, and in the words of Pierre Nora (1996), the ‘site of memory’ ( lieux de mémoire ) is a site of trauma, dispossession, and anger. [15] Accordingly, the chosen locals are powerful stimuli to memory. For in site-specific performances, “telling and retelling stories of our own lives and of the lives of our forebears, telling the stories official society does not want told, listening to other people’s stories are foundational acts in the creation of personal and social identity” (McAuley, 49). Thus, in the Palestinian context, the political consequences of such Nakba storytelling are immensely profound because the settler colonial project is aware of the impact of memorialising the Nakba and is unwilling to let it find its own level. On the surface, Palestinian theatre might appear to be “trapped” in the Nakba narrative. Israeli settler colonialism’s enduring systematic appropriation of land, demolishing houses, expelling people, indiscriminate detentions and imprisonment, destroying infrastructure, academic institutions, and research centres, and denying people the right to enter Jerusalem to worship in the religious sites, are all measures to make life intolerable and to drive people to seek safety and refuge elsewhere. However, as I have argued elsewhere, those biographical monodramas also reflect the oral history and collective memory of Palestinians, who use it as “a political weapon in the process of a national struggle when wars and peace agreements have proved to be ineffective. It also aims to remind, educate, politicize, and inform the public that the Zionist project is ongoing” (Nassar 2023). Site-specific stories of the already-displaced refugees in historic homes and on lands facing ethnic cleansing have become a necessity to combat whatever the future may hold for Palestinians, who simply resist just to exist. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes [1] https://www.ashtar-theatre.org/richard-ii.html . Accessed 25 March/2024 [2] I have attended the two editions of Site-Specific Theatre Festivals organized by al-Harah Theater. In the last two years I have conducted interviews with a-Harah Theatre Director -Ms. Marina Barham-, the directors, and the actors. I also had a Zoom meeting with Grid Iron Theater on.I also would like to express my gratitude to Ms. Barham’s for her assistance and for sharing the scripts used in this article. [3] Zoom meeting with Grid Iron on 16 July 2021. Details about cooperation can be found here: https://gridiron.org.uk/2023/08/03/recently-returned-from-the-bethlehem-site-specific-theatre-festival/ . Accessed 19 March 2024. [4] To read more about Dar Sabagh Diaspora Studies and Research Center, refer to https://thisweekinpalestine.com/bethlehems-dar-al-sabagh/ , and to the center’s Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/DarAlSabaghCentre/ . [5] “ The Bethlehem 2000 Project, implemented between 1997 and 2000, is one example of the exceptional initiatives that were carried out to protect heritage sites and create a more attractive destination for tourists. Its initiatives included updating the city’s infrastructure and emphasizing the significance of important cultural sites. The Center for Cultural Heritage Preservation (CCHP) is continuing this mission through its work on the rehabilitation of traditional buildings and sites. The center has restored several buildings in Bethlehem and adapted them for reuse by turning them into handcraft centers, visitor centers, and guesthouses. All these projects have helped increase Bethlehem’s appeal among both the local community and international visitors who can now better enjoy the built-up cultural heritage of Bethlehem” https://thisweekinpalestine.com/morcos-nassar-palace-bethlehem/ [6] McAuley, Gay (Published 2012) Site-specific Performance: Place, Memory and the Creative Agency of the Spectator . In The Journal of the Sydney University Arts Association. Vol. 27 (2005) 27-51. [7] The scripts and interviews -originally written in Arabic- used in this article are the property of al-Harah Theatre in Beit Jala. The translation from Arabic to English is mine. [8] Sir Alan Gordon Cunningham a fter WWII he served as high commissioner in Palestine during the last years of the British mandate , from 1945 until the proclamation of Israel in 1948. [9] Since the scripts used in this article are not published, for sake of consistency I will refer to them as “al-Harah” [10] “ With very little resistance to speak of, the mayor, accompanied by religious leaders, surrendered the city [ Nazareth] on 16 July 1948 to the Haganah officer from Canada who commanded the occupying contingent.” https://www.palestine-studies.org/en/node/41376 . [11] Stanger, Cary David. The Swedish Count of Wisborg Folke Bernadotte, was the United Nations mediator for Palestine, was assassinated in Jerusalem on September 17, 1948. “Bernadotte sought to modify the provisions of the partition plan approved by the General Assembly on November 29, 1947 in order to create more contiguous and homogeneous Arab and Jewish states within Palestine. “A Haunting Legacy: The Assassination of Count Bernadotte” Middle East Journal , Vol. 42, No. 2 (Spring, 1988), pp. 260-272. Here 260. Also refer to https://www.palestinestudies.org/en/node/38640 . [12] Kobi Cohen-Hattab (2017): The border as bridge: an Israeli perspective on the Mandelbaum Gate in divided Jerusalem (1948–1967), Middle Eastern Studies, DOI: 10.1080/00263206.2017.1318378. Mandelbaum Gate was named for Mandelbaum House, built by “family patriarch Simcha Mandelbaum in 1929. Simcha and his wife Esther Liba were Jewish dealers in thread and materials. During the years in which Jerusalem was divided (1948–1967), the location was the only official crossing point between the city’s two sections. As it was close to the house’s ruins, it was called ‘Mandel- baum Gate’. With the end of the War of Independence, a truce was signed between Israel and Jordan in Rhodes on 3 April 1949”. (Page 2) [13] “ Following the 1967 Israeli Occupation of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, the Israeli Government had unilaterally expanded the Jerusalem municipal boundary to include lands from surrounding villages and cities. Beit Jala was among the Palestinian cities that had parts of its lands expropriated to the new illegal boundary of Jerusalem; hence, 3,147 Dunums; some 22% of Beit Jala's lands were included within the Israeli defined but illegal boundary of Jerusalem” http://poica.org/2008/04/the-strangulation-of-beit-jala-city/ [14] “ The Oslo Accords divided the Palestinian West Bank into three administrative zones: Area A (18%), where the Palestinian Authority (PA) administers civil and security matters; Area B (22%), where the PA administers only civil matters; and Area C (60%) where Israel maintains full control. Area C includes all Israeli settlements and two thirds of the West Bank’s fertile agricultural land. While Area C is a continuous territory, Areas A and B are fragmented into 166 separate enclaves. In spite of the breakdown of the Oslo process, Areas A, B and C remain in force today.” https://101.visualizingpalestine.org/resources/glossary/areas-a-b-c#:~:text=The%20Oslo%20Accords%20divided%20the,where%20Israel%20maintains%20full%20control . [15] Quoted in Masalha 2012. Here, page 4 References About The Author(s) Dr. Hala Khamis Nassar is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Education, Department of Curriculum and Pedagogy, at Bethlehem University in the West Bank, Palestine. From 2017 to 2021, she served as the Assistant Vice President for Teaching and Learning and as the Director of the Center of Excellence at Bethlehem University. Dr. Nassar holds a Ph.D. in Theatre Studies (Theatrewissenschaft) from the Free University of Berlin, an M.Phil. in Stylistics and Drama, and dual B.A. and M.A. degrees in Theatre and English Literature. Between 2003 and 2016, she taught at several universities in the United States, including UC Berkeley, The Evergreen State College, Columbia University, the University of Illinois, and Yale University from (2003-2016). Her peer reviewed publications focus on Palestinian literature, culture, and theatre. She is also the co-editor of Mahmoud Darwish, Exile's Poet: Critical Essays (Interlink 2007). Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Practicing Place: Site-Specific Performance and the Reinscription of Memory in Palestine Resisting the Unleashed Evils of the US- Invasion of Iraq in Amir Al-Azraki’s The Widow (2017) Dina Mousawi’s RETURN: a Compelling site of representing Women’s Status of Agency Under Occupation Renewed Awareness Toward Salvation: The Journey of The Story of Zahra from Page to Stage Site-Specific Performance and Theatrical Memorialization of the Nakba Performance Review: WAILING SONGS OF THE PAST, MIGHT THEY GROW OUR RESILIENCE. By Maya al-Khaldi. Performance Review: DUMMY IN DIASPORA. By Esho Rasho. Performance Review: ENGLISH. Written by Sanaz Toossi Performance Review: THE CAVE. By Sadieh Rifai Performance Review: IRAQ, BUT FUNNY by Atra Asdou Performance Review: COSMOS/AWALEM by Ashtar Muallem and Emile Saba. 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Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 17 Spring 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage ARTIFICIAL HEART. By Mohammad Basha and Firas Farrah. By Marina Johnson Published: May 12, 2025 Download Article as PDF REVIEW: ARTIFICIAL HEART. By Mohammad Basha and Firas Farrah. Directed by Mohammad Basha. The Body Ensemble with the support of Al Hakawati Theatre, Jerusalem. September 9 & December 12, 2025, Marina Johnson Artificial Heart : Thinking into the Future at Al Hakawati Theatre in Jerusalem مش رح اسمحلك تقتل حالك وانا بتفرج ! ناجي ! فكرة خالك عن عالم منزوع السلاح مش حلم. السيدة الأولى, قلب صناعي "I won’t let you kill yourself while I watch! Naji, your uncle’s idea of a world without weapons wasn’t just a dream." - First Lady: Artificial Heart The sound of computerized scanning and the rumbling of bass fills the room as the lights rise on a futuristic laboratory. An anatomical scan of a human rotates on the projection screens against the upstage back wall as green coding and programming data pass along the screen. The Professor, stationed center stage, manipulates screens invisible to the audience, moving in quick, sharp gestures. He is dressed in a silver futuristic tunic, and black slacks, with wires passing over his face, prompting the question of man or cyborg. Behind him is a translucent white and silver cylindrical portal, the kind one might associate with a transportation chamber or other liminal laboratory space, and to his left and right are a couch and two chairs. This stylized beginning made my heart race; I had not seen anything like it before in Palestine and I was eager to go on a journey into the past, present, and future. Artificial Heart (قلب صناعي) was directed by Mohammad Basha and premiered on August 24th, 2024 on stage at Al Hakawati, the Palestinian National Theatre (PNT) in Jerusalem. I watched the play twice, once at Al Kasaba Theatre in Ramallah on September 9th, 2024, and again at the PNT on December 12, 2024. Artificial Heart was written and staged in Arabic, but at the performance I watched in December, supertitles were projected, and many foreigners packed the balcony of the PNT to have the best view of the stage and supertitles simultaneously. The play unfolds across three plotlines, each exploring humanity's reliance on technology and the emotional consequences of this dependence. Each vignette represents a group of people–young people who grew up with technology and use it as an innate part of their lives, an older family who have technology thrust upon them, and a government that sees an opportunity to use technology to maintain power. The storytelling goes back and forth between the three threads, creating an interwoven narrative of a world that, in many ways, eerily mirrors our own. The first thread focuses on an aging couple, Abu Omar and Um Omar, grappling with their failing robot helper. Their humorous and poignant interactions with the robot reflect a society heavily dependent on technology. The couple’s dialogue reveals their nostalgia for simpler times and highlights their desire to reconnect with family, especially their absent son, Omar. Their relationship with the robot mirrors their struggles with memory, aging, and loss, serving as a microcosm of a broader human experience overshadowed by mechanization. By the end of the play, it is revealed that their son Omar, whom they repeatedly mention waiting for, does not exist. In fact, they were not allowed to have a child by the governmental regime which deemed their genes unworthy. This eugenicist act has haunted their lives as they dream of the son they were never allowed to have. The second narrative thread focuses on Sami, a social media influencer obsessed with views and fame. His girlfriend Reema breaks up with him because he is so wrapped up in the promises of a life made easier through technology and cannot take her desire for authentic emotional connection seriously. Sami's infatuation with technological solutions leads him to acquire the robot Sasha, modeled after Reema, as a substitute girlfriend. This relationship showcases the emotional void created by prioritizing efficiency and artificial substitutes over human intimacy. Over time, Sami realizes that Sasha will never seek to connect deeply with him the way that Reema had. Sasha’s inability to return affection in an emotionally connected way is the technological limitation that causes Sami to terminate his relationship with the robot. Sami hosting a live video for his followers with Sasha in the background; Photograph by Mutaz Qawasmi; Courtesy of The Body Ensemble. In the last, and most politically charged storyline, the President collaborates with the Professor to develop a robotic version of himself to perpetuate his rule. The project involves suppressing citizens’ emotional data and memories of trauma to keep order and prevent them from becoming aware of the world's problems. As the Professor conducts lab research, the First Lady seeks him out to share revelations about her traumatic past that, unbeknownst to him, intertwines with his own. The Professor, Naji, actually is the brother of the First Lady, sharing a past as a refugee that he does not remember due to the government-mandated pills which cause people to forget and feel good. The First Lady challenges the Professor to confront his complicity in a system that trades humanity for power. At first, he begs her: Please, I’ve lived my whole life like this. I don’t want to remember. If the memories are that painful, it’s a blessing that they erased them. بترجاك ، انا عشت حياتي كلها بهاي الطريقة ، ما بدي اتذكر ، اذا الذكريات مؤلمة ، هاد بيعني انهم ساعدوني لما محوها. But, as seen in the epigraph to this review, the First Lady reminds him of the ambitions of their uncle, who aspired to see a world without weapons. While not seen explicitly in the play, there is an implication that the President is not only perpetuating his rule with technology, but that he is using the technology itself as a weapon. The Professor reveals he has been having nightmares about his past, illustrating his body’s inability to forget, even if the pills erase the details from his conscious mind. Eventually, he realizes: The idea of a world without weapons wasn’t impossible. Maybe human nature can’t give up violence, but it can avoid turning it into the biggest and most profitable trade—the trade of death. Sure, memories are painful, but no one can force what I remember and what I don’t. Revenge... revenge. How can revenge turn a person into a monster, devouring everything around them? How can we be born innocent children and learn to hate? And hate creates even greater hate! Until it drags us into a spiral, speeding us toward our end. And now, your nightmares will begin, Mr. President. فكرة عالم بدون سلاح ما كانت مستحيلة ، يمكن الطبيعة البشرية ما بتقدر تتخلى عن العنف ، لكن بتقدر ما تحوله لأكبر واربح تجارة ، تجارة الموت. صحيح الذكريات مؤلمة لكن ما حدا بقدر يجبرني شو اتذكر وشو ما اتذكر. الانتقام…. الانتقام. كيف ممكن الانتقام يحول الانسان لوحش يلتهم كل اشي حواليه ... كيف ممكن ننولد اطفال أنقياء ونتعلم نكره ؟! ، والكره يخلق فينا كره أكبر! لحد ما يوصلنا لدوامة تسحبنا وتسرع فينا لنهايتنا، وهلا رح اتبلش كوابيسك انت سيادة الرئيس. The Professor ultimately sabotages the project to reclaim his own agency. At the end of the play, the Professor accesses the project and the images projected are of wars, destruction, weapons, and the technology company, Vita’s, logo. By deleting these files, he takes his own “revenge” here against a fascist system intent on controlling citizens and keeping the arms trade on top. His actions invite the audience to question the roles of memory, morality, and resistance in our lives. These threads, interconnected by themes of loss, humanity, and the ethical dilemmas of technological advancement, collectively critique humanity's surrender to artificial solutions at the expense of emotional authenticity and moral accountability. From the moment the play began, the projections designed by Hayat Laban left me completely engrossed. Paired with Ramzi Sheikh Qassim’s lighting and scenic design and Ivan Azazian’s sound, the technological world was brought to life in a way I had yet to see on stage. The stage was spare, with few physical set pieces present, yet the design and acting filled the world, leaving nothing to be desired. I’ve had the pleasure of seeing Mohammad Basha perform as an actor on stage in plays such as لا غبار عليه ( No Dust , 2022) and صالح وبسمة ، فسيفساء القدس ( Salah and Basma: A Jerusalem Mosaic, 2023 ), so it was especially exciting to see a play that he had co-written and directed. In an interview with Basha on December 21, 2024, he was quick to tell me that, despite the fact that Artificial Heart asks how much technology “contributes to nourishing our humanity” or “stripping us of it,” creating the play would not have been possible without technology. Some of Basha’s team had to travel during the creative process, and Zoom and other online communication made collaboration across distance possible. While the play does not touch much on the utility of technology, perhaps because it is assumed that the audience already brings those experiences to the table, the goal of the play was never to vilify technology. Rather, the point of the play is to bring attention to the ways that people use technology to replace their own humanity and governments use it to target citizen populations in ways that are often unknown or unquestioned. This point was made clear through the use of double casting, as each actor took on roles that created a thought-provoking counterpoint between each character. Reem Telhami, most recently seen in the Netflix television series Mo , did not disappoint with her sophisticated depiction of a First Lady who has been thrust into a privileged position as the wife of the President but refuses to disconnect from her past as a refugee. Her demands for a better future contrasted with her portrayal of the eager and nostalgic Um Omar with grace. Firas Farrah who co-wrote the script with Basha, shined as Sami, the Professor, and the elderly parents’ robot. His journey as Sami was both funny and emotionally wrought, going from a man obsessed with how technology could improve his life to realizing that a life void of human desires and love is not the answer. His physically nuanced performance as the Professor, navigating screens both visible and invisible to the audience, stole the show. Fatima Abu Aloul played both Reema and Sasha. She was especially hilarious in her role as the robot, as she embodied a character who, despite trying to please Sami, continued to make choices that left him angry and the audience laughing. Nidal Al-Jubeh played both the President and Abu Omar, embodying two men on either side of a harmful relationship. Al-Jubeh’s stern and unflinching dedication as President to the world he is working to establish stood in stark contrast to the world of Abu Omar whose life has been left wanting due to the actions of the President. The irony of this double-casting decision allowed the audience to reflect on two men of potentially the same generation and how they have shaped, or been unable to shape, the realities around them. In a world currently saturated with conversations about artificial intelligence and the ways that different world governments use it to surveil their citizens, I expected Artificial Heart to tackle the proliferation and dangers of AI. However, after the performance I realized that “artificial” and “heart” were meant to stand in contrast with each other, asking the audience to reflect on what meaning these two words hold in our own lives. The play’s triptych format allows it to tackle its themes from multiple angles. Each story brings a unique perspective, from intimate domestic moments to larger societal commentary, creating a rich narrative experience. Artificial Heart is a dynamic and thought-provoking theatrical exploration of humanity’s evolving relationship with technology, delivering profound commentary on the collision of tradition, progress, and human fragility. References Basha, Mohammad and Firas Farrah. Artificial Heart. Unpublished script in both Arabic and English, 2024. Johnson, Marina, and Mohammad Basha. Interview about Artificial Heart . Personal, December 21, 2024. Program Note, The Body Ensemble. Artificial Heart , 2024. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes References About The Author(s) Marina Johnson is a Ph.D. candidate in TAPS at Stanford University (M.F.A in Directing, University of Iowa). Her dissertation research focuses on Palestinian performance from 2015 to the present. Johnson is the co-host of Kunafa and Shay, a MENA theatre podcast produced by HowlRound Theatre Commons, and they are also a member of Silk Road Rising’s Polycultural Institute. Johnson’s work has appeared or is forthcoming in Theatre/Practice , Arab Stages , Decolonizing Dramaturgy in a Global Context (Bloomsbury) , Milestones in Staging Contemporary Genders and Sexualities (Routledge), Women’s Innovations in Theatre, Dance, and Performance, Volume I: Performers (Bloomsbury). Prior to her Ph.D., she was a Visiting Assistant Professor at Beloit College for three years. Select recent directing credits include: The Wolves (Stanford) The Shroud Maker (International Voices Project), Shakespeare’s Sisters (Stanford), The Palestinian Youth Monologues (Stanford), Five Lesbians Eating a Quiche (Beloit College), and In the Next Room (Beloit College). www.marina-johnson.com Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents O Lord! By Ali Abdel-Nabi Al-Zaidi Mothers Challenging the Divine: Ali Al-Zaidi’s Ya Rab! The 31st Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre. September 1-11, 2024. ARTIFICIAL HEART. By Mohammad Basha and Firas Farrah. LEILI & MAJNUN. Written and directed by Torange Yeghiazarian SHAHADAT (THE TESTIMONIES) Adapted by Fouad Teymour Review: TO THE GOOD PEOPLE OF GAZA: THEATRE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE Staging Revolutions and the Many Faces of Modernism: Performing Politics in Irish and Egyptian Theatre Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 18 Winter 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Performance Review: ENGLISH. Written by Sanaz Toossi By Peyman Shams Published: December 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF Under the steady yet imaginative direction of Naghmeh Samini, Sanaz Toossi’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play English takes on a life that is both rooted in realism and lifted by metaphor. In this Seattle staging, co-produced by ArtsWest and the Seda Iranian Theatre Ensemble, the story’s intimate frame belies the breadth of its implications. The premise is deceptively simple: in 2008, in Karaj—a cosmopolitan city near Tehran—four adult students gather for a TOEFL [1] (preparation class. They come from different walks of life, each carrying personal stakes in mastering English, and are guided by their teacher, Marjan (Vahishta Vafadari), who enforces a strict “English Only” policy. While for many, learning a second language may be a path to personal growth or even a leisure pursuit, for these characters—like many English learners around the world—it is neither optional nor casual, but a vital necessity. Over six weeks of lessons, shown through a series of short blackout scenes, we watch them struggle with vocabulary, accents, and the cultural weight the English language carries. What unfolds is more than a comedy of miscommunication; it is a layered exploration of identity, belonging, and the uneasy compromises of assimilation. English by Sanaz Toossi, directed by Naghmeh Samini, co-produced by ArtsWest and Seda Iranian Theatre Ensemble. From left: Marjan (Vahishta Vafadari), Roya (Janet Hayatshahi), Elham (Shereen Khatibloo), Omid (Emon Elboudwarej), and Goli (Newsha Farahani). Photo by John McLellan. The classroom is both a literal and symbolic space, where the students’ lives intersect for a brief time, where the rules are clear, but the emotional terrain is anything but. Elham (Shereen Khatibloo), brimming with ambition and impatience, has her sights set on medical school in Australia, and passing this English test is the key to her dream. Competitive and blunt, she is visibly frustrated whenever her English falters. Goli (Newsha Farahani), just eighteen, has no specific plan; she is here simply because she loves English, loves the way it makes her feel, and trusts it will be essential for her future. Roya (Janet Hayatshahi), the eldest, has a deeply personal reason: her son in Canada insists she learn English before she can spend meaningful time with her granddaughter. Omid (Emon Elboudwarej), the only man in the class, is already nearly fluent, claiming to be brushing up for a green card interview, though his ease with the language suggests other, unspoken motivations. Presiding over them all is Marjan, who has returned to Iran after nine years in Manchester. Charismatic yet guarded, she enforces her “English Only” rule with conviction, and seems, perhaps, more devoted to the language itself than to any formal curriculum. From the moment she writes those two words— “English Only”—on the board, the play’s central tensions are set in motion. The rule is meant to immerse the students fully in the language, but it also forces them to abandon the comfort and poetry of their mother tongue. Toossi’s ingenious device removes the need for subtitles: when the characters are speaking their native Persian, the actors use fluent, everyday American English; when they are speaking “English” in class, they adopt a Persian accent, slow their delivery, stumble over grammar, and lose their eloquence. Under Samini’s direction—herself a recent immigrant to the United States—and with a cast composed mostly of Iranian-American actors, this linguistic shift is executed with precision and complete believability. The change is immediate and intuitive; the audience feels the strain of halting, accented speech and the relief of slipping back into the fluidity of one’s native language. In less skilled hands, the device might feel forced, but here it is seamless—an organic extension of the story, and a testament to both Toossi’s writing and the performers’ craft. Samini honors the realism of Toossi’s structure while layering it with visual and symbolic flourishes. Parmida Ziaei’s simple yet effective set design treats chairs as more than functional classroom props: they are stacked, suspended, and rearranged to suggest instability, aspiration, and confinement. In one especially memorable scene, this departure from stark realism—so characteristic of many Persian plays, including Samini’s own work—reaches its height. As Marjan recalls her memories of England, the classroom chairs are transformed into bus seats, making her recollection physically tangible for the audience. Throughout the production, many props are left to the imagination: a blackboard whose writing appears projected on the back wall, an invisible ball passed around in a vocabulary game, an unseen speaker playing a Ricky Martin song. Their absence draws the audience into the act of creation, inviting them to complete the world of the play in their own minds. The classroom emerges in a cold gray-blue palette: the stage opens on rows of blue-gray plastic chairs, soon occupied by characters dressed in varying shades of the same muted spectrum. Only Marjan, the teacher, breaks the monotony—her yellow clothing standing out as a visual marker of someone distinct, someone who has lived beyond the confines of this world. Chih-Hung Shao’s lighting design deepens the atmosphere, using flickering fluorescents to signal scene changes and to underscore the drabness of the setting. The light is often cool, creating a sense of distance and uncertainty, but it warms in rare, fleeting moments of connection. Alongside Shao’s work, Andi Villegas’ sound design reinforces this starkness, keeping the aural world spare and purposeful. Ziaei’s costumes ground the characters in contemporary Iranian streetwear while subtly reflecting their personalities. The play’s music is equally restrained, chosen to serve the text rather than dominate it. When Roya plays a Persian song—unspecified in the script—the selection fits her generation and taste perfectly, while also recalling the “yellow color of amber,” Marjan’s favorite, mentioned in a line of poetry within the piece. The episodic nature of the play mirrors the rhythms of a real classroom: the repetition of drills, the gradual building of trust, the small ruptures that occur when personalities clash. There is no single climactic event; instead, meaning accumulates through games, confessions, and quiet acts of defiance. Some threads are left unresolved. As in a real classroom, the characters avoid fully revealing their feelings, motivations, and secrets, yet each one follows their own personal arc throughout the show, which often remains unfinished and unresolved for the audience. The cast navigates Toossi’s linguistic landscape with precision. Vafadari’s Marjan is a portrait of contradictions—warm yet exacting, nostalgic yet pragmatic. She reveals only fragments of her past: a life in England where she went by “Mary,” [2] a version of herself she liked better, because “small sacrifices,” like anglicizing a name, “can open our world.” [3] Her insistence on an “English Only” policy is not just a teaching method but also a shield, a way of maintaining control and protecting the identity she cultivated abroad. When challenged—particularly by Elham—her calm exterior can fracture, exposing both vulnerability and the subtle prejudices absorbed from years of living under the gaze of another culture. Though she delights in the English language, in Hollywood movies, and even in “American Coca-Cola,” [4] the play never discloses why she abandoned her life in England to return to Iran. Her quiet connection with Omid remains unspoken, and her marriage is left entirely offstage. By the end, disillusioned with teaching adults—most of whom aspire to emigrate, a path she once took and then reversed—she turns instead to teaching beginner courses for children. Khatibloo’s Elham is the live wire of the class—sharp-tongued, quick to challenge, and just as quick to conceal her vulnerabilities. Her confidence bristles on the surface, but beneath it lies a deep frustration. In private, she admits she has failed the TOEFL multiple times, a moment of raw candor that reframes her bluster as a form of self-defense. Khatibloo ensures Elham never tips into caricature; her pride and her shame are equally vivid, each fueling the other. Headstrong and restless, Elham shifts constantly between combative energy and moments of visible overwhelm as she wrestles with the English language. She resents the way it makes her sound—like an idiot, as she bluntly puts it [5] —when she knows she is anything but. It’s a sentiment many immigrants, perhaps even Marjan herself, have felt: the sense that, in a new country, the language barrier obscures vast parts of who you are, stripping away wit, intelligence, and nuance until you appear diminished in the eyes of others. “I have this amazing dream sometimes that the Persian Empire kept growing,” [6] Elham confides, savoring the idea that one day American and British children might have to learn Persian to join the global conversation. But she knows it’s only a fantasy; the linguistic war has long since been won, and, as Marjan tells the class, to be success now you need to “forget your Iranian-ness.” [7] Elham does eventually manage to achieve a passing TOEFL score, but her victory is hollow. She still hates English, and her earlier conversation with Roya lingers as a warning about her future. “You’re very smart, Elham, but you’re very rude. In Farsi, you balance yourself out. But wherever you land, you’re going to have quite a hard time adjusting. Because in English, you won’t have redeeming qualities.” [8] It’s a harsh truth, and one Elham seems unwilling—or perhaps unable—to accept. Farahani’s Goli is a burst of youthful optimism. She claims to love English because it is less poetic than Farsi, but her speech betrays her: she cannot help speaking in metaphor, likening English to rice that floats rather than sinks [9] . Farahani captures the contradiction of someone who believes she is practical but is, in fact, deeply romantic. She represents a younger generation that is fascinated by Western culture and optimistically tries to adapt to it as much as possible. Although she remains a member of the class until the end, the play does not tell us whether she passes the exam or not. Hayatshahi’s Roya is the emotional anchor of the play. Her goal is simple—to be with her family—but the conditions attached to that dream make it bittersweet. In one of the most devastating scenes, she plays two voicemails from her son: one in English, clipped and formal; the other in Farsi, warm and affectionate. “Do you hear how much more soft he is in his mother tongue?” [10] she asks, revealing how language can shape not just communication, but personality, intimacy, and even love. Her English is the weakest in the class—she cannot pronounce her grandson’s name, and her progress is painfully limited to counting numbers and naming a few colors. Yet she understands perfectly the difference between “visiting” and “living” when her son uses those words to describe her visit to Canada, and that understanding cuts deep. Midway through the play, disheartened by this realization, she leaves the class, her hopes of reuniting with her son’s family quietly unraveling. Elboudwarej’s Omid is charming yet elusive. His fluency sets him apart from the rest of the class, but that same ease with the language also isolates him. He flirts lightly with Marjan, lingers after lessons, and watches English romantic comedies with her, yet a quiet guardedness keeps him from ever fully revealing himself. His presence disrupts the classroom’s balance, adding layers to Marjan’s otherwise firm authority. His true reasons for enrolling are never stated outright. As a U.S. resident, he occupies a liminal space, searching for a sense of belonging he cannot seem to find in either America or Iran. When news of his sudden marriage surfaces, it provokes Marjan’s anger, and she expels him—ostensibly because his language skills far exceed the class level, but also, perhaps, because his departure reopens wounds she has tried hard to keep closed. English resists offering a neat moral about the worth of learning the language. For Marjan, it represents self-expansion; for Roya, it is a wedge driven between generations. For Elham, it is both a path forward and a daily humiliation. For Goli, it remains a playful tool, and for Omid, a reminder of his perpetual in-betweenness. Samini allows each of these perspectives to stand on its own, resisting any impulse to elevate one over the others. In doing so, she captures the messy truth of a world in which English can be both a key and a colonizer. For some, the absence of resolution may feel like a shortcoming; for others, it will ring true to life, where many stories end mid-sentence. The final moments are among the most powerful. Marjan and Elham speak to each other in Farsi, and for the first time, the English-speaking audience is shut out. It is a small but potent reversal: a reminder of the privacy and completeness of one’s own language, and of the exclusion that comes when you do not share it. It reframes all that has come before, casting the “English Only” rule in a harsher light. English is not without its flaws. The pacing, while steady, can verge on monotony; there are stretches where the rhythm remains so uniform that the tension flattens, moments that might have been enlivened by sharper bursts of energy or, conversely, deepened by longer silences. Certain character arcs feel underdeveloped, most notably Omid’s, and the quietly suggested romance between him and Marjan, which never moves beyond hints and glances. There is also an inconsistency in the cast’s command of Persian—a detail that, while perhaps unnoticed by most, becomes particularly jarring for audience members like myself who speak the language. This is most evident in the final moments when Marjan and Elham speak in Farsi together; for me as a Persian audience member, the uneven fluency did pull focus from the emotional weight of the scene. The deliberate choice to avoid overt political commentary—beyond fleeting references to the difficulty of securing U.S. visas for Iranians—aligns with the play’s thematic emphasis on the personal and the intimate. Yet this restraint also leaves certain dramatic possibilities untapped. In a work so deeply attuned to the cultural and emotional stakes of language, one senses there is room to push further into the realities that shape those stakes. Still, these shortcomings remain minor within the larger fabric of the piece. At its core, English is about what cannot be fully translated: our humor, our tenderness, our anger, our sense of self. It is a reminder that language can open doors, but it can also leave parts of us locked away, sometimes forever. Samini’s direction is attentive to the smallest details: the way a character exhales before speaking, the flicker of recognition when a word lands just right, the slump of shoulders when meaning slips away. The ensemble works as a true unit, each performance distinct yet in harmony with the others. The design elements—set, lighting, costume, sound—are cohesive, each reinforcing the themes without overwhelming them. The symbolic flourishes never feel imposed; they grow naturally from the text, deepening its resonance. What lingers after the play ends is not a single image or line, but a web of impressions: Roya’s voice breaking as she talks about her son, Elham’s stubborn set of the jaw, Goli’s laughter spilling into the air, Omid’s easy charm masking something unsaid, Marjan’s wistful confession that she liked herself better in English. These moments accumulate into a portrait of people caught between languages, between selves, between worlds. English is, in the end, about more than the acquisition of a second language. It is about what we gain in translation and what we lose; about the selves we become in another tongue and the selves we leave behind. In Samini’s hands, it is also about the shared human desire to be understood, and the costs—emotional, cultural, personal—of achieving that understanding. This production invites us to sit in the discomfort of that exchange, to recognize the beauty and the pain of it, and to leave the theatre hearing our own language, whatever it may be, a little differently. English by Sanaz Toossi, directed by Naghmeh Samini, co-produced by ArtsWest and Seda Iranian Theatre Ensemble. From left: Goli (Newsha Farahani), Roya (Janet Hayatshahi), Elham (Shereen Khatibloo), and Omid (Emon Elboudwarej). Photo by John McLellan. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes [1] Test of English as a Foreign Language [2] Toossi, Sanaz. English . (New York, NY: Samuel French, an imprint of Concord Theatricals Corp, 2023), 29 [3] Ibid., 32 [4] Ibid., 28 [5] Ibid., 23 [6] Ibid., 51 [7] Ibid., 31 [8] Ibid., 36 [9] Ibid., 4 [10] Ibid., 44 References About The Author(s) Peyman Shams is a PhD candidate in Theatre Arts at the University of Oregon. He grew up in Iran, where he earned his BA and MA in Theatre Arts. His research centers on Middle Eastern and Iranian theatre, with a particular focus on political and social performance. His current work examines censorship and forms of resistance in theatre under authoritarian regimes. Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Practicing Place: Site-Specific Performance and the Reinscription of Memory in Palestine Resisting the Unleashed Evils of the US- Invasion of Iraq in Amir Al-Azraki’s The Widow (2017) Dina Mousawi’s RETURN: a Compelling site of representing Women’s Status of Agency Under Occupation Renewed Awareness Toward Salvation: The Journey of The Story of Zahra from Page to Stage Site-Specific Performance and Theatrical Memorialization of the Nakba Performance Review: WAILING SONGS OF THE PAST, MIGHT THEY GROW OUR RESILIENCE. By Maya al-Khaldi. Performance Review: DUMMY IN DIASPORA. By Esho Rasho. Performance Review: ENGLISH. Written by Sanaz Toossi Performance Review: THE CAVE. By Sadieh Rifai Performance Review: IRAQ, BUT FUNNY by Atra Asdou Performance Review: COSMOS/AWALEM by Ashtar Muallem and Emile Saba. Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 18 Winter 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Dina Mousawi’s RETURN: a Compelling site of representing Women’s Status of Agency Under Occupation By Hind Sabah Bilal Published: December 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF A significant wave of theatrical productions emerged in the United States and the United Kingdom, engaging with real events surrounding the conflict amid the humanitarian crisis and prolonged violence in Iraq following the US-led invasion in 2003. Drawing on personal testimony, interviews, public records and oral histories, many of these works challenged reductive narratives that justified the war. They highlighted a multiplicity of voices and underscored the importance of lived experiences in navigating the complexities of occupation and resistance. Feminist theatre in the diaspora is one form of this emerging repertoire. Since the 1990s, feminist theatre scholars and practitioners, particularly in the US and UK, have advocated for transnational feminist approaches that resist colonial stereotypes related to gender, race, and nationality. These frameworks emphasise the intersection of local and global contexts and the necessity of cross-border collaborations (Aston 2003, 8). In 2003, Elaine Aston called for a feminist perspective aimed at understanding and transforming the sociopolitical conditions shaping women's lives, one that recognises their heterogeneity (9). In their joint essay, Feminist Futures and the Possibilities of “We,” Aston and Géraldine Harris contend that despite the growing influence of utopic Post-feminism, women practitioners from different generations and locations still create compelling, politically active theatre and performance that highlight “pressing social concerns and political problems for women” in the present, expressing a collective, though nuanced, form of resistance (2006, 11-12). I argue in this article that Documentary theatre contributes to both creating politically-provocative drama and promoting a self-expressive medium that resists violence. Documentary theatre, particularly verbatim theatre, has emerged as an essential genre for artists to express resistance. However, during the 2003 Iraq War, this form of theatre often centred Western viewpoints. Plays such as David Hare’s Stuff Happens (2004) and Emily Ackerman and K.J. Sanchez’s verbatim piece ReEntry (2009) explore the reasons behind the invasion and examine the psychological impact on American soldiers. Nonetheless, these works tend to overlook or diminish Iraqi voices, resulting in a lack of representation for Iraqi experiences, especially those of women. An example of Iraqi-authored documentary theatre, however, is 9 Parts of Desire (2003) by Heather Raffo, an American Iraqi playwright. Although not strictly verbatim, the play conveys authentic truths through poetic monologues and a hybrid structure that blends personal narratives with documentary elements, based on ethnographic interviews with Iraqi women. Despite the growing body of work on documentary theatre in the USA and the UK post-9/11 and the ‘war on terror’, critical engagement with Iraqi-authored or Iraq-centred plays remains limited. This article seeks to address that gap by examining Dina Mousawi’s Return (premiered in 2012), a contemporary Iraqi verbatim theatre piece in the diaspora that centres the narratives of Iraqi women who lived through the invasion and its aftermath. I argue that Return operates as a crucial site of feminist resistance. It offers a platform for expressing feminist agency by witnessing the realities of post-war narratives as emotionally embodied, politically urgent, and culturally situated. By exposing the personal costs of global conflict and reclaiming silenced voices, Return reframes the occupation as a lived, gendered experience; one in which Iraqi women have not only survived but asserted their presence and power in the face of political, epistemological, and documentary erasure. Return . Written by Dina Mousawi and 3Fates. Directed by Poonam Brah. Designed by Alice Hoult. AV Design by Eva Auster. Photo courtesy of ©EAuster & ©3Fates/Dina Mousawi. The British Iraqi artist Mousawi created Return in collaboration with 3Fate Theatre Company and director Poonam Brah. The production draws from Mousawi’s personal experiences of growing up in Baghdad during the Iran-Iraq War and her field work trip to the SWANA region in 2011, during which she interviewed Iraqi women living in Syria, Jordan, and Iraq to ask them about what it means to live under the occupation. In this project, Mousawi acts as both a witness and an interlocutor, incorporating video diaries, interviews, emails, and social media posts into the performance. The play interrogates dominant Western media representations of Iraq and Iraqi women, reframing these narratives through a feminist and diasporic lens. Mousawi observes that “the media typically portrays the men’s stories and the Western experience of involvement in Iraq when it comes to war, power and politics” (cited in Ditmars 2012). Return responds to this representational void by foregrounding the voices of Iraqi women, inside Iraq and in diaspora, across various religious, generational and social backgrounds: voices that are often neglected or stereotyped in mainstream discourse. The play’s reception further underscores its feminist and political resonance. As Lauren Strain notes, Return presents “a complex, sensitively put together patchwork of experiences” with a particular focus on the “domestic changes” in women’s lives under occupation (Strain 2013). Similarly, Rachel Bower observes that the play “asks urgent questions that demand attention,” especially regarding the gap between official claims of liberation and the lived fears of Iraqi women. Her review affirms the play’s role in foregrounding defiance and determination, making women’s stories impossible to ignore (Bower 2012). Although Return has received some attention in theatre reviews, it has not been the subject of sustained academic analysis. This article helps fill that gap. By doing this, as Cathy Turner and Synne Behrndt assert in Dramaturgy and Performance , verbatim theatre avoids irony in favour of repositioning theatre as a socially engaged platform for public debate (2008, 194). Mousawi mobilises verbatim theatre to challenge patriarchal and imperial narratives, highlighting the resilience of women under occupation. Thus, this article marks the process relationship between theatre and reality, foregrounding the play’s construction through interviews with Iraqi women in a work of civilian journalism, political intervention, and feminist dramaturgy. The play becomes a vital performance that bridges testimonial, theatrical, and political registers, offering both an artistic and an activist intervention, specifically from the perspective of an Iraqi diasporic female playwright. Dina Mousawi and her Iraqi Heritage Mousawi is a British Iraqi actress, performer, theatre-maker and producer residing in London. She was born in Bradford, West Yorkshire, England, in 1978 to an Iraqi father and a Ukrainian mother. She remained there for six weeks before her family moved to Baghdad, Iraq, and then returned in 1986. At eight years old, Mousawi and her family fled the dangers of the Iran-Iraq war conflict, which lasted for eight years (1980 - 1988) ( Bradford Telegraph and Argus 2005). Spending the informative years of her childhood in Iraq, she still identifies Iraq as her home. Yet, she has a dual national heritage, and England is also her home (Mousawi, Personal Interview, 2023). Mousawi’s creative impulse to develop a project centred on Iraq, her country of origin, emerged from a deep sense of frustration with the dominant narratives produced in the West. While she witnesses the increase of UK-based films about Iraq, such as Green Zone (2010) and In the Valley of Elah (2007), Mousawi’s work is rooted in the desire to correct this imbalanced representation and to reclaim how agency of the Iraqi identity, especially female identity, is portrayed on stage and screen. Reflecting on her experiences in the British film industry, Mousawi recounts her disillusionment during the casting process for The Devil’s Double (2011). Although the film featured several female roles, she was overlooked for auditions and later brought in only to record background Arabic dialogue (ADR). Watching a white actress, disguised as an Iraqi woman, perform a role she herself could have embodied highlighted for her the erasure of Arab women from their own narratives. This moment provoked her sense of exclusion, not only from the industry but from stories that should have been hers to tell. These experiences, coupled with the emotional weight of witnessing her homeland, both physically devastated by war and misrepresented in Western media as well, stimulated Mousawi’s resolve to create her own work. Her writing asks urgent questions: Where are the Iraqi women in these narratives? How have war and occupation impacted their lives? How do they wish to be represented? Her project is a response to these silences, a deeply personal and political act of storytelling that places Iraqi women at the centre of their own histories (Mousawi 2021, 8). Mousawi’s RETURN to Iraq: Production and Style With the help of funding from the British Institute for the Study of Iraq (BISI) and the Arab British Centre, Mousawi collaborated with 3Fates Theatre Company to produce Return, which premiered at The Yard Theatre/ London in July 2012. Between 2012 and 2014, Return was showcased in various stages of its development, including Tara Theatre/ London 2012, The National Theatre Studio/ London 2013, Liverpool Arab Arts Festival/ Liverpool 2013, and the Aat International Theatre Festival/ Amman, Jordan 2013 (Auster 2017), and finally two sold-out shows at Rich Mix/ London in February 2014, attracting 200 people (Ditmars 2012). This piece connects an Arabic-speaking audience with the British mainstream spectators, promoting discussions with a greater understanding of life in Iraq. Skilfully shaped from interviews into a theatre performance by the British Asian female director Poonam Brah, the play “uses texts and videos to great effects” (Ibid.), projecting onto the screen some of Mousawi’s own Facebook messages to her mother from the time of her travels. It also features a diverse, all-female cast of five, that includes Mousawi, three actresses with Arabic heritage, and two British actresses. This diverse ensemble serves as a performative medium, showcasing the layered stories of Iraq’s postwar upheaval. They portray the physicality of the experience through a total of 16 named characters and one unnamed character, inspired by interviews with local Iraqi women in Iraq and migrant Iraqi women in Syria and Jordan, as well as some of the people Mousawi encountered along the way during her journey to the region. All cast members were tasked with playing multiple roles, bringing to life a spectrum of characters ranging from ordinary housewives, simple workers and students to activists, poets and political advocates for women’s rights. Some characters narrate their stories in monologues; each staged with distinct lighting and settings that highlight their resilience and the individuality of their experiences under occupation. The play gives voice to vulnerable Iraqi women who are also talented, positive, and inspired. Most importantly, it sheds light on their experiences and choices in adapting to the new changes in their lives following the invasion. Mousawi, performing the character of Dina, represents her personal journey in this theatrical project. As a character and actor, Mousawi shares her opinion on Iraq under occupation, in contrast to her nostalgic perceptions of her pre-invasion homeland. Some scenes include touching reflections on old memories of Mousawi’s mother, father, and grandmother, who is known in the play as Nana. In my interview with Mousawi (October 2023), she expressed pride in her return to Baghdad and in the theatre project, describing it as a deeply personal journey. She also spoke about her desire to teach her young son Arabic, reflecting her commitment to preserving cultural continuity. These reflections underscore the diasporic consciousness embedded in Return , where personal memory and political critique converge. Methodology In my analysis of Return, I follow a qualitative, performance-based approach, drawing primarily on the unpublished play script received through Professor Salih Mahdi Hameed, [1] who obtained the script directly from Mousawi, translated it into Arabic, and published it in 2021. Supplementary materials include my interview with Mousawi (2023), conducted via the Zoom platform, in which she described key mise-en-scène elements. Additionally, my information about the performance is derived from published production photographs, performance footage from YouTube, and the 3Fate theatre website. Published reviews by Rachel Bower and Hadani Ditmars, along with audience feedback on the 3Fate website, also inform the reception analysis. This study is framed within transnational feminist perspectives, with a particular attention to Arab feminist scholarship. The concept of agency is informed by the work of Saba Mahmood (2001, 2005), who emphasises how autonomy and resistance can be expressed through culturally embedded practices, especially within religious and social structures. Similarly, Lila Abu-Lughod (2013) critiques Western narratives that portray Muslim women as passive victims in need of saving, urging scholars to consider the specific historical and political contexts that shape Arabic/Muslim women's lives. These perspectives help situate the representation of Iraqi women in Return as contextually grounded, resisting simplistic binaries of oppression and liberation. Additionally, the analysis draws on verbatim theatre tools, recognising Return as a form of documentary performance that foregrounds real voices and lived experiences. As Peter Weiss argues (1998), documentary theatre seeks to expose political realities through aesthetic means. Stephen Bottoms (2006) further elaborates that verbatim theatre resists passive consumption by demanding critical engagement from audiences. These frameworks help assess how Return uses verbatim techniques, such as monologues, direct address and transmedia storytelling, to challenge dominant narratives and promote ethical spectatorship. The play’s representation of Iraqi women is analysed through two selected scenes out of the twenty-four available scenes. These scenes were chosen for their thematic relevance to the article’s focus on women’s agency under occupation. Due to word limit constraints, a broader analysis was not feasible, especially as each scene presents a distinct narrative that would require separate study. The selected scenes offer compelling portrayals of resilience and resistance. Rather than depicting them as passive victims, Return presents women as culturally grounded agents shaped by both tradition and the chaos of occupation. My analysis endeavours to addresses two central questions: 1. How do these representations, directed at a Western audience and written by a second-generation Iraqi woman playwright, challenge dominant portrayals of Iraqi women in Western media and culture?2. How does contemporary Iraqi diasporic theatre resist occupation through performance? The Western Gaze and the Spectacle of Liberation: The performance opens with a daring and ambivalent scene that questions women’s agency under occupation. Behind the transparent plastic curtain, the audience can see a bride being dressed by two other women who are singing a joyful traditional Iraqi wedding song. The light is dim, initially creating a mood of quiet intimacy and anticipation. However, a heartbeat begins to throb beneath the surface of the soundscape, turning the atmosphere threatening. Suddenly, the woman is pushed through the curtain; no longer a bride in ceremonial garb but bound by ropes in a visual echo of captivity. This transition violently fractures the audience’s expectation, subverting the promise of celebration with the spectacle of restraint (Mousawi, 2021, scene 1:3). Ditmars, in his review of Return , states that “this moment in Return heralds not only the beginning of a powerful piece of theatre, but also serves as a metaphor for the East/West conundrum” (Ditmars 2012). This collision of celebration and coercion reconfigures a traditionally joyful cultural ritual into a haunting spectacle of control, rendering it a terrifying embodiment of stripped feminine agency under occupation. Such imagery critiques how occupation, though often framed as liberation, distorts cultural norms and extinguishes individual freedoms. Staging this moment through the use of shadow play, plastic barriers and lighting shifts highlights the idea of perception: how cultural rituals are perceived from the outside versus how they are experienced within. The plastic curtain serves both as a veil and a screen; what lies behind it is obscured, distorted and ultimately misrepresented, echoing the Western gaze that Mousawi critiques. This moment encapsulates a broader thematic concern in Return : the paradox of ‘liberation’ under military occupation, particularly within the context of gender. The bride’s transformation into a prisoner or a captive visually challenges the rhetoric of emancipation adopted by occupying forces. Rather than empowering women, such interventions often impose new structures of control, replacing one form of oppression with another, although under the guise of progress. Leila Abu-Lughod provides a key lens through which to understand this scene. Abu-Lughod critiques the way Western media and policy often frame Muslim women as passive victims of their own culture, in need of liberation by external (often military) forces (Abu-lughod 2013). In this performance, the representation of a vulnerable bride shows the simplistic and conventional understanding of the West, which potentially serves to perpetuate societal expectations and beliefs about women as submissive individuals who are prone to victimisation by their family male members. Mousawi inverts that logic: the bride is not liberated through intervention but is rendered voiceless, immobilised and thus lacks agency. Her bondage does not originate in her cultural tradition of the marriage system, but in the violence of occupation. Thus, the play does not critique Iraqi customs, but rather the misrepresentation and manipulation of these customs by external forces. From a theatrical standpoint, the use of sound (heartbeat), lighting changes, and the plastic curtain emphasises dissonance. The heartbeat rising beneath the scene functions as a sonic marker of impending trauma, suggesting both human vulnerability and the intrusion of militarised power. Patrick Duggan examines how sound design, particularly repetitive or rhythmic elements like a heartbeat, can reveal signs of trauma. He discusses how such auditory cues can create an “affective elongation of the experience” (Duggan 2012), immersing the audience in a profound sense of upcoming violence and human vulnerability. This technique disrupts the spectators’ ability to distinguish between representation and reality, thereby intensifying the emotional impact of the performance (Ibid., 67-8). Similarly, during this moment of staging, changes in lighting can signify shifts in narrative or emotional tone, while the plastic curtain can serve as both a visual barrier that reveals and conceals. The moment the woman is pushed through the curtain is not just a visual disruption but an assault on audience expectations. We are forced to reckon with the reality that what lies beyond the ‘curtain’ of occupation is not freedom, but a reconstitution of dominated power. Moreover, this scene visually challenges Western feminist discourse regarding the homogenisation of ‘Third World women’, as argued by Chandra Mohanty who emphasises the transnational feminist attitude of acknowledging women’s cultural specificity (Mohanty 1984). By beginning with a culturally specific and intimate moment, a traditional Iraqi wedding song, the performance invites empathy and identification. The choice of a bride and the wedding setting is particularly evocative. In many cultures, including Iraqi society, the bride represents not only personal joy and familial continuity but also cultural identity and a rejoicing tradition. By invoking this deeply rooted symbolism, Mousawi creates an atmosphere of intimacy and celebration. However, that intimacy is shattered, revealing how global conflict distorts cultural practices. The ropes binding the woman’s body symbolise not tradition, but the geopolitical machinery that assumes the authority to ‘free’ her. In doing so, Mousawi exposes how the West projects oppression onto the East while simultaneously enacting its own forms of control. Furthermore, Mousawi’s transnational identity as a British Iraqi helps shape this critique. Her perspective bridges both the Western feminist and SWANA experiential frameworks, allowing her to examine the ideological contradictions embedded in interventionist narratives. This positionality enables her to challenge simplistic dichotomies, East/West, oppressed/liberated, and to centre complexity of Iraqi women’s lives under occupation. By dramatising the contrast between a bride’s traditional preparation and her sudden objectification as a prisoner, Return forces the audience to confront how ‘freedom’ is too often performed as spectacle rather than truly experienced. Resistance Through Representation: Mousawi’s Transnational Identity In Return , Mousawi stages more than a verbatim performance: she enacts a politically charged return to a homeland she knows only partially, signifying both a literal and symbolic act of agency. It represents a challenge commonly explored by second-generation migrant and diasporic theatre: the desire to reconnect with an ancestral homeland while acknowledging the privilege and distance created by life in the West. For Mousawi, this return is neither romanticised nor heroic; it is an act of responsibility and solidarity. Mousawi locates herself within a complex network of diasporic identity, political urgency and feminist ethics. Her decision to travel to Iraq during the US occupation despite her mother's concerns, both in reality and in the play, is emblematic of her commitment to first-hand witnessing. In scene 2, her character Dina firmly asserts the importance of hearing directly from local Iraqi women: Dina: I have to meet women there and interview them for my theatre project. Mum: Can’t you just interview Iraqi women living in England? Dina: No, it’s not the same thing. (Mousawi, scene 2:4) This exchange encapsulates a key element of Mousawi’s transnational feminist position in which she refuses to homogenise Iraqi women’s experiences by relying solely on diasporic voices. Instead, she confronts the physical and emotional risks of the return: “Dina: I'm not stupid, I know that it is a dangerous place and I'm taking all precautions to ensure I'm as safe as possible.” (Scene 11:12). Mousawi brings to the stage a hybrid identity that allows her to mediate between Eastern lived experience and Western modes of storytelling, crafting a counter-narrative that resists reductive tropes about Arab and Muslim women so prevalent in Western media and political discourse. In my interview with her, Mousawi emphasised: We didn’t want the audience to feel sympathetic and consider the Iraqi voices as poor women, poor Iraqis. We wanted people to feel inspired and humbled and moved in a sense of resilience. Iraqi women are resilient... Some are funny, clever, motivated, and businesswomen. We wanted to show that as well. (Oct 4, 2023) This intention is clearly realised through Return , particularly in scene 12, a powerful moment of two narratives occurring in tandem that embodies the complexity and diversity of Iraqi women’s lives. The scene is divided between two actresses performing: Nahal, a Christian mother who tears paper silently, indicating her stress as she recounts three near-death experiences of her son, and Nasreen, a Muslim woman who shares a story of love between her Christian friend, Saria, and an American soldier. As the stories unfold simultaneously from opposite sides of the stage, they interweave emotions of grief, faith, love and irony (Mousawi, 13-14). However, representations of the narrative style of this scene were far from showing victimisation or passivity. On the contrary, Nahal ends her monologue not with despair, but with spiritual resilience: “Nahal: Alhamdulillah, we left in peace...God has never left us.” (scene 12:13). Her words are not passive; they represent a form of situated agency in which faith is a mode of empowerment in a context where choices are limited. As Saba Mahmood argues, religious expression can be a legitimate form of agency rather than a sign of subjugation (Mahmood 2005). Thus, Nahal’s prayers became her means of resistance, not in a Western liberal feminist sense, but within a framework of spiritual and cultural meaning. Nasreen’s story, in contrast, highlights the limits of gender freedom within Iraqi familial structure. She admires her Christian friend’s father for supporting his daughter’s marriage to an American soldier, while lamenting her own inability to attend their wedding in Turkey because her family forbade her from traveling alone: “Nasreen: My parents were like ‘you can’t go alone’.” (scene 12:13). This juxtaposition reveals how patriarchal constraints persist in Iraq, but it also resists turning these limitations into spectacles of victimhood. Nasreen’s voice is critical and reflective; she understands her cultural context and the precautions of safety under occupation yet is not broken by it. The celebratory ending of the scene, enacted by Nahal joyfully throwing the torn pieces of paper into the air, with projected snowfall bathing the stage (13), reframes these stories not as sites of trauma, but as moments of endurance, joy and shared humanity. The structure and direction tools of Return consistently support this style of framing representations. Scenes often conclude with disruptions that prevent the audience from dwelling in pathos. This is done as actresses move and change their costumes onstage and in front of the audience in preparation for the next scene, breaking the fourth wall. Mousawi described the production process as being highly transparent and open to the audience. The set designer, Alice Malia, for example, worked on the scenes directly in front of the audience, cutting papers, hanging them on or sticking them on actors’ bodies (Author interview with Mousawi, 2023). The play’s tone frequently shifts towards humour, everyday banter or logistical transitions, drawing the audience away from sentimental consumption. These are intentional performative tactics, which move beyond empathy to reach what Diamond describes as “the pleasure of cognition” in Brecht’s theory of reception (Diamond 1988). This entails ethical spectatorship where spectators are not only emotionally moved but also critically engaged. Moreover, Mousawi’s use of transmedia elements, such as narrating her journey through the projection of her Facebook posts and emails from her travels in Iraq, inserts the diasporic experience into the real-time media consumption habits of Western audiences. This both demystifies the process of cultural return and democratises the reception of these stories, inviting spectators not to pity but to listen, connect, and understand. Conclusion: In examining Return , Mousawi offers powerful counter-narratives to externally imposed stories of liberation by centering Iraqi women’s lived experiences under the US-occupation. By interrogating the terrain of women’s agency, Mousawi’s verbatim theatre mobilises her diasporic insight to subvert the stereotype of the passive, victimised Eastern woman and instead render women as active interpreters of their own survival strategies. Mousawi’s second-generation Iraqi heritage and Western education enable her to reframe Iraqi women’s resilience through a hybrid aesthetic: she neither sentimentalises suffering nor reduces agency to Western-centric notions of emancipation. She rather reveals how agency is negotiated within and sometimes through the very cultural codes that patriarchy enforces. Through its verbatim style and transmedia elements, Return challenges dominant Western portrayals of Iraqi women by foregrounding their voices, choices and contradictions. The selected scenes demonstrate how Iraqi women assert situated agency through literacy, imagination, solidarity, and everyday resistance, while remaining embedded in complex social constraints. In this way, Return resists occupation not only through its content but through its form. It transforms theatre into a site of ethical representation, where testimony, memory and performance converge to reclaim narrative authority. Mousawi’s work becomes a transnational feminist intervention, resisting the consumption of trauma as spectacle and offering instead a textured portrayal of Iraqi women as culturally grounded subjects who act, adapt, believe, and survive within the structures of occupation and tradition. This form of situated agency reflects how power and autonomy can operate within specific socio-religious and political constraints. Return , therefore, becomes a political act of rewriting the representational structure of Arab womanhood and asserting the role of diasporic theatre in resisting occupation through storytelling. [1] Dr Hameed is a retired Iraqi scholar and professor of English drama, who is based in Iraq. I first came to know Dr Hameed as a drama professor who taught me during my graduate studies, then subsequently, as my MA thesis supervisor and as an academic referee for my PhD study at the University of Exeter, UK. He continually supports me, whether spiritually through words of praise and encouragement or academically, sharing with me ideas and plays! Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes Abu-lughod, Lila. 2013. Do Muslim Women Need Saving? Harvard University Press. Aston, E. (2003) Feminist Views on the English Stage: Women Playwrights, 1990–2000 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Studies in Modern Theatre). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511486005 Aston, E. and Harris, G. 2006. ‘Feminist Futures and the Possibilities of “We”?’, in E. Aston and G. Harris (eds) Feminist Futures? Theatre, Performance, Theory . London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, pp. 1–16. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230554948_1 Auster, Eva. 2017. ‘Return’. Eauster. https://eauster.co.uk/return . Bottoms, Stephen. 2006. ‘Putting the Document into Documentary: An Unwelcome Corrective?’ TDR (1988-) 50 (3): 56–68. Bower, Rachel. 2012 ‘Review: Return عودة’, 6 July. Available at: https://rachelbower.net/2012/07/06/review-return-%d8%b9%d9%88%d8%af%d8%a9/ “Film with local cast closes 11th festival.” Bradford Telegraph and Argus . March 1 st , 2005. https://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/7993657.film-with-local-cast-closes-11th-festival/ Diamond, Elin. 1988. ‘Brechtian Theory/ Feminist Theory: Toward a Gestic Feminist Criticism’. TDR (1988-) 32 (1): 82–94. https://doi.org/10.2307/1145871 . Ditmars, Hadani. 2012. ‘Stage Fright: Arab Spring Plays out in London’s Theater District’. Haaretz , July 27. https://www.haaretz.com/2012-07-27/ty-article/arab-spring-plays-out-in-theater/0000017f-f07a-d223-a97f-fdfff5840000 . Duggan, Patrick. 2012. ‘Mimetic Shimmering and the Performative Punctum’. In Trauma-Tragedy . Symptoms of Contemporary Performance. Manchester University Press. https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctt212165r.8 . Mahmood, Saba 2001. ‘Feminist Theory, Embodiment, and the Docile Agent: Some Reflections on the Egyptian Islamic Revival’, Cultural Anthropology , 16(2), pp. 202–236. DOI: http://www.jstor.org/stable/656537 Mahmood, Saba. 2005. Politics of Piety: The Islamic Revival and the Feminist Subject . Anthropology Online. Princeton University Press. https://www.aspresolver.com/aspresolver.asp?ANTO;1666374 . Mohanty, Chandra. 1984. ‘Under Western Eyes: Feminist Scholarship and Colonial Discourses’. Boundary 2 12/13: 333–58. https://doi.org/10.2307/302821 . Mousawi, Dina. 2021. Foreword to Return عودة, translated by Salih Mahdi Hameed al-Shukri. 1st Edition. Babil, Iraq: Dar AL-sawaf for Publishing and Printing. Return | Elliott Franks Photography . 2012. https://elliottfranks.photoshelter.com/gallery-image/Return-3rd-July-2012/G0000bkasjl49h14/I0000SFPaOCYQp9s (Accessed: 18 July 2025). Strain, Lauren . 2013. ‘Return @ Unity Theatre, Liverpool, 12 Jun’, The Skinny Independant Public Journalism [Preprint]. Available at: https://www.theskinny.co.uk/festivals/uk-festivals/festival-guide/return-unity-theatre-liverpool-12-jun (Accessed: 18 October 2025). Turner, Cathy and Behrndt, Synne . 2008. Dramaturgy and Performance . Basingstoke; New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Weiss, Peter. 1998. ‘The Material and the Models: Notes Towards a Definition of Documentary Theatre (1968)’. In Modern Theories of Drama: A Selection of Writings on Drama and Theatre 1850-1990 , edited by George W Brandt. Oxford University Press. https://doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780198711407.003.0039 . References About The Author(s) Hind Sabah Bilal is an Iraqi scholar and currently a PhD candidate in Drama at the University of Exeter, UK, funded by the Iraqi government’s HCED scholarship since 2021. Her research examines representations of women’s agency in contemporary Iraqi drama and theatre post-2003 US-led war in Iraq. Hind, who earned her MA in English Drama in 2012, has been a permanent staff lecturer in English Drama and Literature at the University of Kufa, Iraq, since 2015. She has published several papers, with a recent journal article under review in Global Performance Studies. She has actively participated in various local and international conferences and symposia, recently presenting at the IFTR 2025 conference in Cologne, Germany and the TaPRA 2025 conference at the University of Warwick, UK. Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Practicing Place: Site-Specific Performance and the Reinscription of Memory in Palestine Resisting the Unleashed Evils of the US- Invasion of Iraq in Amir Al-Azraki’s The Widow (2017) Dina Mousawi’s RETURN: a Compelling site of representing Women’s Status of Agency Under Occupation Renewed Awareness Toward Salvation: The Journey of The Story of Zahra from Page to Stage Site-Specific Performance and Theatrical Memorialization of the Nakba Performance Review: WAILING SONGS OF THE PAST, MIGHT THEY GROW OUR RESILIENCE. By Maya al-Khaldi. Performance Review: DUMMY IN DIASPORA. By Esho Rasho. Performance Review: ENGLISH. Written by Sanaz Toossi Performance Review: THE CAVE. By Sadieh Rifai Performance Review: IRAQ, BUT FUNNY by Atra Asdou Performance Review: COSMOS/AWALEM by Ashtar Muallem and Emile Saba. Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 16 Fall 2024 Volume Visit Journal Homepage An Interview with the Iraqi-born British playwright Hassan Abdulrazzak by Hadeel Abelhameed By Hadeel Abelhameed Published: November 1, 2024 Download Article as PDF ! Widget Didn’t Load Check your internet and refresh this page. If that doesn’t work, contact us. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes ! Widget Didn’t Load Check your internet and refresh this page. If that doesn’t work, contact us. References About The Author(s) ! Widget Didn’t Load Check your internet and refresh this page. If that doesn’t work, contact us. Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents An Interview with the Iraqi-born British playwright Hassan Abdulrazzak by Hadeel Abelhameed Review: GUERNICA, GAZA: VISIONS FROM THE CENTER OF THE EARTH. By Naomi Wallace and Ismail Khalidi Performance Review: The Tutor Review: OF KINGS AND CLOWNS: LEADERSHIP IN CONTEMPORARY EGYPTIAN THEATRE SINCE 1967 By Tiran Manucharyan. Review: PLAYS OF ARABIC HERITAGE. By Hannah Khalil Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 18 Winter 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Performance Review: THE CAVE. By Sadieh Rifai By Sami Ismat Published: December 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF Sadieh Rifai's world premiere of The Cave at Chicago's A Red Orchid Theatre, immediately immerses us in the fraught existence of a half-Palestinian, half-American family navigating the complexities of identity during the Gulf War, 1990. A Red Orchid, celebrated for its intimate space and unflinching approach to storytelling, becomes the ideal incubator for this narrative that grapples with cultural dissonance, the immigrant experience, mental health, and the fierce protectiveness that binds a family. Rifai draws inspiration from her upbringing and crafts a story that seeks to transport us into the heart of this family, exploring their humor and their darkness. However, The Cave wrestles with an ambition that perhaps exceeds its reach, attempting to simultaneously function as a family drama, a mental health discourse, an immigrant saga, and a commentary on the political realities of the Palestinian diaspora, all while current realities in Gaza loom large. While offering moments of profound honesty and empathy, one is ultimately left questioning whether the play fully succeeds in untangling the intricate web of identity, trauma, and belonging it bravely sets out to explore for an American audience that are highly prone to cultural misinterpretation. The play's opening act portrays the family's move from Las Vegas to Columbus, Ohio. Their move is an attempt to distance themselves from the murder of their cousin, but subtly hinting at a deeper quest for a sanctuary—a "Cave"—a motif that reverberates throughout the production. It is through this family tragedy that we are introduced to the daughters Dema (Aaliyah Montana) and Noor (Milla Liss), with the loss of their cousin Jay hanging heavy in the air. The seemingly idyllic suburban home in Columbus, Ohio, becomes a deliberate juxtaposition against the turmoil festering within the family and the larger world. This gated community, with its aggressively white American middle-class aesthetic, morphs into a microcosm of America itself, exposing the alienation experienced by immigrants – a space where promises of safety and security are subverted by the realities of prejudice, cultural disjuncture, and the ever-present specter of the Gulf War. We see such xenophobia manifest in the character of the "friendly" neighbor Gail, played with precision by Ashley Neal. Milla Liss, H. Adoni Esho, Kirsten Fitzgerald, and Aaliyah Montana in The Cave by Sadieh Rifai, produced by A Red Orchid Theatre (2025). Photo by Evan Hanover . The walls of the family’s home, metaphorically a cave, are punctuated by projections of war, news, family life, and xenophobic content. This carefully curated mixture of content begins to bleed into each other, a chaotic crescendo mirroring the escalating tensions within the family and, perhaps, the worsening mental state of the father Jamil (H. Adoni Esho). The confined theatre space ensnares us within this family’s pain and joy, haunting the living space during scene transitions. Initially piled high in the first act but gradually diminishing throughout the play, the moving boxes further underscore the overarching themes of displacement, impermanence, and the family's desperate, yet ultimately futile, attempt to find a sense of belonging. The family does not just struggle to belong to the larger environment that inherently resists them, but also extends to within the household, as we witness the family constantly bickering with each other over the simplest things, such as their food choices. At its core, The Cave meticulously examines the complex and often fractured relationships between the family members from different cultural backgrounds. Jamil, portrayed with both charisma and vulnerability by Esho, is a Palestinian father battling schizophrenia and PTSD; his paranoia is fueled by personal trauma and the rampant xenophobia that permeates America. Bonnie, played with nuanced strength by Kirsten Fitzgerald, embodies the challenges of assimilation, navigating the cultural chasm between her American identity and her husband's heritage. Dema and Noor, the daughters, played with purity and unflinching honesty by Montana and Liss, find themselves caught between these two worlds, as their struggles with identity mirror the broader challenges of belonging that plague many second-generation immigrants. Through this character depiction, Rifai is successful in following a vision of helping audiences of second-generation backgrounds see themselves in these characters. Aaliyah Montana and Milla Liss in The Cave by Sadieh Rifai, produced by A Red Orchid Theatre (2025). Photo by Evan Hanover. The Cave attempts to show Jamil grappling with a mental illness, which remains undiagnosed within the narrative. As Jamil’s condition worsens throughout the play, the audience is only left further confused about the type of mental illness and the negligence of it by other characters in the play. Bonnie (Jamil’s wife) is the only one genuinely concerned, but she is too afraid to intervene or embrace his culture as a path towards understanding his condition. Instead, Jamil's character devolves from a charismatic and caring husband and father to a paranoid patriarch desperate to overprotect his daughters, and alienating his wife Bonnie by weaponizing his cultural identity against her. On the other hand, Bonnie makes no real attempt on her end within the dramatic narrative to resolve any of this beyond showing concern around being divorced. He leans further into his Arabic and Muslim heritage, seemingly validating long-held stereotypes among Westerners. Given that Jamil is the central brown Muslim character in the play, and very few Muslim characters grace Chicago stages annually, it raises the critical question: will the predominantly white American audiences ever be offered portrayals of Muslims, Arabs, and Palestinians that transcend the harmful tropes of "threat" or "traumatized subject who becomes a threat"? Even with the sincerest intentions from the playwright, can an American audience, raised on a steady diet of prejudice against brown male bodies, truly separate a character's individual struggles from ingrained societal biases against Islam? It is this tension that defines the challenge of ethical representation, of creating characters that are both authentic and free from the weight of harmful stereotypes. This is not a critique of the playwright or the autobiographical truth behind this story that she intended to mention in the talkback. Rather, it is a question of intention versus impact on non-immigrant, non-Muslim, and non-Arab audiences. A particularly unsettling scene unfolds when Jamil, in the throes of his escalating mental health crisis, proposes that his 13-year-old daughter, Dema, that she should consider marrying Omar (Omer Abbas Salem), his younger friend from the mosque in 7-8 years’ time when she’s around 18-20 years old. Jamil emphasizes this as an opportunity for his daughter to have a husband to support her higher education and pay the bills so she can reach her potential. This moment might have been intended to illustrate the character's fractured state of mind and perhaps explore themes of cultural tradition. But instead, it stumbles into dangerous territory. While the play may not explicitly depict an arranged or forced marriage, the suggestion, particularly involving a minor, evokes historical and contemporary anxieties surrounding cultural practices, specifically within Muslim communities. Coerced child marriage is a human rights violation that exists, and although this moment is much more complex, it still feeds such anxieties, given that Dema is 13 and is being asked about marriage. Such scenes risk reinforcing the "us" versus "them" dichotomy, where the culture of the "other" is portrayed as inherently deficient. By associating Jamil's mental illness with this suggestion, the play flirts with the harmful stereotype of the "violent Muslim man", subtly reinforcing the association of mental illness with dangerous behavior. It also risks perpetuating the dehumanization of Palestinian men by Western media. At times, Rifai attempts to justify that moment by connecting it to other inappropriate moments earlier – for instance, the white Grandma marrying at 16 years old, and Dema’s aunts/uncles marrying at a young age. However, is it enough to clear a whole generation of Americans born and bred on images and stories of Muslim men being awful to women, including their own daughters? The question becomes, at what cost does one attempt to represent the complexities of mental illness when it reinforces pre-existing societal biases and stereotypes? Even if unintended, the impact of such portrayals can be far-reaching, further stigmatizing mental illness within marginalized communities and perpetuating harmful stereotypes about Muslim and Arab men. The issue is not that these things do not happen; in fact, Rifai shows us multiple flawed family members, including Uncle Neil (Guy Van Swearingen), a troubled Vietnam veteran who gives a gun to Jamil, smokes near children, and takes Dema on a motorcycle with no helmet. The issue rather stems from the flawed perceptions of Westerners and their colonial gaze that feeds the idea of Western cultural exceptionalism -- a culture that chuckles at a racist, unhinged Grandma who sexualizes the body of her 13-year-old granddaughter in an earlier scene. The two scenes are set in very different contexts, but such cultural exceptionalism that finds sexualizing a 13-year-old palatable in one context, but asking her about a future marriage horrifying in another cultural context, is quite revealing of the hypocrisy in the American cultural consciousness. The character of Omar, who is not given any proper introduction beyond “Jamil’s friend from the mosque,” is portrayed as complicit in this troubling behavior. Omar also appears as a voice, a projection, and appears physically on stage to haunt Jamil’s mind with negative thoughts towards America and his family, which can dangerously conflate Islam as a religion that radicalizes and contributes to Jamil’s worsening condition. While Rifai’s intentions are far from such a simplified worldview, and those of us who are immigrants understand very well the complexities of cultural differences, it begs the question: is the American stage ready for such raw, emotional, and culturally complex stories, and when overall representation is lacking? Additionally, xenophobic ideas populate Westerners’ minds about Muslim men plotting to marry underage girls, making the impact of this moment potentially dangerous in what it could further perpetuate. Although we witness Jamil struggle and hear a tragic monologue about his traumatized childhood in Palestine, and hear that his father had mental health struggles, are those moments sufficient to absolve him in the eyes of the average American? A Muslim woman in the audience cried and empathized with him because she had the cultural understanding, but what about the rest of the audience members? Act 2 is full of moments that expose troubling cultural discrepancies. For instance, when Jamil tries to teach Dema how to physically hurt any kids bullying her at school, a moment that culturally makes sense if you grow up under occupation and must defend yourself, but will it come across to those who do not know what that’s like and don’t possess the cultural sensitivity? While Esho does a phenomenal job with his strong stage presence and deeply felt emotions as Jamil, there did not seem to be ample time given to cultural consultancy and authenticity in the production process. For instance, the Muslim prayer was questionably done, the accent did not sound Palestinian, and the Arabic words were often incorrectly pronounced, including the word for divorce in the climactic moment “talaq” repeated three times, which legally in Islam means the marriage is irredeemable. Saying “talaq” in Arabic just means divorce, without a proper address with a signifier “inti” followed by the word “taleq” not “talak” directed at the subject (Bonnie) so it will be “inti taleq” said three times. Although this may seem a little detail but given that this is the climax of the play it is important that the intensity of it for Arabic speakers does not get diffused by simple linguistic errors. This is no fault of an actor who is neither from a Palestinian nor Muslim background, but rather stems from the confines and difficulties of producing theatre authentically in such challenging times economically, where it is often difficult to provide sufficient time and resources. Immigrant stories deserve ample support, and the Palestinian diaspora in Chicago (one of the largest Palestinian communities in the country) needs to grace the stage more often. The fact that this is Rifai’s first ever play and was produced at a reputable small sized theatre in Chicago is something to be commended and appreciated. The Cave shares a story about a traumatic childhood expressed through an ensemble of brilliant actors. The stage is a cultural battleground that shatters the family through Jamil’s paranoia, which makes him turn off light bulbs, transforming the house into a dark cave. The play demonstrates how those unprotected in an alienating and xenophobic culture cannot become real protectors for their families. Even though this play is set prior to 9/11, the racism in America is very present in the text, from the crazy extremist Christian neighbor Gail to the bullying Dema faces at school to Bonnie’s family members spewing ignorant microaggressions. The play ends with Jamil divorcing Bonnie, leaving his family in despair with a burden of raising two daughters who are dealing with the grief of their killed cousin Jay and the divorce. In a beautiful final gesture the daughters exit by descending into the home's basement, which becomes their own private cave or sanctuary, with the shadow of Jay and/or Jamil looming over the house (depending on how you interpret it). But do these artistic and creative moments clear the potential impact that this story could have on Western minds in 2025? The danger is that this ending quickly shifts focus away from the Palestinian man Jamil at a time when we need the utmost empathy, considering the genocide happening in Gaza. It is impossible to know what each American audience member interprets, but Jamil could be easily vilified and seen as yet another brown Muslim man who broke a happy American family as he leaned further into his religion and cultural identity. An unfortunate and unintended impact, but a plausible one in a country that lacks diverse representation and that primarily focuses on negative stereotypes, such as those dramatized in the play Disgraced . The Cave asks whether America is ready to embrace Arab trauma without reducing Arabs and Arab Americans to cultural threats to steer away from . Or, perhaps more accurately, how do we guard against the trap of exceptionalism, ensuring that our attempts do not simply reinforce a sense of Western superiority? The answer, it seems, lies not in avoiding difficult stories but in approaching them with humility, a critical eye, and an unwavering commitment to empathy and understanding that this production is working towards. Guy Van Swearingen and Aaliyah Montana in The Cave by Sadieh Rifai, produced by A Red Orchid Theatre (2025). Photo by Evan Hanover. Aaliyah Montana and H. Adoni Esho in The Cave by Sadieh Rifai, produced by A Red Orchid Theatre (2025). Photo by Evan Hanover. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes References About The Author(s) Sami Ismat is a Research-Practitioner in Performance & Theatre from Damascus, Syria. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor at Columbia College Chicago. His interdisciplinary artistic practice integrates performance art, devised theatre, documentary techniques, ethnographic research, filmmaking, and choreography. Across cultural institutions in Egypt, Tunisia, UAE, UK, and USA., Sami has contributed as writer, director, creator, performer, collaborator, and consultant on a variety of projects spanning across major theatres and museums to street performances and unconventional spaces. Additionally, Sami is a semi-professional soccer coach and sports administrator working nationally across the US at the adult and youth levels. Currently, he works at Edgewater Castle FC as a coach and assists in sporting operations. He also serves on the board of the foundation for the club. Sami is passionate about developing talent and creating cultural belonging through the arts and the beautiful game, globally known as football. Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Practicing Place: Site-Specific Performance and the Reinscription of Memory in Palestine Resisting the Unleashed Evils of the US- Invasion of Iraq in Amir Al-Azraki’s The Widow (2017) Dina Mousawi’s RETURN: a Compelling site of representing Women’s Status of Agency Under Occupation Renewed Awareness Toward Salvation: The Journey of The Story of Zahra from Page to Stage Site-Specific Performance and Theatrical Memorialization of the Nakba Performance Review: WAILING SONGS OF THE PAST, MIGHT THEY GROW OUR RESILIENCE. By Maya al-Khaldi. Performance Review: DUMMY IN DIASPORA. By Esho Rasho. Performance Review: ENGLISH. Written by Sanaz Toossi Performance Review: THE CAVE. By Sadieh Rifai Performance Review: IRAQ, BUT FUNNY by Atra Asdou Performance Review: COSMOS/AWALEM by Ashtar Muallem and Emile Saba. Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 18 Winter 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Performance Review: COSMOS/AWALEM by Ashtar Muallem and Emile Saba. By Malek Najjar Published: December 1, 2025 Download Article as PDF Ashtar Muallem’s Awalem/Cosmos is a one-woman performance infused with text, music, and aerial arts performance, co-written by Ashtar Muallem, and co-written and directed by Clément Dazin and Emile Saba. Muallem, who has toured the production around the world, performs the work in Arabic, English, and French. I attended this production in Portland, Oregon, at the AWOL Dance Collective, produced by BOOM Arts on Saturday, March 1 st , 2025, after attending a movement workshop with Muallem earlier that day. A self-described Jerusalemite artist who navigates life between Palestine and France, Muallem bills Awalem/Cosmos as “a one-woman theatrical performance” ( Cosmos English). In the press materials, she describes the show thus, Ashtar practices yoga, and meditation, and explores tarot reading and hypnosis on the internet. Her elastic body mirrors her dual life, between two countries, cultures, and languages, between solitude and togetherness. In a satirical manner, she presents her beliefs, inviting us to participate in a ceremony where poetry blends with humour and subjectivity merges with the universal. Through Ashtar’s art, we embark on a journey of balance, contradictions, and the beauty of interconnectedness. ( Cosmos English) The audience enters to Muallem sitting in the lotus position wearing a white blouse tied at the waist and black yoga pants on a large white cloth pooled on the stage, which also ascends high above her to the rafters. She performs several actor vocal exercises and speaks casually to the audience as they take their seats, asking if they are comfortable and whether anyone has practiced yoga or meditation. She then asks everyone to inhale and exhale together, “to get into the group’s atmosphere” (YouTube). This metaphor of “inhale, exhale” becomes central to the piece as it progresses. Muallem begins the actual performance with a Tibetan singing bowl, which she rings and circles with a mallet while laying on her side. Ashtar Muallem performs in Cosmos/Awalem by Ashtar Muallem and Emile Saba, . Directed by Clément Dazin and Emile Saba. Photo by Christophe Raynaud de Lage. She tells the audience she is neither Christian, nor Jewish, nor Muslim, nor from the East or West. “I abdicated duality and saw that the two worlds aren’t but one. Everything is one,” she states. She then begins a series of exercises with a yoga stretching strap while she speaks about the primacy of the body and the need for harmony between the body, soul, and spirit. She tells the audience of her grandmother, a religious woman who wanted Muallem to be like her, a “prayer addict” living in Jerusalem, a city of peace with a market filled with the smells of za’atar, sumac, sesame, and curry. However, despite the beauty of the city, there was a tension that convinced her at the age of eighteen to leave her country to study circus in France. She spends months in the new country, unable to speak the language until she attends a pro-Palestine rally where she hears the shouts “Free Palestine! Victory to Palestine!” There, she is asked about the history of her country and explains the 1948 War, the 1967 War, the division of Jerusalem into quarters, and the occupation zones that dictate where Palestinians are allowed to live or travel under occupation. When asked by foreigners what the solution is to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, she says: “The solution is simple. It is within us.” (YouTube) Although never mentioned, her tenure in France seemed to coincide with the COVID-19 lockdown, leaving her with a hopeless feeling that she would never be allowed to perform theatre again. She flirted with the idea of becoming a YouTube influencer but found little success. With her vanishing hope, she came to study Zen and its koan “You cannot control external circumstances. Pain is a part of life” (YouTube). She learns that everything happens for a reason and that there is a predestiny at work. Music begins, and she performs a beautifully choreographed aerial sequence as she ascends the silk and performs gravity-defying maneuvers. Suddenly, she stops, pulls out a cigarette, lights it, and smokes high above the stage floor. “Are you surprised that I’m smoking?” she asks. “I have plenty of time to burn” (YouTube). She says that her true lover, solitude, complements her as she cooks, reads, dances, and repeats affirmations in her lockdown. She realizes she is a vortex of creativity and creates rituals where she hugs and kisses herself, sometimes cradling and speaking baby talk to her own leg as she would an actual baby. She watches a tarot reader named Estelle online who always predicts correctly. She also learns to read the aura surrounding people by crossing her eyes and looking directly at them; a technique she employs on the actual audience watching the production. Ashtar Muallem performs in Cosmos/Awalem by Ashtar Muallem and Emile Saba, . Directed by Clément Dazin and Emile Saba. Photo by Christophe Raynaud de Lage. She then tells us that she finds that some people have blockages, and that men are told not to cry and they, in turn, tell their children not to cry either. To remedy this, she pulls a male audience member from the audience and leads them upstage right to a table with a chopping block and a chef knife, where they sit on a chair facing the audience. She produces a basket of onions and tells the participant to cut them until they are done. “You will cry freely and I will move freely” she says. As a mournful Arabic song plays, she dances, returns to the aerial silk, ascends, and performs a balletic dance high above the stage with unbelievable accuracy and speed. When she descends and escorts the man from the stage, she tells us how we, like the onion, are constituted of many layers, with each layer representing an identity we have assigned ourselves. “For us to access our truths,” she states, “we need to peel off these layers.” (YouTube) [1] She repeats a mantra, “Those who never cry are full of tears” (YouTube). She says she has seen too many men carrying weapons, but too few who cry. “I wonder if men let their tears fall then perhaps our world would be washed from all the wars?” she asks. She then breaks into a humorous infomercial voice as “Ashtar the Influencer,” urging audiences to purchase onions in the lobby. Her last words are “May peace be upon you. Namaste.” Muallem’s embodied performance of physical and vocal mastery, her congenial tone, her direct address, and her spiritual quandaries combine to make Cosmos/Awalem an enjoyable and thoughtful evening of performance. It is clear that she is exploring her role as an artist in the world and her life as a woman, as a Palestinian, and as a spiritual seeker in the hopes of unravelling her complicated emotions regarding the patriarchy, toxic masculinity, war, and occupation. Perhaps, instead of an onion, a more apt metaphor might be the artichoke. One may not cry while peeling an artichoke, but each layer peeled leads not to tears, but to the heart. After all is said and done, isn’t that the journey Muallem has asked us to take during this poignant evening of performance? Ashtar Muallem performs in Cosmos/Awalem by Ashtar Muallem and Emile Saba, . Directed by Clément Dazin and Emile Saba. Photo by Christophe Raynaud de Lage. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes SOURCES: Cosmos: A One-Woman Theatrical Performance, Co-written and Performed by Ashtar Muallem. Co-written and directed by Clément Dazin and Emile Saba.” ASHTAR Theatre, 11 September, 2003. Media kit. Muallem, Ashtar. “AWALEM with English sub.” YouTube, uploaded by ASHTAR Theatre 7 January, 2024. https://youtu.be/HUhNyBJnASU?si=sHnGUAGOPOKxj0Vx . [1] On this particular evening of performance, I was unexpectedly the one asked onstage to chop the onions. As I sat there cutting the onions I found myself much less interested in the task as I was in the mesmerizing aerial performance unfolding before me. References About The Author(s) Malek Najjar is a Full Professor of Theatre Arts with the University of Oregon. He holds a PhD in Theater and Performance Studies (UCLA) and his Master of Fine Arts in Directing (York University). He is the author of Middle Eastern American Theatre: Communities, Cultures and Creators and Arab American Drama, Film and Performance: A Critical Study, 1908 to the Present. He edited Heather Raffo’s Iraq Plays: The Things That Can’t Be Said and The Selected Works of Yussef El Guindi ; Four Arab American Plays: Works by Leila Buck, Jamil Khoury, Yussef El Guindi, and Lameece Issaq & Jacob Kader . He is co-editor of Until I Return: The Selected Plays of Ismail Khalidi and Mona Mansour: The Vagrant Trilogy (with Hala Baki) and Six Plays of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (with Jamil Khoury and Corey Pond). Malek has directed with Silk Road Rising, Golden Thread Productions, New Arab American Theatre Works. Malek is a performance editor for Arab Stages and a board member of the Middle East North African Theater Makers Alliance. Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Practicing Place: Site-Specific Performance and the Reinscription of Memory in Palestine Resisting the Unleashed Evils of the US- Invasion of Iraq in Amir Al-Azraki’s The Widow (2017) Dina Mousawi’s RETURN: a Compelling site of representing Women’s Status of Agency Under Occupation Renewed Awareness Toward Salvation: The Journey of The Story of Zahra from Page to Stage Site-Specific Performance and Theatrical Memorialization of the Nakba Performance Review: WAILING SONGS OF THE PAST, MIGHT THEY GROW OUR RESILIENCE. By Maya al-Khaldi. Performance Review: DUMMY IN DIASPORA. By Esho Rasho. Performance Review: ENGLISH. Written by Sanaz Toossi Performance Review: THE CAVE. By Sadieh Rifai Performance Review: IRAQ, BUT FUNNY by Atra Asdou Performance Review: COSMOS/AWALEM by Ashtar Muallem and Emile Saba. Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 15 Spring 2024 Volume Visit Journal Homepage MIDNIGHT IN CAIRO: THE DIVAS OF EGYPT'S ROARING '20S. By Raphael Cormack (REVIEW) By Suzi Elnaggar Published: June 15, 2024 Download Article as PDF Raphael Cormack’s Midnight in Cairo offers a glimmering portrait of the female stars of Egypt’s Roaring ‘20s. The book combines meticulous research and a narrative style that appeals to a broad audience, which bring to life the 'divas' of the era through detailed biographical vignettes. These stories capture the jubilant glamor of the period, showcasing the lives of these fascinating performers both on and off the stage. Midnight in Cairo has resonated with readers beyond academia, as it offers an entertaining and insightful foray into a pivotal moment in Egypt’s performance history. Cormack organizes the narrative into “a theatrical story in three acts”: Act I: Setting the Scene , which focuses on the historical performance context pre-1920s; Act II: The Leading Ladies , which provides the biographies of the key female performers; and Act III: Curtain Call , which tracks the political and social developments in Egypt from the 1950s forward, providing a brief retrospective in contrast to the earlier era (10). In the first act, Setting the Scene , which encompasses chapters one through four, Cormack provides a brief overview of Egyptian theatre and performance history up to the 1920s. By beginning with Ibn Daniel’s thirteenth-century shadow plays, Cormack pushes against the narrative that Egyptian drama began with the intrusion of European colonialism. This approach not only counters pervasive historiographic narratives but also positions Cairo of the 1920s within a broader regional performance history. Cormack vividly paints Cairo of the 1920s as a sort of cosmopolitan fever dream, suggesting, “Egypt was all over the front pages, and Cairo’s residents must have felt they were living at the centre of the world” (100). He focuses, in particular, on the vibrant nightlife and cultural scene in Ezbekiyya, a Cairene district known at that time for an abundance of dance halls, theatres, and other performance venues. Written in an engaging narrative style, this first ‘act’ of Midnight in Cairo serves as an excellent primer on performance history in Egypt; the focus on a diverse array of notable figures, writers, producers, and actors, as the narrative throughlines makes for a delightful read. In the second act of Midnight in Cairo , The Leading Ladies , which spans chapters five through eleven, Cormack explores the lives of significant female film, stage, and musical stars of 1920s Egypt through chapter-long vignettes. The biographies intersect and build on each other, with some women becoming recurring figures, background players in the others’ narratives. The chapters focus respectively on stage-actress turned journalist Rose al-Youssef, theatre troupe leader Fatima Rushdi, singer and actor Fatima Sirri, widely known songstress Oum Kalthoum, musical theatre star Mounira al-Mahdiyya, film actor Aziza Amir, and comic actor and dancer Badia Masabni. While a few men, such as Aziz Eid, feature prominently throughout, the chapters focus on the women’s groundbreaking careers and complex lives. Notably, Cormack addresses both their triumphs and challenges, a choice that is exemplified by the highlighting of Rose al-Youssef’s controversial editorial choices, use of misogynistic cartoons, and an all-male staff for her eponymous still-running magazine. Yet, her story is ultimately portrayed as a tale of triumph, as Cormack emphasizes her unlikely rise in Egyptian society, stating, “it is hard to imagine that a young girl who had turned up alone in Alexandria at the beginning of the twentieth century could possibly have started her own literary journal in Egypt if she had not found her way into the world of arts and become one of Egypt’s biggest stars” (148). Cormack extends the stories of these women into the twilight of their careers and lives in the 1950s, fulfilling the book’s core mission to “tell the history of Cairo’s nightlife through the eyes of the women who made it what it was” (321). Curtain Call , the final act, which covers chapter twelve and the conclusion, serves as a fitting denouement, opening with an anecdote of a young Edward Said visiting Badia Masabni’s establishment in 1950 to watch the famous dancer Tahiyya Carioca. Cormack leverages this happenchance encounter between Said and Carioca to chronicle Egypt’s journey from the precipice of the 1952 Revolution to the present day. In the concluding chapter, Cormack adopts a more personal tone, reflecting on feminism, contemporary Egypt, and regional cultural transformations. While providing a modern perspective, this subjective shift sometimes contrasts sharply with the detailed historical narrative he established earlier, which casts a somewhat somber tone on the ending. This discordance may feel jarring, yet it also effectively draws the reader into the ongoing dialogue about Egypt’s past and its present. In crafting nuanced portraits of the iconic ‘divas’ of the era, Cormack extends beyond drama and theatre to include music, dance, and film. He situates these arts within the broader historical, political, and cultural contexts that shaped the performers’ lives, their artistic expressions, and their legacies. Cormack enriches the narrative by interweaving tales of lesser-known figures and personal dramas, creating a rich tapestry that captures the vibrancy of the 1920s Cairo stage scene. The book touches upon fraught subjects, if too briefly, such as intercultural tensions, misogyny, blackface, and colonialism. While Cormack does not approach these critically or in-depth (as that is neither the style nor objective of the text), their inclusion serves to make Midnight in Cairo a well-rounded entry into the performance history of the region. This approach makes the book accessible and informative, appealing to a general audience as well as theatre students and scholars from other disciplines, such as historians and literary scholars who focus on Egypt or the Middle East. However, performance and theatre scholars will also find much of interest within the text as Cormack gives a glimpse into oft-overlooked pre-1950s Egyptian drama, music, and dance. Cormack’s use of archival photographs and excerpts from interviews and the writings of the stars themselves adds authenticity and depth, showcasing the era’s glamour and the significant, yet often overlooked, contributions of these women. Cormack’s Midnight in Cairo is a love letter to a bygone era of Egyptian glitz and glamour. Bringing to light some of Egypt’s most fascinating female figures, often marginalized in narratives that typically focus on Western perspectives, the text makes these women both legible and truly dazzling. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes References About The Author(s) Suzi Elnaggar is an Egyptian-American performance scholar, freelance dramaturg, and theatre-maker. She was a 2021 Kennedy Center Dramaturgy Intensive Fellow and works as both a developmental and production dramaturg. She is pursuing an Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Theatre and Drama and MENA Studies at Northwestern University. She holds an M.A. in Theatre Studies from Baylor University, where she researched the work of Heather Raffo through the lens of trauma studies. She has been published in Asian Theatre Journal , Arab Stages , and Theatre Times . Her research interests include recontextualizing Greek tragedy, post-colonial theatre contexts, decoloniality in performance, theatre of social change, the intersection of trauma and performance, and work that centers around SWA/MENA (Southwest Asian/Middle Eastern and North African) experiences. Her scholarship and practice center community, collaboration, and context. Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Carving a Path: Desiring-Production in Displaced Syrian Theatre Interview with Nasser Rahmaninejad by Babak Rahimi Arab American Drama: Five Books that Inspired My Journey Five Arab American Plays Everyone Should Read MIDNIGHT IN CAIRO: THE DIVAS OF EGYPT'S ROARING '20S. By Raphael Cormack (REVIEW) Previous Next Attribution:

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 15 Spring 2024 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Arab American Drama: Five Books that Inspired My Journey By Malek Najjar Published: June 15, 2024 Download Article as PDF Photo courtesy of Malek Najjar When asked by Arab Stages Book Review Editor George Potter about five books that shaped my thinking about Arab American drama, I immediately thought about the fact that there were no full-length books available about the genre when I began my doctoral dissertation on the topic. As a matter of fact, the very reason I focused my attention upon this bourgeoning theatre form was because of the paucity of information available up to that time. We must remember that, although the first Arab American play, Ameen F. Rihani’s Wajdah , was written in 1909, prior to that point, the entire history of Arab American drama consisted of one-off productions and publications. Like other immigrant communities, our theatre was not considered legitimate because it had no major playwrights with large bodies of work, it had no Broadway productions, it had no anthologies of plays, and it had no major prizes associated with it. Instead, Arab Americans have been creating theatre independently, and with little or no means of production, since the first recorded Arab American theatrical group, the Syrian Youth Society, staged the play Andromak in 1896.(1) The early plays by Kahlil Gibran, Mikhail Naimy, and Ameen F. Rihani were published in Arab American newspapers, but were never staged in their lifetimes. This might have prompted Edward W. Said to lament to Gregory Orfalea that, in terms of Arab Americans having any influence on the dominant culture, “the Arab American simply plays a very tiny, marginal, unimportant role.”(2) Said’s words rang true in his lifetime, but the burgeoning of this artform over the past decades has proven that this situation has changed over time. No serious discussion of Arab American history, arts, or letters can begin without mentioning Edward W. Said’s seminal work. Even though his book Orientalism is, of course, a masterwork, his essays “The Arab Portrayed,” which appeared in the 1970 book The Arab-Israeli Confrontation of June 1967: An Arab Perspective , edited by the late Ibrahim Abu-Lughod, and his “Preface to the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Volume” of Orientalism were the foundation for my study of Arab American drama. In “The Arab Portrayed,” Said crystalized the very notions I had been wrestling with my entire life as an Arab American as I watched Arabs being perniciously misrepresented in films by filmmakers like Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, Robert Zemeckis, and John Frankenheimer (to name only a few). In the films I watched by these directors, Arabs were always portrayed as evil, violent, terroristic, stupid, sex-crazed, and sadistic. This contrasted greatly from the films I grew up watching at home starring Omar Sharif, Fairuz, Farid Al Atrash, Faten Hamamah, and others. The Arabs I knew watching my parents’ VHS tapes sang, danced, played musical instruments, loved, laughed, cried, and mourned. By contrast, the Arabs in the movie theatres were Nazi collaborators, ruthless terrorists, vile letches, and scimitar-wielding villains worthy only of a brutal death. Said’s essay begins with the two offensive caricatures of Arabs he encountered: the stupid and offensive Arab with their hands above their heads in a gesture of surrender, or the treacherous, sex-mad Arab intent on violating Western women and killing Western men. Said attributes these to British and French colonialist writings and the June 1967 Arab-Israeli War coverage, which pitted white Europeans facing off against a horde of native savages. He wrote, “As an intelligible unit in the mind, the Arab has been reduced to pure antagonism to Israel. The sheer mass of his numbers—against which, it seems, any injustice counts for very little—has been abstracted into unitary order, the better to deal with the uncomfortable moral demands his history and actuality might make.”(3) He continues by stating that the sympathy one might feel for Africans or Vietnamese, Balkan nationals or Irish nationalists, simply cannot be extended to the Palestinian Arabs. “In the mind’s syntax, then, the Arab, if thought of singly, is a creature without dimension. His history is obscure, for it is written neither in terms of institutions the Americans can recognize nor in a language he can read… What is most telling about Western consciousness of the Arab is how few ordinary categories of human existence seem applicable to him. Suffering and injustice, it seems, can never be his lot.”(4) Said critiques scholars such as I.F. Stone, Theodore Draper, Joel Carmichael, Michael Walzer and Martin Peretz. In works like these, Said, states, “It is no accident, I think, that in America the representation of the Arab in accounts of the modern Near East relies so heavily on a simple, though to my mind seriously defective and malicious, conception of fact.”(5) Said also blames “regional studies” programs that also diminish Arabs into factual statistics, rigid categories, and psychological conditions. Said ends his essay with the following notice: “There are signs, however, that with much of the Third World, the Arab has now fully recognized this as his predicament: he is demanding of the West, and of Israel, the right to reoccupy his place in history and actuality.”(6) In his “Preface to the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition” of Orientalism , Said, speaks both of his advancing age and “diminutions in expectations,” and his faith in emancipation and enlightenment. He wrote, “My argument is that history is made by men and women, just as it can also be unmade and rewritten, always with various silences and elisions, always with shapes imposed and disfigurements tolerated, so that ‘our’ East, ‘our’ Orient becomes ‘ours’ to possess and direct.”(7) This radical notion of unmaking history and rewriting it melded perfectly with what I observed in Arab American dramas that recast and restaged the Middle East from our Arab American point of view, not the point of view of those outside of our community who wished to distort and misrepresent us. Given the horrors of the American invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan at the time, Said’s essay was a reminder that, for as much progress as we have made in this country, we were still basically viewed the same by the hegemonic powers that governed our nation. Said also wrote, “Therefore, it would seem to be a vital necessity for independent intellectuals always to provide alternative models to the reductively simplifying and confining ones, based on mutual hostility, that have prevailed in the Middle East and elsewhere for so long.”(8) The plays and playwrights I read, studied, and witnessed, were the ones subverting stereotypes by providing the American theatre with fully dimensional Arab and Arab American characters who were not, by any means, perfect, but were just as fallible and wonderful as any humans might be. That humanism is what Said valued most in his essay when he wrote, “humanism is the only, and I would go so far as to say, the final resistance we have against the inhuman practices and injustices that disfigure human history.”(9) That was what I saw in these plays—resistance against the inhumane films major filmmakers created that disfigured our Arab and Arab American histories. In my desire to piece together this lost history, I turned not to books but to essays. The first important essay I found was by Ala Fa’ik, titled “Issues of Identity: In Theater of Immigrant Community” found in Ernest N. McCarus’s book The Development of Arab American Identity (1994). Here, Fa’ik explores how Arab American theatre has shaped the identity of Arab Americans. He examines “theater of different types: plays in Arabic by and for Arab-Americans, bilingual productions for wider audiences of both Arab-Americans and non-Arab-Americans, and professional productions in English for the general U.S. public.” (10) For Fa’ik, the roots of Arab American theatre grew from Arab communities grappling with how to preserve their cultural heritage, such as the plays that were staged by the early Arab American immigrants. Although he cites the fact that there were some Arab American theatre troupes that preceded the 1970s, in this essay Fa’ik focuses upon the plays produced in the 1970s and the 1980s. He cites that Arab Americans came to the United States for many reasons: the pursuit of a better life and the flight from political persecution and war. Arab immigrants who settled in larger U.S. cities, therefore, also fulfilled the cultural needs of these communities by creating cultural and entertainment events. The amateur groups, mainly concentrated in urban centers like Detroit, Chicago, San Diego, and Los Angeles, presented plays in Arabic with various Arabic dialects, but in Fa’ik’s opinion, despite the commercial success these productions achieved, they were artistically lacking. Some of the plays which dramatized life in the United States were based on assumptions and misunderstandings which, in Fa’ik’s opinion, “perpetuates ignorance and misinformation.” (11) Fa’ik’s article introduced me to the various amateur theatre groups that had been creating theatre of all sorts: political plays, social commentary plays, social justice plays, children’s theatre, and his own playwriting. In his summary he wrote, A study of the Arab-American theatrical movement does not reveal a high literary and artistically enduring quality right now, but it mostly does reveal attitudes, values, ideals, and aspirations of immigrants developing a community. It brings to light a new dimension to understanding the growth and development of the self-identity of an immigrant community in the United States. As a theater practitioner and scholar, I find the movement of evolving cultural character material of great value to be recorded and studied further… Arab-Americans in their developing theater are bringing their past and their values to the U.S. culture of which they are now a part while at the same time they struggle to maintain their own identity and to define for themselves what that identity is. To be an Arab-American, say these plays, is to be both Arab and American and, for the time being at least, to be neither. (12) Fa’ik’s essay provided a template for me, as an Arab American scholar and practitioner myself, for how to move forward in the discussion of these disparate works of art created by this vibrant artistic community. Unlike Fa’ik, I was writing in a time when there was a larger body of works by extremely accomplished playwrights like Betty Shamieh, Yussef El Guindi, Leila Buck, and Jamil Khoury. What was most exciting for me was recording the progression of Arab American theatre from the chamber plays of Gibran, Naimy, and Rihani, to the semi-professional work of S.K. Hershewe, to the amateur productions of the playwrights Husam Zoro, Hammam Shafie, and Fareed Al-Oboudi. What was also evident was the reflection of these works on the various “waves” of Arab American immigration from the early first-generation Syrian-Lebanese playwrights, to the plays of the first-generation playwrights in the 1970s and 1980s, to the second-generation Arab American plays of the 1990s and 2000s. I saw a longer trajectory of Arab American plays that was overlooked by Fa’ik, and one I wanted to explore in greater depth with my book-length project. Another important essay that was published by Dalia Basiouny and Marvin Carlson titled “Current Trends in Arab-American Performance,” was published in the 2009 edited volume Performance, Exile and ‘America’ , edited by Silvija Jestrovic and Yana Meerzon. The essay begins with the history of Arab migration to the United States, the development of distinct immigrant communities, and the early theatre offerings they presented. The essay then turns to the post-9/11 situation and Arab American artists’ response to negative media portrayals, the wars in Iraq, Palestine, and Afghanistan, and the need to express hybrid identities. They note that the majority of the artists creating work during this time were women, saying: “Thus, even on this most basic level, current Arab-American theatre and performance is working to present a more accurate picture of Arab-American culture by contradicting the standard Western stereotype, according to which Arab women are widely if not universally oppressed and not allowed any voice or outlet for expression within Arabic culture.” (13) The article discusses several Arab American artists and groups including Yussef El Guindi, NIBRAS, and the Arab-American Comedy Festival, but the focus is primarily on women artists including Faiza Shereen, Etel Adnan, Heather Raffo, Betty Shamieh, Leila Buck, Elmaz Abi Nader, Soha Al Jurf, Rania Khalil, Kathryn Haddad, Lena Rizkallah, and Maysoon Zayid. “The majority of the plays and performances of these artists deal in one way or another with the negotiations of being Arab in America today,” they write. (14) The authors examine plays like Shamieh’s Roar, Khalil’s Flag Piece , Rizkallah’s Layla’s Sahra , and Haddad’s With Love from Ramallah . They also focus attention on female solo performances such as Al Jurf’s Pressing Beyond In Between , Buck’s ISite , Abi Nader’s Country of My Origin , and Raffo’s Nine Parts of Desire as works of “autobiographical solo performances.” They define this genre as, “a particularly popular medium for women theatre and performance artists, particularly for the exploration of the forces that encourage or discourage the formation of identity.” (15) They conclude the article by stating that these varied performances are making a significant contribution to American theatre, utilizing theatre to explore the tensions and identity formations of the Arab American community in the United States. “Their work has a therapeutic and educative dimension for themselves and their community,” they write, “but it has even more widespread therapeutic and educative work to do in the American culture within which it is created.” (16) This final statement is one that landed most with me as I immersed myself in Arab American theatre and performance. While first-generation Arab audiences are drawn predominantly to plays and performances in Arabic that primarily feature humor and music, such as the works of Dearborn theatre makers Najee Mondalek’s AJYAL Theatrical Group , second-generation Arab Americans gravitate more toward the English-language productions of these second-and-third generation playwrights and performers of Arab descent. However, the largest audiences for Arab American plays and performers are actually non-Arabs. For them the plays are translations of the Arab experiences through the lens of Americans of Arab descent. That speaks directly to what Basiouny and Carlson refer to as the “therapeutic and educative work” in the American culture. Another important scholar, Jack G. Shaheen, provided two major resources for my understanding about Arab and Arab American representation in his books Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People and Guilty: Hollywood’s Verdict on Arabs after 9/11. Shaheen was a vociferous advocate for Arab and Arab American representation, especially when it came to Hollywood filmmaking. In his seminal book Reel Bad Arabs , he critiques nine-hundred films by major Hollywood directors, screenwriters, and producers that malign and misrepresent Arabs and Arab Americans. The introduction to this incredible study focuses on what Shaheen called “The New Anti-Semitism.” He explains, “I call it ‘new’ not because stereotypical screen Arabs are new (they aren’t) or because anti-Semitism against Jews is dead (it isn’t). I use the word ‘new’ because many of the anti-Semitic films directed against Arabs were released in the last third of the twentieth century, at a time when Hollywood was steadily and increasingly eliminating stereotypical portraits of other groups.” (17) For Shaheen, malicious stereotypical portrayal of Arabs on screen was not just an aesthetic matter—it had real-world implications in the way Arabs were treated in society and in world affairs. What I appreciated most was that Shaheen was not calling for a blanket approach that would only praise Arabs onscreen. To the contrary. He wrote, “I am not saying an Arab should never be portrayed as the villain. What I am saying is that almost all Hollywood depictions of Arabs are bad ones. This is a grave injustice. Repetitious and negative images of the reel Arab literally sustain adverse portraits across generations. The fact is that for more than a century, producers have tarred an entire group of people with the same sinister brush.” (18) He breaks down the categories of the “reel” Hollywood Arabs into villains, sheiks, maidens, Egyptians, Palestinians, and gratuitous scenes and slurs. Like Said before him, Shaheen traces the beginnings of the pernicious stereotypes of Arabs in the media to the conflict between Israel and the Arab countries dating back to the late 1940s. The anti-Arab sentiment only grew over the successive decades and, by the time he wrote the book Guilty: Hollywood’s Verdict on Arabs after 9/11 , Shaheen writes, “Today, the stereotype’s power to inflict damage on innocent people is much greater than before 9/11. During times of armed conflict, stereotyping meets the least resistance; its mendacity most convincingly masquerades as truth, and it is most vigorously defended and justified as truth. Arabs have been so demonized that it has become impossible for some world citizens to believe they are real people; they are perceived only as the enemy, as terrorists, as the ‘other.’” (19) In that book, he also challenges other stereotypes such as “Arab=Muslim”, Post-9/11 images, “Reel Bad Omnipresent Arabs”, and “Reel Political Implications.” He likens these films to the German propaganda of the 1930s, furthering governmental strategies to enforce stereotypes in an attempt to influence foreign policies. One of the most impactful chapters in this book is one titled “Real Solutions” whereby Shaheen calls upon us in the Arab American community to eradicate these stereotypes by breaking into the industry and becoming a key part of the production of these films, to major and excel in media studies, and to learn more about Arab American plays, to create documentaries that focus on Arab lives, and to hold an “Arab American Entertainment Summit” where creatives can gather to “recognize, contest, and correct images of the reel evil ‘others’” of Hollywood films. (20) Shaheen ends this book on a hopeful note, stating: “Change will come—one summit, one college film course, one character, one movie, one TV show, and one courageous imagemaker at a time… Keep the faith: New films will lead the way, illustrating that regardless of color, creed, or culture, we are bound together.”(21) Shaheen’s optimism inspired me, yet, after struggling as an out-of-work director in Los Angeles for years, I must say that my own experience proved otherwise. I hope this brief essay about the scholars and essays that shaped my understanding about Arab American theatre, film, and performances has been helpful. All our scholarship lies on the shoulders of those Arab Americans before us who took the time and effort to document the important and creative work artists in our community have been creating for over a century. Scholars like Edward. W. Said, Ala Fa’ik, Marvin Carlson, Dalia Basiouny, and Jack G. Shaheen are but a few of those who have guided my path as I’ve attempted to analyze, understand, and disseminate the works of these extraordinary individuals. Over time, I’ve had the opportunity to publish manuscripts, anthologies, journal articles, and play reviews as well as teach classes and direct plays to educate and enlighten others to the powerful and impactful work that is consistently produced in this country. Other incredible scholars are now adding to the understanding of Arab American theatre including Roaa Ali, Evelyn Alsultany, Dina Amin, Hala Baki, Waleed F. Mahdi, Somaya Sami Sabry, and others. Before I wrote my book, someone asked me “is there such a thing as Arab American drama?” My hope is that our collective works can prove once and for all that this question is ridiculous. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes 1. Michael W. Suleiman, The Arab-American Experience in the United States and Canada: a Classified, Annotated Bibliography (Ann Arbor, MI: Pierian Press), 488. 2. Quoted in Gregory Orfalea, The Arab Americans: A History (Northampton, MA: Olive Branch Press), 175. 3.Edward W. Said, “The Arab Portrayed,” in The Arab-Israeli Confrontation of 1967: An Arab Perspective . ed. 1970. Ibrahim Abu-Lughod (Evanston: Northwestern University Press), 3. 4. Said, “The Arab Portrayed,” 4. 5. Said, “The Arab Portrayed,”, 8. 6. Said, “The Arab Portrayed,”9. 7. Edward W. Said, “Preface to the Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Edition,” in Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, 2003), xviii. 8. Said, “Preface,” xxiv. 9. Said, “Preface,” xxix. 10. Ala Fa’ik, “Issues of Identity: In Theater of Immigrant Community” in The Development of Arab-American Identity, ed. Ernest McCarus (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994), 107. 11. Fa’ik, “Issues of Identity,” 111. 12. Fa’ik, “Issues of Identity,” 117-118. 13. Dalia Basiouny and Marvin Carlson, “Current Trends in Arab-American Performance,” in Performance, Exile and ‘America’, ed. Silvija Jestrovic and Yana Meerzon (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), 209-210. 14. Basiouny and Carlson, “Current Trends,” 211. 15. Basiouny and Carlson, “Current Trends,”213. 16. Basiouny and Carlson, “Current Trends,” “Current Trends,”219. 17. Jack G. Shaheen, Reel Bad Arabs: How Hollywood Vilifies a People (New York: Olive Branch Press), 6. 18. Shaheen, Reel Bad Arabs , 11. 19. Jack G. Shaheen, Guilty: Hollywood’s Verdict on Arabs after 9/11 (Northampton: Olive Branch Press), XII. 20. Shaheen, Reel Bad Arabs , 77. 21. Shaheen, Reel Bad Arabs , 89 References About The Author(s) Malek Najjar is a Professor of Theatre Arts with the University of Oregon. He is the author of Middle Eastern American Theatre: Communities, Cultures and Creators and Arab American Drama, Film and Performance: A Critical Study, 1908 to the Present. He edited Heather Raffo’s Iraq Plays: The Things That Can’t Be Said, The Selected Works of Yussef El Guindi , and Four Arab American Plays: Works by Leila Buck, Jamil Khoury, Yussef El Guindi, and Lameece Issaq & Jacob Kader . He is co-editor of Mona Mansour: The Vagrant Trilogy (with Hala Baki) and Six Plays of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (with Jamil Khoury and Corey Pond). He has directed mainstage productions with Silk Road Rising, Golden Thread Productions, and New Arab American Theatre Works. Malek is currently working with Hala Baki on the edited volume The Selected Plays of Ismail Khalidi . Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents Carving a Path: Desiring-Production in Displaced Syrian Theatre Interview with Nasser Rahmaninejad by Babak Rahimi Arab American Drama: Five Books that Inspired My Journey Five Arab American Plays Everyone Should Read MIDNIGHT IN CAIRO: THE DIVAS OF EGYPT'S ROARING '20S. By Raphael Cormack (REVIEW) Previous Next Attribution:

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 17 Spring 2025 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Staging Revolutions and the Many Faces of Modernism: Performing Politics in Irish and Egyptian Theatre By Tiran Manucharya Published: May 12, 2025 Download Article as PDF Staging Revolutions and the Many Faces of Modernism: Performing Politics in Irish and Egyptian Theatre . By Amina ElHalawani. London and New York: Routledge, 2024; pp. 170 + x. Reviewed by Tiran Manucharyan Amina ElHalawani’s monograph Staging Revolutions and the Many Faces of Modernism: Performing Politics in Irish and Egyptian Theatre is a detailed study of the transformative potential of theatre in the political development of a country through the examples of intersections between theatre and politics in Egyptian and Irish contexts. Clearly, an essential inspiration for the author is the unique place of the play Waiting for Godot (1952) by the Irish-born playwright Samuel Beckett (1906-1959) in Egyptian theatre tradition. A notable example of Beckett’s influence in Egypt is the frequent comparison, including by ElHalawani, of one of the country’s most influential plays, The Farfurs (1964, Al-Farafir ) by Yusuf Idris (1927-1991), with Beckett’s masterpiece. References to Beckettian characters and scenes are abundant in the work of many of Idris’s compatriots of his time, some of whose work is incorporated into ElHalawani’s study. Today, too, Beckett’s work continues to speak to issues within Egyptian society, evidenced by the periodic revisits to his plays on Egyptian stages. The 2015 production of Waiting for Godot , directed by Ahmed Sobhi, or the 2024 production of Endgame (1957), directed by El-Saeed Qabil, both on the stage of Cairo’s E-Taliaa Theatre, are only a couple of such examples. This significant and ongoing influence of Beckett on Egyptian theatre indicates that the topic of ElHalawani’s monograph has the potential to make a timely and pertinent contribution to the study of Egyptian theatre. ElHalawani’s take on Beckett’s work is in line with the almost canonized perception of it among Egyptian playwrights and directors, interpreting Waiting for Godot as a play that turns theatre into “the arena in which rebellion is not only suggested but performed” (90). In this stance, the author is inspired by the highly prominent Egyptian playwright Tawfiq al-Hakim’s (1898-1987) experiments with the Theatre of the Absurd, in which life is depicted “as constant struggle” (75), and Michael Y. Bennett’s reading of Waiting for Godot as “a recast myth of Sisyphus” (76). Building on this standpoint, ElHalawani’s book narrates a convincing history of direct and indirect dialogue between the Irish and Egyptian theatres of rebellion. The monograph incorporates comparative analyses of the work of a handful of Egyptian and Irish playwrights. Egyptian theatre is represented with plays by Tawfiq al-Hakim, Mikhail Roman (1924-1973), Yusuf Idris, and Salah Abdul-Saboor (1931-1981), and Irish theatre with those by Brian Friel (1929-2015), Frank McGuinness (b. 1953), Christina Reid (1942-2015), and Samuel Beckett. Given the significant development and influence of Beckett’s work beyond Irish shores, the inclusion of his work in the scope of a book, which discusses specific national theatres, with a stress on the word ‘national’, is a bold decision by ElHalawani. Yet this is well argued: it is an attempt “to complicate the relation between the centre and periphery exactly through such ambiguous figures [i.e. Beckett and William Butler Yeats (1865-1939)]” (11). The study strongly emphasises the belief in theatre’s potential to “effect change” (5). As ElHalawani clarifies, her book “presents a gesture of reading global modernist texts in local contexts, which gives way to new approaches of understanding complex moments of social change entangled within global histories of colonialism and decolonization” (12). The book opens with the story of the Irish playwright and theatre manager Lady Augusta Gregory’s (1852-1932) visit to Cairo, and her acquaintance with and admiration for the Egyptian nationalist Ahmed ʿUrabi, the leader of the 1879-1882 revolt in Egypt against the political leadership of Egypt and British and French control of the country. As the author states, Lady Gregory and Yeats’ project of national theatre has been inspirational for similar endeavors among Egyptian cultural practitioners. In her introduction, the author specifically mentions the most prominent examples of such attempts in Egyptian theatre, undertaken by al-Hakim and Idris. She highlights al-Hakim’s emphasis on how indigenous Egyptian cultural forms were redefined by modernist cultural movements of the time. At almost fifty pages, Chapter One is the longest chapter of the book and makes up one third of it. Such length is necessary to provide the reader with the socio-political context to justify the comparative discussion of Irish and Egyptian theatres. Here, ElHalawani elaborates further on the development of cultural nationalism in Irish cultural production and Yeats’ involvement in it. The author stresses the difference between colonialist nationalism, which looks at “local cultures [of those colonized] as unworthy, primitive and backward”, and the nationalism of liberation movements, which attempt “to reassert themselves and the right of their nations to self-government” (23). In her analyses, ElHalawani incorporates references to and discussions of a wide range of examples from Egyptian and Irish literature, music, and theatre, placing the developments in theatre within the framework of the wider socio-political context and trends in the cultural production of the two nations. Among others, one of the most interesting sections in this chapter is that concerned with the involvement of women practitioners in the theatre scenes in Egypt and Ireland. The section starts by reflecting on the Egyptian playwright and director Laila Soliman’s (b. 1981) 2016 play Zig Zag , which returns to the attack carried out by the British army on an Egyptian village called Nazlit al-Shubak in 1919 and to the stories of the women raped by British soldiers during this attack. ElHalawani interrogates the absence of these women’s stories from Egyptian nationalist discourse—and their availability only in the archives of the British Foreign Office—as underscoring “issues of women’s rights and citizenship” (39). The author draws a parallel with the Irish director and playwright Louise Lowe’s 2011 play Laundry which revisits the infamous Magdalene Laundries, focusing on “the violence and oppression the women and children [in them] went through not only at the hands of the British Empire but even more painfully under the rule of the Irish Free State” (39). As she suggests, the disappearance of women’s narratives and names from the canonical narratives in history “brings to the forefront the question of the missing female names from the theatre canon itself” (41). The next three chapters analyze the key texts chosen by the author for her study. Chapter Three focuses on Beckett’s Waiting for Godot , al-Hakim’s Fate of a Cockroach (1965, Masir Sursar ) and Roman’s The New Arrival (1965, Al-Wafid ). Through this selection of plays, the author aims to investigate the Egyptian playwrights’ interpretation of Beckettian absurdist tradition. According to ElHalawani, the Egyptian writers approached the Theatre of the Absurd as a mode that allowed them to perform rebellion in an era of gradually growing disillusionment during the 1960s, which contrasted to the atmosphere of euphoria and hope that the 1952 revolution brought to Egypt in the previous decade. The overarching argument that ElHalawani develops is that the shared “sense of despair in an existing world order” in these plays does not equate to “a despair in life itself” and does not deny “the possibility for man to give it new form.” Moreover, according to ElHalawani, interpreting them as performances of rebellion inside the theatre suggests that “a sense of contagious collectivity pushes for a new world order to be negotiated” (90). In Chapter Three, the discussion is driven by ElHalawani’s attention to the self-reflexive quality of Idris’s The Farfurs , Friel’s Faith Healer (1980), and McGuinness’ Carthaginians (1988). The self-referential quality of these plays, as ElHalawani explains, allows her “to examine the vision of three overtly committed writers concerning [the] transformative nature of the performative act and the different ways in which it can be achieved” (92). Engaging with Idris’s masterpiece, ElHalawani revisits one of the central, almost eternal, questions in Egyptian theatre, which concerns its form and content: what makes theatre Egyptian? This question has long perturbed Egyptian theatre circles, most prominently since the 1960s thanks to al-Hakim’s and Idris’s preoccupations, but arguably since its beginnings in the second half of the nineteenth century. As ElHalawani concludes, Idris’s play is in fact “a complex hybridity” that is “inspired by Western theories of theatre without denying its own authenticity as an Egyptian play” (94). ElHalawani’s conclusion regarding its content follows the same logic, suggesting that in it “the local is made global and then is reduced back to its specificity” (100). What unites these plays, according to the author, is that, through their self-reflexive essence, they enabled the playwrights to reflect on how they saw the role and the responsibility of theatre “to react to the past and present” and to “shape the future” (116). In Chapter Four, engaging with Reid’s Did You Hear the One About the Irishman…? (1985), Abdul-Saboor’s Musafir Layl (1969, Night Traveller ), and Beckett’s Catastrophe (1982), ElHalawani investigates “the correlational dynamics involved in performing oppression and revolt”, considering theatre’s power to turn its audiences into “a communal force” (119). The author argues that in these plays the playwrights are united in prioritizing “a more politically active audience” (121). As she explains, through their liminal quality and by breaking boundaries these plays bring reality and imagination together, turning theatre into “a space in which transformations are possible and where people can redeem their agency”. She goes on to conclude that the outcome is the transformation of theatre into “an interactive endeavour,” which empowers “the audience’s agency both in the theatre and in the public sphere” (137). As well as being a thorough study of the key texts from Irish and Egyptian theatre traditions, ElHalawani’s monograph is a rare example of scholarly writing with an engaging narration. This is enriched by the author’s inclusion of various theatre-related anecdotes, such as Lady Gregory’s above-mentioned encounter with ʿUrabi or Egypt’s President Gamal Abdel Nasser’s (in power 1954-1970) involvement in a school production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar . Thus, a valuable addition to the scholarship for researchers and students engaged with theatre, comparative literature, and the intersections between arts and politics, ElHalawani’s book can also attract readers curious about Irish and Egyptian theatres and the role of theatre in the resistance movements of the two nations. Lastly, the appendix of the book provides those who teach or study Egyptian theatre in English with much anticipated first translations of Idris’s opening remarks to The Farfurs and al-Hakim’s introduction to his Qalibu-na al-masrahi (1967, Our Form of Theatre ), a book in which the playwright manifested his vision of how a truly Egyptian theatre could develop. As a final note, I would like to highlight the recently rekindled encouraging interest of English language publishers in Egyptian and Arab theatre in general. One hopes this will result in additional publications on the subject, since—despite its not very long documented history—theatre in the Arabic language has produced a huge number of brilliant texts, many of which may help us to make sense of some of the crises we witness today, not only in the region but also beyond it. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes References About The Author(s) Tiran Manucharyan is a Lecturer in Arabic at the School of Modern Languages, University of St Andrews. Tiran holds a PhD in Arabic from the same university. His thesis looked at politically and socially engaged Egyptian theatre in the second half of the 20th and in the early 21st century. Published in 2024, his first monograph, titled Of Kings and Clowns: Leadership in Contemporary Egyptian Theatre since 1967 , builds on his PhD thesis, focusing on the work of the Egyptian playwrights Yusuf Idris, Mohamed Abul-ʿEla El-Salamouny, Lenin El-Ramly, and Fathia El-ʿAssal. Tiran is currently working on a British Academy-funded project devoted to the work of late-twentieth-century Egyptian women playwrights. Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents O Lord! By Ali Abdel-Nabi Al-Zaidi Mothers Challenging the Divine: Ali Al-Zaidi’s Ya Rab! The 31st Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre. September 1-11, 2024. ARTIFICIAL HEART. By Mohammad Basha and Firas Farrah. LEILI & MAJNUN. Written and directed by Torange Yeghiazarian SHAHADAT (THE TESTIMONIES) Adapted by Fouad Teymour Review: TO THE GOOD PEOPLE OF GAZA: THEATRE FOR YOUNG PEOPLE Staging Revolutions and the Many Faces of Modernism: Performing Politics in Irish and Egyptian Theatre Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Back to Top Article References Authors Keep Reading < Back Arab Stages 16 Fall 2024 Volume Visit Journal Homepage Review: OF KINGS AND CLOWNS: LEADERSHIP IN CONTEMPORARY EGYPTIAN THEATRE SINCE 1967 By Tiran Manucharyan. By Areeg Ibrahim Published: November 1, 2024 Download Article as PDF OF KINGS AND CLOWNS: LEADERSHIP IN CONTEMPORARY EGYPTIAN THEATRE SINCE 1967. By Tiran Manucharyan. Routledge Advances in Theatre and Performance Studies. Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge, 2024; pp. 270. Tiran Manucharyan’s Of Kings and Clowns: Leadership in Contemporary Egyptian Theatre Since 1967 is an important addition to the literature on theatre and leadership. Manucharyan who is a Lecturer of Arabic as well as Comparative Literature at the University of St. Andrews, Scottland is a budding scholar of Egyptian theatre. Composed of 270 pages, this monograph is a rewriting of the author’s PhD dissertation and is comprised of a preface, an introduction, seven chapters and a conclusion. The book deals with the transformations of Egyptian theatre since 1967 until the 2011 revolution through theoretical discourses, essays and plays of Yusuf Idris, as well as the analysis of the plays of Abul-‘Ela El-Salamouny, Lenin El-Ramly, and Fathia El-‘Assal, along with some theatre makers of the younger generation such as Sondos Shabayek, Mahmoud Gamal Hedeny, and Magdy El-Hamzawy. In the preface, Manucharyan explains that the book explores the development of Egyptian theatre since the period following the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, shedding light on political and cultural leadership. The author maintains, “The book observes the ways Egyptian theatre has negotiated its place within the socio-political environment in which it operates, not only transforming itself but also inciting transformation” (xi). The author also proposes that this book is innovative as a monograph in English that provides an examination of the progress of theatre as well as a detailed analysis of plays, focusing on leadership and taking gender into consideration, especially in the dramatic and theatrical works of women playwrights and theatre makers. In the introduction, the author begins by exploring the way in which events on stage can integrate with real-life events, and recalls the essays of iconic Egyptian playwright Yusuf Idris who proposed removing the boundaries between stage and audience, in order to emphasize theatre’s role in society. After going through the relationship between leadership and theatre, Manucharyan refers to the works of some of the major Egyptian playwrights of the period, referring to Idris, El-Salamouny, El-Ramly and El-‘Assal. In chapter one, “ Tamasruh : Between Theatricalisation and Carnivalesque,” the author link’s Yusuf Idris’ tamasruh , a coined term which refers to dissolving the boundary between audience and spectator, with Bakhtin’s concept of the carnivalesque. The chapter links these concepts to the overarching theme: the relation of clowns and jesters to the carnivalesque. By extension, intellectuals/playwrights represent such archetypes, especially when they assume their role as leaders in the society. Idris’ vision of theatre, which is informed by indigenous popular forms of Egyptian theatre, such as the shadow theatre ( khayal al-zill ) and open-air rural performances ( samir ), calls for the stage as a space for public and collective participation (21). The chapter explores such concepts in relation to the plays of El-Salamouny, El-Ramly, and El-‘Assal. Each of the next four chapters takes up individual playwrights. Chapter two continues to explore Yusuf Idris’ ideas about establishing a uniquely Egyptian theatre, and then brings the discussion back to the clown and the role of women, with some references to plays of the aforementioned playwrights. (Since both this chapter and the previous engage in Idris’ thought, one wonders why they were not integrated into one chapter.) Chapter three focuses on the role of theatre and explores representations of leadership in the plays of Abul-‘Ela El-Salamouny. Similar to Idris’ ideas, El-Salamouny integrates indigenous forms of performance and theatricalization in his plays in order to have an open dialogue with the audience (63). The plays are discussed in relation to what they present about leaders, kings, clowns and women. Chapter four explores Lenin El-Ramly’s use of comedy as “the art of cunning” to satirize the socio-political milieu. Despite El-Ramly’s slightly different stance on the use of indigenous popular forms in theatre, his use of meta-dramatic techniques also offers a space for theatricalization. As in many of his plays, El-Ramly makes use of foolishness and madness to explore authoritarianism and institutionalization versus leadership and social change. Chapter five links silence and carnivalization while discussing the plays of Fathia El-‘Assal, as representative of Egyptian women playwrights. Manucharyan opines, “She makes female characters central to the action, yet still silent and muted to start with, making them seen and heard within the silence” (158). El-‘Assal’s plays thus portray leadership, women rights and societal inequalities. The final two chapters take up the 2011 revolution and the theatre it inspired. In chapter six, “Of Times and Spaces,” the author begins by referring to the 2011 revolution and then sheds light on the realities of the revolutionary change. The chapter discusses the time and space of the discussed plays (a part that could have been integrated into the previous chapters) before moving to explore how public spaces played a role during revolutionary times. The chapter then relates the revolution to the carnivalesque and the emergence of verbatim theatre, or public spectacles that are based on lived testimonies of the revolution. Some women theatre makers also had a paramount role in producing such kind of theatre. Chapter seven, “Theatre and the Revolution,” focuses on the post-2011 plays. It explores the relationship between theatre and the 2011 revolution in relation to the plays of the younger generation of theatre makers as well as some post-revolution plays by the previously-discussed dramatists. The chapter suggests that the 2011 revolution had its impact on theatre in allowing for the emergence of new forms and new voices (213). For instance, Sondos Shabayek and team’s Tahrir Monologues presented verbatim documentary theatre that narrated testimonies of the revolution’s participants. Mahmoud Gamal Hedeny and Mohamed Gabr’s 1980 Onwards dramatized the uncertainty of Egyptian youth after the revolution. As for Magdy El-Hamzawy’s Report on Revolutionary Circumstances , it was a staged play about the role of an underprivileged Kid in supporting the revolution. To sum up, Tiran Manucharyan’s Of Kings and Clowns: Leadership in Contemporary Egyptian Theatre Since 1967 provided an encyclopedic study of Egyptian theatre from the last third of the twentieth century onto the 2011 revolution. The book is a good read both for an average reader as well as scholars and students of theatre and Arabic studies. The strength of the book lies in its survey and analysis of leadership, carnivalization, and the search for a theatrical national identity in the plays of three established playwrights, as well as three theatre makers of the younger generation. The book uses these phenomena as lenses to look at the plays El-Salamouny, El-Ramly, and El-‘Assal both individually and in relationship to one another. The book also clearly uses the ideas of Egyptian playwright Yusuf Idris as part of the theoretical literature about the discussion. It is unclear as to whether the analysis of Idris’ plays is central to the book’s arguments about these phenomena or simply helps clarify the playwright’s theoretical concepts. The book also could have benefited from using some of the topical literature in leadership studies. Overall, t he book engages both the specialized and average reader in a journey with bits and pieces of enjoyable information and analyses about Egyptian theatre and representative plays. The book closes with a profound analysis of the 2011 revolution and highlights the role Egyptian theatre performances narrated, documented, and came to terms with that event. Article Bibliography, References & Endnotes References About The Author(s) Areeg Ibrahim is Professor and Chair of the Department of English Language and Literature at the Faculty of Arts in Helwan University, Cairo and was the Dean of Graduate Studies and Research at Effat University, KSA. She has published widely in both Arabic and English on Arabic and international Drama. She is the co-editor of a Routledge volume, Rewriting Narratives in Egyptian Theatre . She has also translated a number of Theatre books for the National Center for Translation. Arab Stages Arab Stages is devoted to broadening international awareness and understanding of the theatre and performance cultures of the Arab-Islamic world and of its diaspora. The journal appears twice yearly in digital form by the Martin E. Segal Theatre Center of New York and is a joint project of that Center and of the Arabic Theatre Working Group of the International Federation for Theatre Research. Visit Journal Homepage Table of Contents An Interview with the Iraqi-born British playwright Hassan Abdulrazzak by Hadeel Abelhameed Review: GUERNICA, GAZA: VISIONS FROM THE CENTER OF THE EARTH. By Naomi Wallace and Ismail Khalidi Performance Review: The Tutor Review: OF KINGS AND CLOWNS: LEADERSHIP IN CONTEMPORARY EGYPTIAN THEATRE SINCE 1967 By Tiran Manucharyan. Review: PLAYS OF ARABIC HERITAGE. By Hannah Khalil Previous Next Attribution: Entries under this journal are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.