Photos - Sami F Alzoubi and JIFLT
Shathi Eleyan in Sky سما
The most striking an memorable thing from Amman, Jordan in June 2023 was the interaction of 'youth' and professional theatre. Two strands of theatre are staged alongside one another and audiences attend both, and nearly all productions. The cross-fertilisation of acting training, design ideas and sheer creative energy was really impressive.
I was invited to join the jury of the Jordan International Festival of Liberal Theatre by Festival directors, including Ali Elayan and Amal Dabbas.
The festival takes place every year in Amman, Jordan. It presents shows under international and youth categories, and many of the latter are produced at the Jordan University.
Jury Members: (Clockwise from Top Left) Dr Shathi Salim (Iraq); Firas Al Masry (Jordan); Abullah Abdalrasoul (Kuwait); Richard Talbot (England); Ahmed Muftah (Qatar).
Liberal is the translation of il-hor or ‘free’, and refers to plays that are not evaluated under ‘classical’ criteria, although I am not sure what those are. The festival promotes contemporary theatre, and though predominantly scripted plays, in the international work in particular there were instances of new writing, and innovation in scenography and experimentation with dramaturgy.
Local news coverage
"Amman breathes "theatre and art" for days with Jordanian, Arab and International artistic work" in Nabaa Jordan online
The majority of plays were presented in formal Arabic, with some instances of regional dialects – Jordanian, Tunisian, Palestinian; or in a foreign language (French, English). The prizes in the professional pathway were as follows, with some more details below.
Apnea, Italy: Best Scenography, Monica Raponi
Frameology, Jordan: Best Actor, Masaud El Hakim and Best Actress, Maram Abu Al Hija, Jordan
Landmine, Palestine: Best Show - Silver Prize, Director George Ibrahim
Longing, Tunisia: Best Show – Gold Prize, Directed by Hatim Darbal
The Stranger and The Captain, Saudi Arabia: Jury Special Selection, directed by Fahid ElDousry
Richard Talbot and Firas Al-Masry, Chair of the Jury
I am announcing the prizes in Arabic from 01:12:18
Longing (Shawq) Tunisia (Best Show – Gold Prize)
Shawq/شوق "Longing", directed by Hatim Darbal and produced by the Centre for Dramatic and Performing Arts (Centre Des Arts Dramatiques et Scéniques), Ben Arous, Tunisia. It is based on a devised script inspired by Jean-Luc Lagarce, and though it is not cited specifically in the publicity there are traces of Juste La Fin Du Monde (It's Only the End of the World), 1990, a novel, adapted to film in 2106 by Xavier Dolan (Cannes Grand Prix 2016). The narrative deals with the return of a man with a terminal illness to his family after a long absence. It deals, in a very theatrical style, with the 'violence' in the use of language between family members and between the effort to recall events through a 'verbose' monologues in which characters repeat and erase what they say, reproach themselves for past events and their accounts of the past, contorting and abstracting their language.
"Family and death are two main themes, which meet throughout the events of the play in the mond of a character lost between times and places, escaping death, falling into a labyrinth of timelessness in which the barriers between reality and imaguniation converge..." (from the flyer, trans AI plus RT)
The staging is sparse with a screen upstage while characters appear to move within very limited tracks in front of it. Each family member in turn addresses the returnee. A very striking first image shows three people lined up in the screen with the actors' legs visible, sitting on chairs behind the screen, but perfectly aligned with the screen image. This promises a number of illusions and tricks between the world in the screen and the world on the stage, between memory and reality perhaps. As the play progresses, the play between these worlds becomes less formal, and this would be understandable if it was not also attended by logical confusion. For instance, when a relative appears on screen in the same world as the protagonist and is frustrated at not being able to reach him, I wondered whether the frustraiton would have been better witnessed by her remaining within the 'live' world of the on immediate stage performance. A couple of times when characters ran across the back of the screen there seemed to be an opportunity to unifiy the two worlds as they had done in the first image, but this was not achieved.
Perhaps as a result of this looseness, the production seemed over-extended, as if each new combination of character and screen was trying to add a perspective or information. Without knowing about Jean-Luc Lagarce's death from AIDS in 1990, the historical and social significance of that illness is missed and this might have given the dramaturgy a stronger anchor. On the other hand the dramaturgical convolution might have been a symptom of the original influence and its reputation, fair or not for 'verbosity'.
With a further distance, due to only partially understanding the mix of Arabic, French and Tunisian, I was mostly struck by the acting style, design and directing choices and dramaturgy. Isolation is a problem for the family and this is shared in the ensemble, Amal Alfargi (Badour, his mother), Nadira Ittowmi (Dido, his sister), Miriam Bin Hassan (Zeinab, his wife), Abd Almna'am Chouiat (Lameen, a brother), Hamadi Albagawy (Youssef, a brother), with each actor invested in their world and its ticks and circular monologues, at the expense of a deeper connection with other characters.
Frameology (Frimologia) - Best Actor, Best Actress, Maram Abu Al Hija. The actors worked with a postmodern staging around an apparent grid pattern, rotating and shifting door frames, constantly reframing their relationship, and the distances, boundaries and portals to one another. Easy to recognise the dunder-headed stupidity of a male who is trying to fix everything and rush to simple solutions: she's a frustrated wife, a repressed woman. This could have been a clichéd binary simply pointing out what is well known a couple alientates itself easily. But as the frames circled hypnotically, sometimes the baffling pattern forced us to look closely at the relationship. It revealed its complex repetitions and clichéd habits. We witnessed the long suffering couple of course, but also, through moments of humour, grotesqueness, and surprise tenderness, regression, breakdown, they revealed why it might be worth it to keep pursuing each other down the psychological corridors. Great performances used a strange physicality and vocality, sometimes egged on by an audience looking for moments of emotional climax, but at the most appealing moments hinting at patterns and habits that were fascinating: psychological dead ends, strange and pitiful self-mockery, desperate bids for change even as the protagonists become more aware that bad habits are traps they are building for themselves. This was largely metaphorical to me as I couldn't really understand full sentences, but I was rivetted.
The Stranger and The Captain – (Ilgharib wil Naquib) Saudi Arabia (Jury’s Special Selection)
The Stranger and The Captain along with Apnea – Italy (Best Scenography) are also going on to the Sharm El Sheikh International Festival for youth. I saw The Stranger and The Captain in Tunis, a bold satire of the army. A person completely unsuited to a military life is put through his paces and reveals the nonsense of it all. This is a Catch-22 type satire that works from the extreme contrast between the soldier and a stranger to conflict. Beautifully poetic language lifts the performances towards an operatic style which is strange in a satire, but it seemed to hit the audience hard and got a rousing ovation. Production values and the strength of investment in the acting make this a powerful piece even to the uninitiated.
Apnea is a technical masterpiece, creating some brilliant illusions with black-light and colourful puppetry. For some reason actors who speak brilliant English in everyday life, transform the spoken text in to a polemic spoken in such an emphatic register that a bold argument is squashed. The text is complicate eco-biological story about collecting cells from marine life to save the human species. Women, if they are given even the slightest freedom to execute their plan, could have a solution to environmental crisis but the men crush all this with agro, machismo and physical force. It's an impressive piece of physical theatre, althoug hon the night I saw it the sound system had gone hysterical and our ears were drilled with a frantic treble pitch for over an hour and a half!
Landmine (الألغام الأرضية Illagham Ilardia) – Palestine (Best Show, Silver Prize) - see my review here
Youth Pathway - all by Jordanian artists
Tick Tick Boom (Tik, Tik, Boom) based on a semi-autobiographical story and film (2021) about Larson, a young artist in New York who is writing a musical to try to break into the theatre industry. The film is based on the stage musical by Jonathan Larson.
Garden of the Animals (Hadiqatil Hayawanaat)
Hell’s Labyrinth (Mataha Gahtim) (Best lighting, shared)
Drum (Best Direction - shared)
The Graveyard (Maqbara) (Best Direction, Nor Shakawara)
Not this time ... You (Fi Heda IlWaqt...Inta)
Sky (Samaa) - Best Production Overall. This was a mesmerising mix of Egyptian (Akhenatian?) iconography and Sufi meditation with a strong central performance by Shathi Elayan. To my eyes as a tourist perhaps the poetic and beautifully dreamlike tumble of scenes created something exotic but it was undoubtedly different to a largely literary collection of youth works so far. Yes, it was perhaps advertising its ambition and wanted to force its imagery in places, but the production pointed the way to postdramatic theatre in this context of Arab Theatre Festivals and really support the idea of a Liberal Theatre. There are other productions, as ever in these festivals that were equally beautifully lit and artfully stages, but there was also something self-possessed and assured about the acting and the different elements seemed to be neatly integrated and that left me feeling very excited about what might come in the future from these recent graduates
Dead Room (Ghorfa Ilmouta)
Aside from work I have wonderful memories and recommend to everyone reading a visit to this beautiful city and its surrounding hills. Go on a trip to a beautiful summer garden restaurant in the historic town of Jareesh, eat Knefah stuffed with white cheese and pistachio downtown (ideally with my hilarious Saudi pal with Dr Sami Gamaen as your guide), sip mint tea on a balcony overlooking an Amman high street lined with palm trees. If you can, do this with elegent friends, like fellow jury members Dr Shatha Taha Salim an actress and academic from Baghdad Iraq and Ahmed Almuftah a poet and theatre maker from Qatar. I think I gushed like a tourist, as wide eyed as the pitiful sheep that ended up in a Bedouin meal of Mansaf. Its toothy jawbone seemed aghast as hands dived into the pile of rice around it. We lifted and flicked ball of sticky rice, soaked in turmeric and milky sauce, and my hand had the sweet whiff of guilt for several days afterwards. This was truly a macho celebration with cigarette fumes and sweets and hot tea to follow - so cool. I admire my friend Ranad Thalji whose vegetarian principles are stronger than mine. When in Amman...
At night drive downtown through streets strung with colourful lights, and jammed with traffic. This gave us lots of time to talk theatre in the car as Firas drove and and DJ'd Fairuz and Um Kulthum and Amr Diab. Moez Mrabt, Director General of the National Theatre of Tunisia told me about his research on Mise En Sène, from Grotowski to Robert Wilson. And finally at the buzzing Heesham felafal restaurant, we sat in tressled rows for a rich picnic. More people squeezed in from the street to have their photos taken with famous actress Amal Dabbas, and guest, the Egyptian actor, Ahmed Siam. I can't thank the festival organisers enough for their generosity and huge sense of fun.
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