400th Anniversary updates

Today being the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare's death, now seems as good a time as ever to highlight a few things that have happened in the world of Arab Shakespeare scholarship since Margaret Litvin "passed the torch" for this blog at the beginning of the year:

Litvin's new book, co-edited by Marvin Carlson, recently came out. Entitled Four Arab Hamlet Plays, this collection features English translations of four prominent productions of Hamlet by Moroccan Nabyl Lahlou (Ophelia is Not Dead, 1968), Syrian Mamduh Adwan (Hamlet Wakes Up Late, 1976), Jordanian Nader Omran (A Theatre Company Found a Theatre and Theatred "Hamlet," 1984), Iraqi Jawad al-Assadi (Forget Hamlet, 1994). The book helps fill a growing need in global Shakespeare studies for similar translations in order expand the audience and readership of non-Anglophone Shakespeares. (http://www.amazon.com/Four-Hamlet-Plays-Marvin-Carlson/dp/099068475X)

Another book by Sameh Hanna (University of Leeds), Bourdieu in Translation Studies: The Socio-cultural Dynamics of Shakespeare Translation in Egypt, was published by Routledge in late March. In it, Hanna explores Arabic translations of Hamlet, Macbeth, Othello, and King Lear in light of Pierre Bourdieu's "sociology of cultural production." (http://www.amazon.com/Bourdieu-Translation-Studies-Socio-cultural-Interpreting/dp/1138803626/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1461429735&sr=1-1&keywords=sameh+hanna)

On April 5, the Globe to Globe Hamlet tour, which consisted of a company of actors from Shakespeare's Globe in London performing Hamlet in every country in the world at least once, finished its tour of the Arab world with a performance in Erbil, Iraq. This tour included performances in the West Bank and in refugee camps near (but not within) Yemen and Syria, as well as two shows in Malta (in lieu of Libya). The group's visit to Saudi Arabia on January 9th likely marked the first professional production of Hamlet on Saudi soil. (http://globetoglobe.shakespearesglobe.com/hamlet/the-map/north-asia?date=01+Apr+2014)

Lastly, this blog received a shout-out on arablit.org in a post by freelance journalist M. Lynx Qualey entitled "Arabic Shakespeares: From Theatre to TV to YouTube." The post features "out-takes" for another article of hers posted today at The New Arab: "The Arabic Shakespeares: Subversive, political, and entertaining."

In the near future, look forward to posts about the Shakespeare conference occurring today in Alexandria, Egypt (live-tweeted by @GlobalShaxpeare), as well as a prominent Egyptian Shakespeare scholar and translator of the 1920s and 30s who later immigrated to the United States and has been described as "immigrant zero" for Egyptian-Americans.

Al-Bassam's Arab Shakespeare Trilogy and my two interviews with him

Sorry I've been neglecting this blog a bit. Should have some exciting publication news for you soon.
Meanwhile: Did I forget to mention that Sulayman Al-Bassam's Arab Shakespeare Trilogy came out last fall from Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, comprising the texts to his Al-Hamlet Summit, Richard III: An Arab Tragedy, and The Speaker's Progress? Intro by Graham Holderness. You can get your epub or hard copy direct from Bloomsbury. As you do so, notice that for "theme" they've categorized it under "Conflict, Other Cultures, Society."

Thanks largely to Holderness, subtitled videos of all the plays in the trilogy are available, along with a lot of secondary material including my work, on the Global Shakespeares site.

I've also published two interviews with Al-Bassam recently, a really fun one in the Palgrave collection Shakespeare and the Ethics of Appropriation (adapted from a really fun late-night conversation in Beirut in 2011 and yes, that's his Richard III on the cover, and an updated version of my essay on his trilogy is in the book too)

and a somewhat duller one in the PMLA special issue on Tragedy.

Filling in Iraqi Hamlet history

Just came across this article from a year ago (June 2014) by `Awad `Ali on the Iraqi site al-Mu'tamar (in Arabic): Hamlet in the Arab Experimental Experience. A few details on experimental Iraqi Hamlet productions by Hamid Muhammad Jawad (1967) and Salah al-Qasab (1980) as well as the more recent هاملت البابلي (Hamlet of Babel) directed by Muhammad Hussein Habib (2009). In Arabic.

Hamlet's Trial (offshoot play)

For my own reasons I just Googled غولدنشترن to find out who besides Mamduh `Adwan uses this spelling for Hamlet's friend.  I came across a 2010 PDF script for a offshoot play called Hamlet's Trial, which "takes up where the splendid William Shakespeare left off." By one Ala'a al-Gharbawi.  It's also at this blog.  It includes a very brief Author's Note "for those who have never read Shakespeare's play before."  Anyone have details?  No time to read it now, but maybe you'd like to. 

What hast thou to do with me, old Jephthah?

Illusions?  Allusions?  Both?  I'm reposting this letter from a reader:

Dear Professor Litvin
You might be interested in my discovery of a subtle illusion in Hamlet to the (ancient) Middle East war. As I explain on my website, Hamlet’s mention of “old Jephthah” is meant to point to these lines in the Biblical story of old Jephtha: Judges 11.12
… What hast thou to do with me, that thou art come against me to fight in my land?
Judges 11.13
…Because Israel took away my land… now therefore restore those lands again
I discuss this, and it’s connection with the Spanish Armada, on my free and and ad-free website, “Smith’s Hyper Hamlet”, www.thyorisons.com.
Please see the following essays on my website:
I Know a Hawk from a Handsaw – Hamlet and the Spanish Armada
– http://www.thyorisons.com/#Handsaw
Hamlet in a Nutshell – Hamlet Is an Anti-War Play
– http://www.thyorisons.com/#Nutshell
How to Love Hamlet – http://www.thyorisons.com/#Love_Hamlet
Sincerely
Ray Eston Smith Jr
email: thyorisons@gmail.com

NYT on Syrian Refugee King Lear in Zaatari Camp, Jordan

Arab Shakespeare functioned the way he often does in a recent, moving New York Times article by Ben Hubbard, "Behind Barbed Wire, Shakespeare Inspires a Cast of Young Syrians."
A heartwarmer. A breath of fresh air amid the relentless arid struggle that characterizes not only these refugees' lives but also most US news coverage of the Middle East.  More than that, a human interest story, using our familiar old Shakespeare (memories high school theatricals) to humanize the young refugees.

“The show is to bring back laughter, joy and humanity,” said its director, Nawar Bulbul, a 40-year-old Syrian actor known at home for his role in “Bab al-Hara,” an enormously popular historical drama that was broadcast throughout the Arab world.

Clumsily spliced (because even though it's a performance of King Lear, it has to end, of course, with an uplifting chant of Hamlet's "To be or not to be"), sparingly staged, the performance seems to have been heartwarming for the participants and their families as well.  If there were many contemporary resonances with Lear and Cordelia's plight, no one mentions them in the NYT piece.  But of course this is Shakespeare's darkest play and not unrelated to the situation in Syria: "As flies to wanton boys are we to th' gods. They kill us for their sport."

Tangentially related, here's part of what one of my first-year students, Rachel Long, wrote last semester in introducing her midterm assignment, a short-story adaptation of King Lear 5.3 that she set in a POW camp:

This scene, set in recent times in an unspecified region, takes place immediately after Cordelia is defeated in battle by Regan, Goneril, Albany and Edmund. My intention in this scene was to briefly emphasize the descent of law and order into a struggle for power and control. This adaptation would attempt to do so by illustrating how King Lear begins in a structuralized environment where Lear is king with legitimate rules and laws, and is transformed into a structure where those who have power took it through force, namely through a civil war, and manipulation. The rest of the adaptation would ideally emphasize the means by which Regan, Goneril and Edmund plot to strip Lear on all political power.

And her adaptation begins:

Lear and Cordelia were transported in large, battered, old van, crammed full with other prisoners, so cramped that not a soul was able to sit down. As the van drew closer to the camp, the passengers slowly ceased to talk – and in the face of the immediate future neither Lear nor Cordelia could think of a single thing to say. Before this Lear had been quite vocal, imaging a world where he and Cordelia would escape and live by themselves, without cares. He was much relieved to be reunited with his daughter; and it seemed to restore much of his good cheer and sense. That cheer faded, however, not long after the vehicle started moving. Lear and Cordelia simply stood by each other now, holding hands, attempting to ward off the heavy trepidation about their destination, having little hope to give. Their fates were now in the control of Edmund, Regan and Goneril, whom Lear refuses to confront despite Cordelia’s urging. But Cordelia’s pleas fell on deft ears and she soon fell silent as she anticipate what was to come.

Cordelia’s first impression of the war camp was deeply unsettling. The buildings themselves were rather unassuming, having the appearance of large brick barnlike buildings which Cordelia knew used to function as soldier’s barracks many years ago, but now they seemed to possess an aura that screamed hopelessness. The landscape was barren, with no trees or shrubs in the near vicinity. The ground was mostly dirt, with large puddles of mud scattered throughout, evidence of a recent rainfall. A sign by the entrance proclaimed “War Camp Ogden, _________.” By avoiding the terminology “Prisoner of War,” their captors were able to avoid the requirements set by the Geneva Convention, which would guarantee fair treatment to prisoners. But the most disturbing facet of the camp was the lack of life. Other than the soldiers that policed it, there was no evidence of human activity. It seemed to be waiting to devour those unfortunate enough to step foot inside. New, unoccupied, but unspeakably weary at the same time. The entire camp was encircled with barbed wire and had guards posted at regular intervals, insuring beyond a doubt that no captive would escape. And in that moment, Cordelia knew she would never again leave this place.

  Yes, it's good when IR students do literature.
 

Hamlet to be performed in Riyadh

The Literary Club in Riyadh is resuming performances of "cultural theatre" after a hiatus of many years. Any guesses which play they're opening with? Details here (in Arabic).

Hamlet on world tour

An article reprinted by the Sharjah-based Arab Theatre Authority here (in Arabic) promises a world tour of the Globe's Hamlet, to something like 200 countries, including the island of St. Lucia. But no mention of performances in the Arab world. I imagine there will be some. You can follow @worldhamlet.  It seems Dominic Dromgoole is approaching this with his customary feistiness; as he told the Guardian:

"I think having a lunatic idea is a very good thing, it's a great way to keep everybody focused and dazzled and delighted by the ambition and energy of the company," said the artistic director, Dominic Dromgoole. "If we're going to do every country in the world it has to be every country, we're not going to leave anyone out. All the 'Stans, South and North Korea – we're very keen to get into North Korea. Antarctica? Fuck yes."

Shakespeare alive and well in Tunisia

Today was the third anniversary of Mohamed Bouazizi's self-immolation, the official spark that ignited the so-called Arab Spring. Whatever else may be happening in Tunisia (national dialogue, uneasy negotiations between secularists and Islamists
On BBC this morning, Lise Doucette began her polyglot report on Tunisia (download here; listen at 11:00 - then go back and notice the cultural politics of language, how Rachid Ghannouchi and some others speak beautiful standard Arabic, Beji Caid Essebsi predictably speaks French, the Salafists speak accented and French-inflected but extremely expressive English...) from a theatre, Toufik Jebali's Teatro, where the new cycle of his satirical show Klem Ellil Zero Virgule (Night Talk Zero Comma, or 0.00 as we might translate it in English) was playing to what others described as packed houses.
"And you use Shakespeare - why use Shakespeare in this very Tunisian production?" she asks Raouf Ben Amor, obviously intrigued."And is it a comedy?"  "Nooo, a tragedy," he insists jauntily. "A tragedy that we meet with as a comedy."
Jebali has posted 16 mins of clips from the show (with French subtitles) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kELqhhtyoA.  Look for the Hamlet lines starting around 2:57, where Hamlet's "Seems, madam?" speech is addressed (in English) to a niqab-wearing mannequin in a weird critique of Islamists' "customary suits of solemn black" and all the hypocrisy they connote.  Then around 6:50 for the inevitable 2B||!2B:
(It seems Ben Amor is taking the occasion to reminisce about his days as a theatre student in London in the 1970s.)

And of course, the obsession with morgues and gravediggers, the feeling of danse macabre throughout.  As reviewer Asma Drissi puts it:

Dans Klem Ellil zéro virgule, Shakespeare trouve bien sa place, les apparitions de Raouf Ben Amor dans des monologues d'Hamlet ou de Macbeth viennent souligner cette obsession de la mort. Des têtes, des membres, des corps avec des excroissances totalement difformes, des monstres, en somme... il semblerait que Jebali veuille nous dire que nous avons accouché d'un monstre!?

And she goes on to point out that the habit of reading between the lines of a play script, decoding the taboos, so well developed under the authoritarian Arab rulers of the past 40 years, still works to enhance theatregoers' pleasure in Tunisia even today:

Entre rires et émotions qui nous prennent à la gorge, Klem Ellil zéro virgule nous livre tout, sans discours directs et enflammés... lire entre les lignes et s'adonner à un exercice intellectuel pour décrypter les non-dits; c'est à cela que nous invite Jebali, mais on peut aussi se suffire au simple rire libérateur que nous offre cette pièce, le théâtre de Jebali a toujours fonctionné ainsi... A vous de choisir votre propre lecture des choses.

Among other bits of Shakespeariana in Tunisia: another show last summer from serial Shakespeare adaptaer Mohamed Kouka, called Shakespeare Ech Jebou Lena.  Apparently it "offers a humorous take on how Shakespeare's comedies are still relevant in contemporary society." 

And of course there's the semi-expat production of "Macbeth: Leila and Ben" (which has been mentioned here before) - enjoying quite a run after London's 2012 World Shakespeare Festival.  It was warmly received in Tunisia last spring. Although "much awaited" at the Carthage Theatre Days festival last month (which sounded amazing), it was canceled at the last moment for health reasons when director Lotfi Achour had to be hospitalized in Paris; Jebali's play was scheduled instead.  Hopefully Achour has recovered; last week the show toured to Sao Paulo, Brazil!  It's scheduled to open at Paris's Tarmac Theatre in January 2014.

offers a humorous take on how Shakespeare’s comedies are still relevant in contemporary society. - See more at: http://www.tunisia-live.net/2013/05/15/what-is-on-in-tunis-may-15-22/#sthash.nr2OmF4K.dpuf

offers a humorous take on how Shakespeare’s comedies are still relevant in contemporary society. - See more at: http://www.tunisia-live.net/2013/05/15/what-is-on-in-tunis-may-15-22/#sthash.nr2OmF4K.dpuf

 

CFP: Essays on cross-cultural Hamlet translation

Reposting this from the ESRA list.  Any takers? 

Hamlet Translations

Call for Contributions

This interdisciplinary collection of articles discusses how Shakespeare's Hamlet has been translated into different languages and cultures at various historical moments (including our times) and for different purposes: performance, reading, artistic experimentation, language-learning, nation-building and personal identity-formation, among many others.

Hamlet, a central text not only of the Shakespearean canon but Western culture generally has travelled in translation worldwide; yet, as Laura Bohannan reminds us in “Shakespeare in the Bush”, the oft-cited universality of the story may not be more than a myth. There are many Hamlets, and rather than straightforward replicas of the original (indeed, which one?) they are texts that carry traces of their own time and place. Hamlets in different tongues may be seen as significant memory-places and multi-layered palimpsests. This volume is interested in shedding light on the many hues and refractions Hamlet gains in translation and, at the same time, reasons for its transcultural presence as cultural capital.

Contributions are welcome on any aspect of translating Hamlet, primarily in interlingual contexts (theatrical, literary, scholarly, retranslations, dramaturgical adjustments, surtitling productions, translations in manuscripts as well as those canonised and constantly re-edited, translations from English as well as from relay languages or indeed translation from English into English, nontranslation or a lack of translation). Different approaches will be considered: contextualised case studies (contemporary and historical), overviews focusing on a particular national culture, comparative articles, insights into language history, style and translation norms through Hamlet, gender- or social-class oriented analyses, character-based, scene-based or motif-based approaches, theoretical explorations, practitioners' reflections, and so on.

Please email a 300 word abstract accompanied by a short biographical note to the editor, Márta Minier, by 15 November 2013 to marta.minier@southwales.ac.uk and miniermarta@hotmail.co.uk.

If you have any questions please do not hesitate to contact the editor.

Pray for Egypt

Time out of joint. But in case anyone doubted the omni-relevance of Hamlet in Egyptian political culture, here's a typical, fairly vacuous example of a secularist writer in Egypt, Mona Ragab, organizing a column in the Al-Dustur newspaper (from Aug 12, before the latest bloody crackdown on Brotherhood supporters) as an extended riff on how the phrase "To be or not to be" (and she highlights its source) captures the great dilemma facing Egypt's identity today. She glosses "To be or not to be" as a choice "between survival and dissolution" (al-baqa' wa-l-fana' -- a Sufi-tinged phrase that has a history in Arabic Shakespeare translations), then "between success and failure."

«إما أن نكون أو لا نكون، هذه هى المسألة « هى عبارة شهيرة للشاعر الإنجليزى الخالد والأشهر ويليام شكسبير من مسرحيته الشهيرة «هاملت» والتى تحولت إلى أفلام سينمائية ومسرحيات بعدة لغات فاشتهرت فى أنحاء العالم

إلى يومنا هذا، وتحولت إلى حكمة حول البقاء فى اللحظات الصعبة، وهذه العبارة تعكس القدرة على الاختيار بين ضدين، إما البقاء أو الفناء، أو بين النجاح أو الفشل للإنسان، إلا أنها أيضاً تتعلق بكل القرارات الصعبة فى الحياة.

Egypt, she argues, must choose: to be the multi-religious nation with the 7000-year history, or to fall victim to the "terrorism" of "al-Ikhwan al-Muta-aslimin" (The Islamizing Brotherhood) against the will of the "vast majority of the Egyptian people." 
Accusations of fascism as well as symptoms of fascist behavior have not been lacking on either side of the latest wave of conflict in Egypt; as ever, Hamlet lends himself to such polemics. 

إن الشعب المصرى الآن أمام اختبار محدد فى هذا التوقيت الدقيق من تاريخ الوطن وبعد ثورة كاسحة ضد حكم الإخوان المتأسلمين وهو «إما أن نكون أو نكون»، إننا أمام مسألة مصير وطن عمره ٧٠٠٠ عام، وبقاء دولة بكافة مؤسساتها المختلفة، وشعب يضم مسلمين ومسيحيين تعايشوا معا ولم يفرقهم أحدا طوال هذا التاريخ الممتد عبر العصور ورغم تعاقب الحضارات على أرضه المباركة.

«إما أن نكون» هو خيارنا الوحيد كشعب عريق يريد دولة مدنية ديقراطية ومستنيرة وليست قائمة على الاتجار بالدين، وكحكومة ليس أمامها إلا أن تستجيب وأن تلتزم بإرادة الشعب المصرى، والـ٤٠ مليون رجل وامرأة وشاب وشابة ممن خرجوا لتفويض الجيش المصرى بمواجهة الإرهاب والعنف.

لقد رفض الشعب الإرهاب وأقصد بالشعب الشعب المصرى كله باستثناء عدد قليل يمثلون جماعة الإخوان المتأسلمين وأتباعها، والمرتزقة الموالين لها من غير المصريين والذين يحملون السلاح ويوجهونه بكل صفاقة إلى صدور المصريين بغية بيع الأرض المصرية وتقسيمها.

«إما أن نكون» هو اختيار لابد أن تترجمه الحكومة المصرية الانتقالية لوقف قتل المصريين وتفعيل القوانين التى تمنع التظاهرات والاعتصامات والمسيرات المسلحة والممارسات الإجرامية والتعذيب الوحشى والخطف الممنهج لمعارضيهم.

 I never said it was pretty, did I?

"To be or not to be an Israeli Arab"

Just came across this 2010 essay in Comparative Literature: "To Be or Not to Be an Israeli Arab: Sayed Kashua and the Prospect of Minority Speech-Acts."  Gil Hochberg's invocation of Hamlet (and, perhaps unintentionally, of a post-simple-nationalist Arab Hamlet tradition) in this context seems felicitous. Whose language to speak? Whose identity to embrace? Which cultural performances will "denote me truly"?

I saw Kashua speak at Tufts last spring, at a wonderful event co-hosted by Jonathan Wilson of the Humanities Center and my friend Amahl Bishara.  At the Tufts Hillel, of all places.  (The plaque behind him says, ironically, "How good and pleasant it is for us all to dwell together.")  Then went home and read his Second Person Singular in two nights.  His major intertext in that book is not Shakespeare but Tolstoy, The Kreutzer Sonata, seen through the prism of Hebrew translation at that. In any case, his observations on the paradoxes of upwardly mobile Arab-Israeli (as he calls it) identity are witty and convincing.

"Alas, poor Syria"!

This editorial cartoon by Habib Haddad just ran in Al-Hayat.  Poor Syria takes the place of the skull.  It's macabre and effective, partly because it follows the usual polemical pattern of personifying the nation as a single person with a single uncertain fate: in this case, Yorick.

h/t David Karjala.

And now Arafat as Hamlet's father's ghost

Was Yasser Arafat "poisoned in the garden for his estate"?  What's sure is that his ghost still stalks the Middle East. Thus Omar Dajani in FP:

The decision to exhume Arafat's remains, almost eight years after his demise, is itself illuminating. Why, many have asked, wasn't it done earlier, when potential evidence of wrongdoing remained fresh? Although it is tempting to suspect a conspiracy, the reality likely hews closer to Hamlet than Julius Caesar. Just after Arafat's death in 2004, a negotiated settlement of the conflict remained a tantalizing prospect: Israel withdrew its troops from the Gaza Strip in 2005, a new Palestinian-Israeli agreement on movement and access was concluded later the same year, and Palestinians returned to the polls in 2006 for the first time in a decade. While many Palestinians suspected from the start that Arafat died from unnatural causes, their leadership, like the court of Denmark in Hamlet, preferred not to be confronted with potentially unpleasant facts about the late patriarch's death. Why inflame the situation just as tempers were cooling? Why risk souring relations with Israel and the United States when progress was close at hand? Wasn't it possible, after all, that Arafat had been the obstacle to peace all along?

Egypt's ElBaradei as "Westernized and Hamlet-like"

Thus spake The Associated Press, at the beginning of the "constitutional" crisis now convulsing Egypt almost exactly as it did one year ago:

The grouping seems to represent a newly assertive political foray for the former chief of the U.N. nuclear watchdog agency. Mr. El Baradei returned to Egypt in the year before Mr. Mubarak's fall, speaking out against his rule, and was influential with many of the youth groups that launched the anti-Mubarak revolution.
But since Mr. Mubarak's fall, he has been criticized by some as too Westernized, elite and Hamlet-like, reluctant to fully assert himself as an opposition leader.

"Bedouin Shakespeare Company" brings Hamlet to UAE

The (UAE) National profiles a young Shakespeare troupe about to bring Hamlet to Abu Dhabi.One might ask, with Hamlet: "How chances it they travel?" In this case, it may be that both "in reputation and profit" (cf. Hamlet 2.2.294) the UAE is an excellent bet.
No word on whether the Bedouin company hopes to localize the play, but they do claim some local Abu Dhabi "roots," if that term can be used of this professedly nomadic enterprise:

The Bedouin Shakespeare Company, which flew into Abu Dhabi last week in preparation for a three-week tour of the UAE, was founded by Edward Andrews and Mark Brewer, both 23, who came to live in the Emirates with their parents in 1999 and 2000 respectively.
Edward's father was working for the UAE Central Bank, Mark's was an IT consultant for the police force, and they met and became friends at the British School Al Khubairat in Abu Dhabi.
After school, Edward trained at Drama Studio London, during which time he played the male lead in Romeo and Juliet and Proteus in a production of Two Gentlemen of Verona, while Mark graduated from the university of Lincoln in 2011 with a BA Hons in drama. Also part of the company of seven is Laura Corbett, another British expatriate who moved to Saudi Arabia when she was 9 and joined the British School after her family transferred to Abu Dhabi.
The company's name, says Edward, partly reflects its roots in Abu Dhabi. "It has Arabic ties, of course - nomadic, the desert, the traveller - and we are a homeless theatre company, nomadically travelling and performing around the UAE".
They hope to engage Emirati students with the play, with special performances at Zayed University and UAE university in Al Ain.

 Read the whole article on The National's site. The company's home (online at least) is here.

If Hamlet were a pretentious Gulfi high schooler with a video camera...

What the hell?

Is Shakespeare, after all, a Palestinian?

Perhaps you've seen my exchange with Gaza-based English professor Refaat Alareer on the idea of Hamlet as a "regular Palestinian guy." Now we can broaden the identification to Shakespeare himself.
Eschewing any hint of the "Shaykh Zubayr" nonsense,  Palestinian director Amir Nizar Zuabi lays it out:

It is a well-known fact that Shakespeare is a Palestinian. And when I say "is" I do mean "is", not "was". The man might have been born in Stratford-upon-Avon four centuries ago, but he is alive and well today in Aida refugee camp, not far from the church of the nativity in Bethlehem. Shakespeare scholars may dispute this. But the reason I say this with such conviction (and even dare, sometimes, to believe it) is that, reading his plays, I have a sense of familiarity that can only come from compatriots.
...
When I think, too, of what Shakespeare writes about, I become totally convinced by his Palestinian-ness, preposterous though this might seem at first glance. There are not a lot of places where the absolute elasticity of mankind is more visible then in the Palestinian territories. In the span of one day, you might find himself reading a book in the morning, then in the afternoon be involved in what feels like a full-scale war; by dinner you and your wife have a lengthy discussion about the quality of that book, and just before you slip into bed there is still time to witness another round of violence before you tuck the children into bed. This mad reality blends everything – injustice with humour, anger with grace, compassion with clairvoyance, comedy with tragedy. For me this is the essence of Shakespeare's writing; and the essence, too, of being Palestinian.

Read the rest: it's great.  There's some cultural generalizing all right, "blazing sun" and "rhythms of the Quran" and all that... but artists, unlike academics, are allowed such thinking. 

It strikes me that the kind of identification Zuabi is performing works in the opposite direction from Prof. Alareer's.  Whereas the teacher aims to get his students to care about Shakespeare by bringing it closer to their lives (a domesticating or appropriation move, in the best sense), the director wants to get Brits to rethink what they "know" about the Palestinians, appropriating the great cultural hero of Western drama to do it. (I'm just guessing "elasticity" is not top on the list of qualities most Brits, even Guardian readers, tend to ascribe to Palestinians.)
Zuabi's is a classic national-liberationist or recently postcolonial appropriation of Shakespeare.  (My book, in a different way, makes the same move: using something my Anglo-American intended readers think they know to defamiliarize and reorient what they know about "Arab culture.")  Check out the toxic reader comments under Zuabi's post, and you can see why this sort of possibly neurotic-seeming self-identificatory move might still be necessary.  The comments also highlight that Zuabi's appropriation works in yet another opposite direction from one like Sulayman Al-Bassam's Al-Hamlet Summit: one reader absurdly (he thinks) quips: "Hard to imagine Hamlet with a suicide belt, somehow" (he obviously didn't see this one).  The difference is that Al-Bassam's show reoriented how some Brits saw Shakespeare, not how they saw contemporary Arab realities.

Zuabi is currently directing Comedy of Errors at the RSC. I won't get to see it, but you should. (It might be interesting to compare his production to the Afghan one in London. Hey you grad students out there!)

 Many thanks to Amahl Bishara for the link.

Another "Hamlet" protest sign - Syria last spring - in Arabic this time

Just found this too, from Syria. Over a year old: Dera'a, April 2011. Reported here. The sign with two lines of black text right in the middle says "Imma an takuun aw la takuun."  Written in Arabic, in case you were wondering whether only Anglophones use this line. 

Something rotten

In Syria, meanwhile, recent Higher Academy of Dramatic Arts acting program graduate `Arwa al-`Arabi عروة العربي has directed what seems, according to this review in Al-Akhbar (also reprinted on the Iraq-based web magazine Alefyaa.com and maybe elsewhere), to have been a really awful production of Hamlet.  Mustafa al-Khani starred. Produced by the Ministry of Culture's Department of Theatre and Music, it opened at the Hamra theatre in downtown Damascus. 
Does the young Syrian intelligentsia really have nothing better to do??  Last February (is it possible?) the same young director seems to have put on a funny J.B. Priestley play. The text of his Hamlet was edited by none other than Dr. Riad Ismat, who himself directed a "contemporary" Hamlet in 1973, and who is now Bashar al-Asad's minister of culture. 

After a catalog of the new production's shortcomings (and alas it fell short only in quality, not length), the reviewer concludes:

كل ذلك، أضاع بوصلة المشاهد عن مقولة العرض التي أراد العربي إيصالها إلى جمهوره: جميعنا الآن نعيش صراعات وحالات ارتياب وتأمل مثل هاملت في بلاد تحوّل فيها الموت والقتل إلى وجبة يومية.

All this has ruined the show's chance to get across the play's message, which al-Arabi had wanted to communicate to the audience: we are all now living through power struggles and amid doubts and hopes, like Hamlet, in a country where death and killing are daily fare.

Rehearsals began this past February. For a glowing announcement in the government newspaper Tishreen, see here.