Othello from Tangiers

Greetings from Morocco. This is the cover of a new book (apparently) titled Othello of Tangiers. By Tangiers-based writer Zoubeir Ben Bouchta.

More details soon, inshallah.

Twelfth Night in Damascus

I just came across the Damascus Shakespeare Festival, and apparently it aspires to be annual. However, this year's performance of Twelfth Night by the Birmingham Theatre troupe (visiting from England) seems to have left the Syrian audience cold. The review quotes a Syrian actress named Yara Sabri wishing the show had had more music and dancing etc. to "contribute to the arts education" of a less elite audience. No surprise there. If ever there were a problematic play for cross-cultural presentation, surely Twelfth Night must be it.

TV report on Shakespeare festival in Damascus

TV report here (in Arabic) on recent Shakespeare Festival held in Damascus, including Birmingham Theatre's performance of Twelfth Night.

Omar Sharif to play King Lear

From Playbill.com...
Sounds wonderful. But how will they avoid allegories about sitting Egyptian presidents??

Sharif Will Star in Egyptian Film Inspired by King Lear
By Kenneth Jones
February 11, 2010
Omar Sharif, the Egyptian-born Oscar-nominated actor of Arab and French descent, will play the tragic patriarch in a film adaptation that places Shakespeare's King Lear in the modern Middle East.Variety reported that the 77-year-old actor — who starred in "Lawrence of Arabia" (for which he got an Academy Award nomination), "Funny Girl" and "Dr. Zhivago" — will play Lear, which is to be set in Egypt.
Egyptian writer Khaled Al Khamissi, who wrote the novel "Taxi," an international bestseller, will write the screenplay.
The film is being developed and produced by Frederic Sichler's Amana Creative, who was once CEO of France's StudioCanal.
Sichler is co-producing "King Lear" with Egypt's Misr Intl. and perhaps Egypt National Broadcast Corp.
"Shakespeare is an icon of European culture, Al Khamissi represents the best of a new generation of Arab writers, and Omar Sharif has been a bridge between our two worlds for half a century," producer Sichler said.
A director will be announced; shooting should begin by late 2010.
King Lear is the famed Shakespeare tragedy of an aging king who decides to divide his domain in three, among his daughters. When he denies his good daughter her share, it becomes his — and his kingdom's — undoing.

Nehad Selaiha rereads my dissertation...

Hamlet galore: Nehad Selaiha enjoys a Hamletian feast at the Creativity Centre
http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2009/963/cu1.htm

Of all the foreign dramas translated into Arabic, including Shakespeare's plays, Hamlet has been the most influential since the 1950s. Not only has its language, particularly Hamlet's "To be or not to be" soliloquy and phrases like "The time is out of joint" or "Frailty, thy name is woman", found its way into the rhetoric of political writers and intellectuals and even in the daily speech of the educated, it has also haunted the imagination of playwrights, directors and actors, appearing in different guises to address different needs at different historical moments. Echoes of Hamlet abound in many of the best dramas produced in the 1960s, and at least three tragedies, Alfred Farag's Sulayman Al-Halabi and Al-Zeir Salem and Salah Abdel Sabour's The Tragedy of Al-Hallaj, modeled their heroes on the Prince of Denmark, giving them more or less the same moral/political/ existential dilemmas. While the play itself has not received many 'textually unadulterated' productions -- the most famous and memorable being Sayed Bedeir's at the Opera house in 1964/65, starring the late, great Karam Metawi', and Mohamed Subhi's 1978 one, in which he also played the title role -- it has inspired a spade of stage adaptations, original plays and what can be best described as ironic, inter-textual engagements.

In her extensively researched, well informed and deeply insightful doctoral dissertation on the appropriation of Hamlet by Arab culture between 1952 and 2002 (entitled Hamlet's Arab Journey: Adventures in Political Culture and Drama, soon to be published in book form), American scholar Margaret Litvin demonstrates that the different Arab Hamlet-appropriations since the 1952 Egyptian revolution 'fall into 4 main phases' that 'have corresponded to the prevailing political moods in the region'. The first phase (1952-64) was one of 'euphoric pride after the 1952 revolution', and in it 'Arab dramatists' preoccupations with Hamlet were focused on [achieving literary and theatrical] international standards'. The second phase (1964-67) was one of 'soul-searching and impatience for progress' and 'Hamlet's incorporation into Arab political drama' then took the form of what Litvin calls (in the manuscript of her thesis, which she has graciously sent me, and from which all the above quotations and the ones that follow are taken): a '"Hamletization" of the Arab Muslim political hero'. 'Such Hamletization,' she goes on to say, 'was an easy way for Arab playwrights to emulate (and borrow) Hamlet's complexity of characterization and to obtain the moral and political standing it conferred. Thus the critical demand for deep, complex, yet politically topical characters encouraged serious dramatists to weave strands of Hamlet in their heroes -- in turn linking the character of Hamlet with the theme of earthly justice in the audience's imagination' (Litvin, pp, 12, 13. 82).

Abu Hamlet and Najm are Alive

A report on a conventional/unconventional Syrian playlet in the (Abu Dhabi) National

Haven't seen it -- sounds kind of reminiscent of Moroccan playwright Nabyl Lahlou's "Ophelie N'Est Pas Morte" (1968)... but maybe funnier?

Recently, an empty shop under renovation in downtown Cairo became an impromptu theatre for an unusual performance. An audience of about 12 people sat on mismatched chairs. A few well-placed scarves and portraits of Shakespeare and the Syrian satirical writer Mohammed al Maghout formed the backdrop. Two identical young men suddenly appeared and began reciting overlapping Shakespeare monologues in Arabic.

The Malas twins, Ahmed and Mohammed, are 26-year-old actors and playwrights. Their play Melodrama, originally performed in their bedroom in Damascus, has become an underground sensation in Syria. During a visit to Cairo, they organised three performances.

In the play, Shakespeare quickly devolves into an argument between the two characters, the grey-haired Abu Hamlet (played by Mohammed) and the boisterous young Nejm, or “Star” (played by Ahmed). They are aspiring actors living in shared quarters who spend their time recounting disappointments, venting frustrations and indulging in fantasies about making it big. As their names suggest, the characters represent different generations of the Syrian acting community – the older committed to the theatre, and the younger enamoured with television and cinema.

Khalil Mutran salutes Shaykh Salama Higazi

Click on photo to enlarge and read poem.
From Volume I of Khalil Mutran's diwan (4 vols, 1949), first published 1908. See last two stanzas for Mutran's admiration of Higazi's dramatic art... and desire to transcend it.