Tanyus 'Abdu's "poetry" from Hamlet

Some high-cultural aspirations to enliven your rainy Wednesday.
These "poems" are from the slim 1925 diwan published shortly before his death by Tanyus 'Abdu (طانيوس عبده), with a brief but glowing preface from none other than Khalil Mutran.  These are not really very poetic -- not even soliloquies so much as arias meant to be sung by Shaykh Salama Higazi (who later recorded some of them for Odeon Records).
Hamlet's "monologue of the skull" (bottom right):

Another version of "Monologue of the Skull" as well as two poems for Ophelia, "Wada`a Husna'" (Farewell, Beauty), and "Bayn Narayn" (Between Two Fires, which stands in for the clumsy "Doubt that the stars are fire" poem Hamlet includes in his letter to Ophelia):

Finally, most famously, "Hamlet and his Mother," an aria about which Muhammad `Awad Muhammad reminisces in his introduction to his own Hamlet translation as late as 1972.

Here is the man himself:

Al-Assadi's "Forget Hamlet" in Kuwait

A production of Jawad Al-Assadi's "Insuu Hamlit" (first performed 1994 in Cairo, published 2000 in Beirut) directed by Issa Dhiab is touring Kuwait.  Recently performed at Gulf University in Mushrif.  Al-Siyasa newspaper has details here (in Arabic).

Abdo Wazen lecture in Sharjah: on Hamlet as monodrama

Details here:
http://www.emaratalyoum.com/life/four-sides/2011-05-12-1.391691

http://www.alittihad.ae/details.php?id=44927&y=2011
http://www.albayan.ae/five-senses/culture/2011-05-11-1.1436632

Tunisia "To be or not to be"

Another 2B moment from the rhetoric of the Arab revolutions.  This one's a Facebook group called
Tunisie To be or not to be - شعب تونس نكون او لا نكون

'To Be or Not To Be' in Lebanon?

Here's the slide from my AUB talk that the Daily Star reporter was alluding to. I took this photo in late Feb 2005 - it's the graffiti around Martyrs' Square (later Liberty Square) in downtown Beirut, where people were commemmorating the Valentine's Day 2005 car-bomb assassination of former prime minister Rafik Hariri. Can you see the faint writing, in English, right at the bottom of the photo? 

"To be or not to be now is the time."

And here's another example of Lebanon-related "to be or not to be" rhetoric: Walid Jumblatt (this was before he broke with the March 14 grouping) saying a rally was absolutely crucial to the existential future of Lebanon. 

"Notre combat c’est “être ou ne pas être.” No hyperbole or anything.

Flew home from glorious Beirut yesterday.  Sigh.

Daily Star covers our Shakespeare conference at AUB

Under the nice headline "Was Shakespeare an Orientalist?" Beirut's Daily Star covers  our just-concluded conference on "Shakespeare's Imagined Orient" at AUB.  Splendidly organized by Francois-Xavier Gleyzon of AUB's English department, the conference staged a conversation some of the most important scholars working to remap Shakespeare's relationship to the Muslim world.  Five men were at the center of this conversation: Jerry Brotton, Dan Vitkus, Gerald Maclean, Jonathan Burton, and Gil Harris.  My talk was really marginal to the whole thing (I'm not an early modernist), but for obvious journalistic reasons (even if she is not Arab, her readers are), the Daily Star reporter seized on it.  She thus ironically supported Ferial Ghazoul's thesis (in "The Arabization of Othello"), which my talk was trying to problematize: the idea that when Arabs look at Shakespeare, "their point of view" (many Arabs, one point of view) leads them to an immediate and almost exclusive focus on the representation of people like themselves.  Well, perhaps such narcissism is only human. Which of us can pick up a friend's book without looking up our own name in the index?

Boston trailer for Al-Bassam's "Speaker's Progress"

Swear to Allah, it's not theatre!  ArtsEmerson in Boston has officially announced its 2011-12 season, and Sulayman Al-Bassam's pseudo-post-but-actually-meta-theatrical The Speaker's Progress, a dark and jam-packed take on Twelfth Night,  is on the schedule for October 12-16.  Details and a video clip here.