"Leila and Ben" (timely Tunisian Macbeth)

The National previews Lotfi Achour's Tunisian-themed Macbeth adaptation, premiering in London this July and playing Tunis in September.

Mounir Abou Debs' Hamlet

Just wanted to draw attention to ImproBeirut's helpful comment on a much earlier post, alerting me to a photo just posted on the Mounir Abou Debs Facebook fan page:
"Check this link... you can find a picture from the 1967 production directed by Mounir Abou Debs of Hamlet, on the right hand side is Michel Nabaa along with Antoine Kerbage playing the king and Reda Khoury on the far right as Hamlet's Mother." https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151549577570366&set=a.10151549577540366.842085.70929910365&type=1&theater

Great! Now anyone feel like tracking down and examining Adonis' translation?

All the world is RSC's stage

More promo for the World Shakespeare Festival, now hyped as "the biggest Shakespeare festival ever" in this a Guardian interview with the ever-articulate Deborah Shaw. There's also some background on the Iraqi show.

Excited to go to London and Stratford in a couple of weeks to take in a few of these shows.  Only wish I had time to swing by Glasgow - looks like they are doing amazing, really thoughtful things on Arab-world topics at the National Theatre of Scotland!  

"Hamlet" Abu Ismail

Hamlet headlines a post on the influential Arabist blog about wacko Egyptian presidential candidate Hazem Abu Ismail's "Mama Amreeka" scandal.
(Meanwhile, photos circulating on Facebook show Abu Ismail as a quasi-Egyptian "god of lies."

South Sudan Cymbeline

I was amazed last fall when a theatre person contacted me looking for an Arabic translation of Cymbeline for the purpose of translating it on into Juba Arabic for a production by the South Sudan Theatre Company.  Now it's really happening! 
England-based folks: join me at the show on May 3, and meanwhile check out the publicity and fundraising efforts of the London-based support staff, most recently here. Trailers and company info are here: http://www.southsudantheatre.com/.  And here's a BBC World Service report: just the sort of story the BBC would be attracted to.
A blog post by British Council director and "friend of the project" Tony Calderbank (is this the same Calderbank whose luminous translations of Arabic novels I've so enjoyed teaching?) writes movingly of the South Sudanese cast's determination to "stand for an hour or two on the world stage." Something not to be forgotten as various critics (including, no doubt, me) write various snarky things about the Globe-to-Globe and RSC festivals' framing and presentation of hot-spot Arab Shakespeares for their own self-serving rhetorical purposes.

"5) Do you agree that Hamlet can be a typical Palestinian guy? How?"

An obviously talented and dedicated university English teacher in Gaza, Refaat Alareer, posted this question last month as one of 12 Shakespeare questions for his students to answer on their class blog.  You can read all the questions and their responses here.  Here is the personal blog of the teacher; he's also on Twitter at @ThisisGazaVoice. And here is my favorite of his students' answers:

Can Hamlet be a typical Palestinian guy? Why?
Yes, he can.
Hamlet and an ordinary Palestinian guy have some things in common but also differ in other things. First, they resemble each other in the fact that, metaphorically speaking, the mother is presented as Palestine, Hamlet senior as a dead father and the uncle "Claudius" as Israel. The ghost of Hamlet tells Hamlet junior that "Claudius" killed him to marry his mother and take over the kingdom. This is found in act 1 scene 5 "The serpent that did sting thy father's life 
    Now wears his crown."
 Consequently, the feeling of revenge as a result of the death of the father reveals for Palestinian guy the facts that Israel came to take over Palestine to enjoy its great riches and resources and make it their own. Thus, both Hamlet and the Palestinian desire to avenge the deaths of their fathers. However, they differ in two things. First, why the two couldn't at the beginning avenge for the deaths of their fathers. Second, Hamlet managed to take revenge at the end. On the other hand, the Palestinian guy either died trying or still can't. For further explanation, Hamlet couldn't kill or delayed killing his uncle 'till later on for several reasons. First of all some say that these lines of Hamlet in act 3 scene 3"Now might I do it pat, now he is a-praying, and now I'll do't. And so goes to heaven, and am I re[ven]ged. That would be scanned. A villain kills my father, and for that, I his sole son do this same villain send to Heaven." Prove that he was a religious man. So how can he kill the king? The God's spokesman on earth. Second, he wasn't very sure that his father was the ghost and what he had told him was true. Finally, some say that Hamlet didn't want to hurt his mother. First his father dies and now her new husband. His love for her is found in act 3 scene 2 "I will speak daggers to her but use non." The Palestinian couldn't avenge his father's death not because Israel is Allah's representative on earth, or because he is not sure that Israel was the reason behind the death of his father nor is it because he didn't want to hurt "Palestine" his mother. But because he simply doesn't have the means to and if he could at this moment to get out there and avenge the death of his father he would do it without any delay or hesitation. The second thing they don't have in common is that Hamlet at the end of the play manages to kill his father's killer. Unlike the Palestinian guy who is still trying, hoping and wishing. So again yes Hamlet, in a way, can be a typical Palestinian guy.

Other students give a more politically universalizable youth-centered reading:

Of course, any Palestinian at one day of his life will face the same as Hamlet.
What Hamlet faced is called The identity crises .Your parents want you to be something you don’t want ,or against your future plans and the only thing is available to you is to follow them. Father wants you to be a doctor and your intelligence is linguistic you want to be a writer .To sum up you will do something for your father as Hamlet did.

As with teaching everywhere, it's humbling to see what students get from the assignment, what they don't get, what they appropriate as their own and what passes them by.  Of course there are local constraints too.  The student who wrote the long response above also posted: "But plz stop increasing the number of questions !! 3 weeks won't be enough to answer them all !! First, no electricity. Second, no enough hours in the day !"

A Saudi Serial: "To Be Or Not?"

This seems to have no relation with Shakespeare except the title. But doesn't the Gulfi Colloquial sound cool? http://online.mjroh.com/517.html