Interview with Ashtar director on "Palestinian" Richard II

Thanks to Marvin Carlson for pointing out this intelligent interview with Iman Aoun, artistic director of the Ashtar theatre group in Palestine, done by Sarah Irving at Electronic Intifada. The conversation gets into issues of language (classical vs. colloquial), interpretation, local reception, and normalization vs. BDS.  Here's one interesting exchange:

SI: Some of the other Shakespeare plays being performed in Arabic during Globe 2 Globe — such as an Iraqi version of Romeo and Juliet set in Baghdad — are very obviously trying to take Shakespeare’s drama and find specific Arab settings for it. Is this what Ashtar has tried to do with Richard II? Or have you left it more to audience to see for itself the modern message that the play might have?


IA: I think we have attempted to do the second. We have tried to be very faithful to the story and to the text itself. We did not add to it, we did not change it. We tried to put it in a modern setting in terms of the costume and flavor, very subtly, you cannot really see one place in our performance, but you could sense, if you want, many places. It is anywhere there is political turmoil, the greed of power. Yes, at some point you could see a Palestinian dress onstage, or you could see people dressed in Middle Eastern outfits, but it does not particularly say that this is happening here in Palestine or in a particular Arab city. We want the audience to concentrate and think.

"Fidelity" discourse aside (and we can easily see that as the counterswing of a certain pendulum), it sounds really worth seeing. One of the peculiarities of the Globe festival is that companies are asked to create these plays essentially on speculation -- for just a few UK performances and maybe one or two back home -- and then hope someone picks it up.  It would be so great if this play, since it appears to be really good and not just ethnographically curious, could tour to the US somewhere. Are you listening, Chicago?

On "strife"

Do a Google News search today for "Shakespeare" and "strife."  There's nothing wrong with it. I'm just saying.

Shakespeare, meanwhile, according uses the word "strife" 41 times throughout his oeuvre. The concordance results seem to indicate that the better the play, the fewer times "strife" occurs in it.

NYT reviews "R&J in Baghdad" in Baghdad

The New York Times' Baghdad bureau has filed a sympathetic piece on Monadhil Daood's Romeo and Juliet in Baghdad. It's in the "Mideast" section rather than on the arts page (surprise), so don't expect a lot of detail about the scenography or performances, but they do have some interesting interviews with audience members, actors, and Monadhil and Deborah Shaw. And the representativeness angle is played up:

“Romeo and Juliet in Baghdad’s” story line of a doomed cross-sectarian love affair manages to touch on nearly every element of the recent collective Iraqi experience.

In an interesting homage to the Iraqi Shakespeare tradition, Monadhil has cast 82-year-old Sami Abdel Hamid (MV 1965, Hamlet Arabian-Style 1973, MND and much else besides) in the role, fittingly, of a history teacher.  Look forward to seeing the man in person in Stratford.  He last appeared in the news ten years ago, I believe, when he directed the theatrical adaptation of Saddam Hussein's first novel, Zabiba and the King.  (not the Sacha Baron Cohen version). One of those complicated intellectuals who played the difficult, not wholeheartedly admirable game of surviving and continuing to produce art under a dictatorship that killed or exiled many of their colleagues and friends. 

Monadhil himself never worked under Saddam; he did his PhD (on ta'ziya theatre) in St. Petersburg and has lived in Sweden and Syria.

Ashtar's Richard II resonates in Jericho

Thanks to Daniele Ranieri for sending me Reuters' excellent writeup on the reception of the Ashtar troupe's Richard II production in Jericho (playing there before coming to London's Globe-to-Globe fest):

"Are you contented to resign the crown?" the rebelling Lord Bolingbroke, leaning impatiently on the already usurped throne, asks the King.

"Yes, no. No, yes," Richard stutters, igniting a roar of laughter from the local audience too familiar with similar jibes aimed at Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak and Yemen's Ali Abdullah Saleh in their waning days.

"Was this the face that, like the sun, used to make those who looked upon it blink?" the king then blubbers into a mirror, echoing the ranting self-praise of Libya's Muammar Gadaffi before revolt, as it did with the title character, led to his murder last year.

 TIMELESS, UNIVERSAL

Organisers said the Palestinian company's production was not about the Arab Spring per se and worked in themes, though manifest in the current uprisings, not bound by time or borders.
"We were amazed how deeply the play delves into the psychology of people and this moment in history," said actress and producer Iman Aoun.
"It's as if people and politicians don't learn. They keep repeating their behavior and it makes us realise how much the play resembles the present," she said.

More reports here (Ma'an) and here (WAFA).

Happy Shakespeare Day, everyone!

"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!