<\/p>\n
I met theatre director and writer Sulayman Al Bassam in the summer of 2001. We were both young theatre makers, working in London, looking to make work that challenged, that made a di\ufb00erence, that was entertaining. We had both worked with Shakespeare for as long as we could remember: Sulayman had directed <\/span>Macbeth<\/span><\/i> in France and was working on a version of <\/span>Hamlet<\/span><\/i>. From my side, I had the double privilege of having studied under the renowned Shakespeare scholar Professor Anne Barton at Cambridge University and worked for her husband John Barton, co-founder of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Anne\u2019s acclaimed book, <\/span>Shakespeare and the Idea of the Play<\/span><\/i><\/a> put the audience at the center of her studies. John was not only one of the great directors of Shakespeare of his generation, he was also one of the great teachers of actors \u201cplaying Shakespeare.\u201d Eschewing elitism and conceptualism, his great maxim was not how to speak, but how to persuade the audience to listen. \u201cIf we don\u2019t reach you, we fail\u2026 and you will only do that if the actors make you listen.\u201d Under his instruction, the transition from page to stage was a natural and brilliant process that verily sparkled in the word painting.<\/span><\/p>\n Nevertheless, I remained hesitant about the director\u2019s role in staging Shakespeare. A brief interlude at Th\u00e9\u00e2tre Od\u00e9on in Paris, on an exchange from the RSC to observe rehearsals for a French production of King Lear, left me with more questions than answers. After two weeks around a long table discussing individuals, their psychology and motivation, I began to feel that this approach overlooked a crucial element that would have surely been obvious for Shakespeare at his time: the political state and its evolution.<\/span><\/p>\n All this changed with 9\/11. Sulayman was due to revive a version of <\/span>Hamlet<\/span><\/i> in Tunisia, but his clever choice of staging was coming more and more into conflict with Shakespeare himself, quite possibly a metaphor for the broader \u201cclash of civilizations\u201d \u2014 as the media called it \u2014 out there in the world. Newly married and moving our base to Kuwait, I encouraged him to take what he wanted from the piece and rewrite the rest. It is the ephemeral nature of theatre that is at once so seductive and frustrating, like a passionate love story\u2026 the power of a group of people coming together to see a performance never to be repeated. Perhaps this is why so many theatre makers are still drawn to Shakespeare. Aside from his genius and deserved reputation for universality and versatility, he is an antidote to ephemera. Imagine the absurdity of one hundred versions of <\/span>Citizen Kane<\/span><\/i>. Yet this is what we do in theatre with no second thought, as we should. The latest version of <\/span>Hamlet<\/span><\/i> roots us in a long tradition of retelling the same story across time and place, and provides the theatre maker with a costume with which to cloak uncertainty when stepping outside of recognized theatre-making structures.<\/span><\/p>\n What theatre does however share with other art forms is that its reception is beyond the control of its authors, and what began with our joint creation of Sabab Theatre as an idealistic, slightly chaotic, possibly naive but certainly genuine artistic collaboration became shaped by the need for classification through cultural and nationalistic labels. Thus, the idea of an \u201cArab Shakespeare\u201d was bequeathed upon the work \u2014 not only a tough act to live up to, but also a very delicate path for me to tread as a non-Arab, British theatre maker living at that time in the Gulf.<\/span><\/p>\n When we finally left the theatre at one in the morning, we were all on a high. The largely Arabic-speaking audience embraced the English-speaking actors; the clash of cultures narrative, so prevalent in contemporary media, was not ours that night. It was proof that theatre could matter, could say things that needed to be said but that could not always be said in more direct outlets. Shakespeare became a companion once again and, we were soon to discover, a bridge.<\/span><\/p>\n ACT ONE: THE <\/b>AL-HAMLET SUMMIT<\/i><\/b><\/p>\n Sulayman worked on his adaptation of <\/span>Hamlet<\/span><\/i> with me as dramaturge of the original and editor of the new writing. The story was transposed to an Arab context through re-structuring, bold rewriting and the characterization of Hamlet as a man radicalized by the political landscape. The following summer, we presented the English-language production of <\/span>The Al-Hamlet Summit<\/span><\/i> at the Edinburgh Festival, then at the Cairo Theatre Festival, winning prizes at both.<\/span><\/p>\n In Cairo, word got out that the production was political. The staging resembled a UN security council meeting, and it didn\u2019t take much imagination to see Saddam Hussein behind the performance of Claudius, the stepfather-uncle that the idealistic young Hamlet is impotent to overthrow. The introduction of a new character, a western arms dealer, ensured that the West was accorded its proper shady presence and that no one escaped criticism. The evening the international jury members were due to attend, a large crowd had already gathered outside the theatre. Seeing the jury members ushered inside ahead of everyone else, the rumor went around that <\/span>foreigners <\/span><\/i>were being prioritized, and the people outside started to push their way forward. More and more people gathered, and soon the lobby was bursting, forcing the theatre manager to lock the glass doors, provoking those excluded to shout, becoming so loud it was impossible to start the performance. It was apparent we weren\u2019t going to be able to leave the theatre either. We found a solution by agreeing to perform the show twice. When we finally left the theatre at one in the morning, we were all on a high. The largely Arabic-speaking audience embraced the English-speaking actors; the clash of cultures narrative, so prevalent in contemporary media, was not ours that night. It was proof that theatre could matter, could say things that needed to be said but that could not always be said in more direct outlets. Shakespeare became a companion once again and, we were soon to discover, a bridge.<\/span><\/p>\n Before we cross that, however: a year later in 2003, I returned to the Cairo Festival with a version of Heiner Muller in Arabic and English. It would be hard to imagine an experience further from the utopian evening twelve months earlier. The Iraqi actors in the company were being accused by some of the Egyptian audience of being traitors; \u201cthey should understand this was a CIA plot.\u201d The hostility was palpable. Why such a conspiracy? I asked. It\u2019s because of you English<\/em>, I was told. But we were the same English last year and we didn\u2019t have this issue. That\u2019s because you were representing the UK. I had not even registered that we\u2019d been representing a country at last year\u2019s festival. This year we were representing Kuwait, nationals and non-nationals alike, and I understood for the first, but not the last time, that the same spirit of performance and a team made of many of the same people, could be heard in a totally different register by mere virtue of the label attached to them.<\/span><\/p>\n But back to the bridge. The Japanese member of the Cairo jury proposed we visit Tokyo, where an Arabic version of <\/span>Al-Hamlet<\/span><\/i> had been commissioned by the Japan Foundation for the Tokyo International Festival for presentation the following year, with Sulayman as the director and me as the producer. By virtue of this generous funding, we were able to bring together performers from Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the UK (here as in throughout the essay, countries and the cast and crew are listed in alphabetical order to avoid any suggestion of hierarchy), together with a creative and technical team from Kuwait and the UK. Coming together for the first time to start rehearsals felt like an act of defiance in itself. The play was performed in Arabic, with the only new addition to Shakespeare\u2019s original text being the western arms dealer, performed in English. Suddenly the English language had become the foreign element in Shakespeare. Thanks to this backing, we were also able to employ technical capabilities we could have only dreamed of previously. I was adamant that the work should be technically on par with work from any other region. Surtitles became important considering we would be performing to a Japanese audience, later Korean and Singaporean, and so began a slow distancing from Shakespeare\u2019s word-painting. Yet I felt closer to Shakespeare\u2019s \u201cidea of the play\u201d than I ever had before. Shakespeare\u2019s unmatched skill in dramatizing the political arena and all the characters therein came to life in performances by Mariam Ali, Bashar Abdullah, Nigel Barrett, Nicolas Daniel, Monadhil Dawood, Kifah Al-Khous and Amana Wali, against a live soundtrack by Alfredo Genovesi and Lewis Gibson.<\/span><\/p>\n The idealism of Sabab Theatre, as embodied by both the team of so many nationalities and by the writing and performance, shone in Tokyo. But I was soon to learn that this idealism was not always shared. A Palestinian director also performing at the same festival and with whom I had exchanged a simple good morning, pointed to me sitting with the audience during a question-and-answer session, calling me the \u201ccolonialist wife.\u201d Unable to defend myself, I was saddened that my \u201cgood morning\u201d had failed to convey my political beliefs \u2014 evidently opposed to all forms of colonialism, cultural included. I was also angry that I was being reduced to a <\/span>wife <\/span><\/i>when I was there in a professional capacity. I wondered if anyone in our company felt they were betraying themselves or their way of doing theatre in this collaboration.<\/span><\/p>\n I didn\u2019t believe so. The atmosphere was that of curiosity, camaraderie, excitement, a sense that we were breaking rules, crossing boundaries and addressing prejudice. But the seeds of doubt and self-censorship had been sewn in my mind.<\/span><\/p>\n A European tour followed, and it was a moving experience to return to the UK with the same performance with which we had left, this time with a largely Arabic-speaking cast and a much slicker technical set up. Performances in London and at the Bath festival led to an invitation by the Royal Shakespeare Company to produce an Arabic language version of <\/span>Richard III<\/span><\/i> for their future Complete Works Festival. The idea of an \u201cArab Shakespeare\u201d was bequeathed to us along with the power of a trilogy.<\/span><\/p>\n What became quickly apparent was that the audience\u2019s encounter was to be as much with the Arabic language as with the performance itself … I sat next to a mother and daughter who had not registered that the play was to be in Arabic. They initially wanted a refund but adapted to the surtitles, and later shared that they had understood Shakespeare\u2019s political concerns and the question of succession for the first time by seeing it in an unfamiliar Gulf setting.<\/span><\/p>\n ACT TWO: <\/b>RICHARD III<\/i><\/b> \u2014 An Arab Tragedy<\/b><\/p>\n The Complete Works Festival took place in Stratford-upon-Avon in 2006-2007. Sulayman was\u00a0 the director and adaptor, I was producer and editor.\u00a0 Ours was to be the first Shakespeare performed in Arabic at the RSC. <\/span>Richard III<\/span> is one of Shakespeare\u2019s best-known villains, whose devilry or charisma, depending on your viewpoint, dominated most English productions I had seen up until then, focusing on the psychology of a dictator and their individual rise to power. Our Richard was situated within the context of his family and as a product of his society, an unnamed Gulf State, and the production style of our Richard III<\/em> very much played into the collaborative themes explored in the translated and adapted text. Sulayman has written much about his approach to the adaptation, written in English and translated into Arabic by the poet Mehdi Al-Sayigh. The adaptation, like the entire trilogy, has also been the subject of considerable academic study that will not be explored here. What is worth noting is that the text and staging were constantly evolving, with the role of the audience becoming an increasingly determining factor. While theatre is not politics, this most famous of Shakespeare\u2019s explorations into the nature of power brought us very close.<\/span><\/p>\n I employ \u201ccross-cultural\u201d in relation to this artistic collaboration as a sentiment rather than an academic term. By it I mean: the composition of the company, the audiences encountered from different regions, the transposition of Shakespeare to a new setting and language with the English-speaking parts being the additions to the original, the themes and characterizations, and the staging and music drawing on different artistic traditions. So the cross-cultural collaboration continued, with actors from Iraq, Kuwait, Lebanon, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the UK: Carole Abboud, Faisal Al-Amiri, Nigel Barret, Nicolas Daniel, Monadhil Dawood, Raymond Al Hosni, Nadine Joma’a, Maritez Julapang, Fayez Kazak, Jassim Al-Nabhan, Amal Omran, performing in Arabic with some scenes in English. Music by Lewis Gibson was performed live by Kuwaiti musicians Ahmad Al Dabbous, Abdullah Hamad, Sultan Al Meftah, Abdullah Sakran, Mehdi Al Sayigh; costumes designed by Abdullah Al Awadi and set design by Sam Collins were firmly rooted in Gulf references.<\/span><\/p>\n What became quickly apparent was that the audience\u2019s encounter was to be as much with the Arabic language as with the performance itself. During rehearsals I bumped into John Barton and regret not asking his thoughts on how our actors could succeed in getting the English-speaking audience to \u201clisten\u201d to the poetry as he had taught me years earlier. At the first performance I sat next to a mother and daughter who had not registered that the play was to be in Arabic. They initially wanted a refund but adapted to the surtitles, and later shared that they had understood Shakespeare\u2019s political concerns and the question of succession for the first time by seeing it in an unfamiliar Gulf setting. Further performances followed in Paris at the invitation of Peter Brook; then Amsterdam and Athens, where, listening to these performances in Arabic, a language I did not fully comprehend, with surtitles in languages I did not, I became sensitive to the audience around me and their impressions, giving feedback to the company accordingly.<\/span><\/p>\n Something shifted when the show toured the US. Until then, the \u201cArab\u201d Tragedy part of the title had referred to the language and setting, but not to the company itself. Now we were invited to be part of a \u201cMuslim Voices\u201d festival at BAM New York and \u201cArabesque \u2014 Arts of the Arabic World\u201d at the Kennedy Center in Washington. Liberal arts academics in the US and UK also seized on this mono-cultural idea, ignoring the physical makeup of the team, and found in it a much-needed voice from a region that was too often alienated from theirs, a voice they could comprehend through the familiar lens of Shakespeare. (It is worth pointing out that unlike Arab audiences and theatre scholars who were familiar with Shakespeare the reverse was rarely the case). Positioning the performance in the context of these labels some audience members searched for geopolitical explanations as if we were spokespeople for a whole region rather than artists asking questions. It was not clear where the non-Arab members of the team should position ourselves. The Australian<\/span> designer Sam Collins was once famously asked by an arts programmer if he spoke \u201cMiddle Eastern Asian\u201d too! I was uncomfortable with the idea of being a silent collaborator, performing a professional role to deliver a polished product, for two reasons: first because I found it patronizing to the Arab artists and crew involved who were more than capable of doing that themselves, and secondly, because I was concerned that for all its success the work was becoming a product for export, to be performed at international festivals for audiences who for the most part did not speak the language, rather than the genuine cross-cultural collaboration it was intended to be.<\/span><\/p>\n The Al-Hamlet Summit<\/span><\/a> had struggled to tour in Arabic-speaking countries for political reasons. But after the European tour, <\/span>Richard <\/span><\/i>was invited to Kuwait, Syria and the UAE. Having just given birth, I was unable to attend the performance in Damascus where Bashar Al Assad and his wife made an unannounced entrance and joined the audience; I leave that encounter to your imagination. I had however been very much present at two shows at the fortress in Al Ain. One was a private performance for female members of the ruling family, another was a public performance whose audience included a group of female students who had never before attended the theatre. These performances allowed me to see the play through the eyes of the female characters. I observed the largely female audience focused not only on the actresses as they listened to the male characters prescribing their fates, but also looking to each other for clues on how to respond to Richard\u2019s villainy. My point is not to make reductive parallels, rather to share that it is not only the audience the actor must make listen, it is also his fellow actors. And the audience also play their role in making each other listen. This is too often forgotten in studies of a written play text \u2014 to listen to who is <\/span>not <\/span><\/i>speaking.<\/span><\/p>\n Three days before the first performance, Bin Ali was overthrown in Tunisia, prompting the start of the Arab Spring. All the resistance that was driving the theatre production, that we were rightly proud of, resistance to a prevailing stasis, pessimism and regressive tendencies, was instantly washed away in the tide of demonstrations and revolutions engulfing the wider region.<\/span><\/p>\n ACT THREE<\/b><\/p>\n TWELFTH NIGHT<\/i><\/b> AND THE SPEAKER\u2019S PROGRESS<\/b><\/p>\n It was time for a new production, and the conclusion to the trilogy in the form of a commission from Attiki Festival Athens, BAM New York and Dar Al Athar Kuwait. The positive response to the work to date was of course exciting, but it was no time for complacency, and many questions were asked. What was the impact of the work? Could cultural collaboration really effect change? What kind of collaboration were we now engaged with, considering we had both been living in Kuwait for almost eight years, Sulayman as a Kuwaiti, and me not? How to respond to an increasingly conservative atmosphere that viewed the theatre with suspicion and all but excluded non-nationals such as myself? Did we need another Shakespeare? What about an Arab text unknown to western audiences? Different options were weighed, and we concluded that after two tragedies, a comedy was in order. I proposed <\/span>Twelfth Night<\/span><\/i>, a text that transitions from page to stage exceptionally well, and is also about a Puritan trying to spoil everyone else\u2019s fun. Malvolio\u2019s parting line, \u201cI\u2019ll be revenged on the pack of you,\u201d foreshadows the closure of theatres on moral grounds that would take place forty years after Shakespeare wrote it. The line also echoed where some of the Arab region seemed to be heading at that time \u2014 stricter rules about how men and women could interact on stage had just been introduced for example \u2014 and became the starting point for the adaptation.<\/span><\/p>\n
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