 A Skype talk from my dear friend and colleague Halina Mead in Morocco, my home, and I think we will have really quite an interesting international representation of commentary on Arab drama churches this afternoon. I want to begin with a book that I think has in a number of directions a particular relevance to this conference. This is the book you may have seen when you came in, a theater from medieval Cairo. This is a book that we published here at the Graduate Center several years ago and is one of quite an impressive number of books on theater from the Arab world. It's in my opinion the most important book that we have published and the reason for that is that, or the reason for my opinion is that this was really a book that opens up the Arab theater from a dimension that was virtually unknown in the western world. Let me step back a moment or two and talk about that perspective before the appearance of this book and just the discovery of Adoniel and his work. I mentioned earlier today that for most theater scholars and indeed for most of the general public back in the last century, about 50 or 60 years ago the general opinion even among informed theater people was there was little or no theater in the Arab world. As a bit more knowledge became available about theater in the Arab world this mistake of impression was replaced by a better but still mistaken impression which was yes there was theater in the Arab world but it was all product of colonialism. There really was no theater in the Arab world until certain areas in the Arab world were occupied by colonial powers particularly in England and France and then they introduced modern ideas of theater or it may be that maybe Egyptians, Iraqis, Moroccans studied in London and Paris and then went back to their home countries having been exposed to theater and created the first theater in those countries so that in many books toward the end of the last century or even the middle of the last century in both English and in Arabic you would find books on the modern theater in the Arab world the modern theater in Egypt or the modern theater in Laban beginning with theater begins in the Arab world with the introduction with adaptations of one year in Syria in 11 and in the 1870s and the assumption is there is nothing before that now in fact on the face of it we would think that really doesn't make a lot of sense and it doesn't indeed and there's all kinds of theatrical activity the most you could say I suppose is people didn't do more year in Syria before 1870 but certainly it was all kinds of performance and performing activity and so on even at that people could argue well there is not really an elaborate from a dramaturgical point of view to go back to the theme of the conference from a dramaturgical point of view there are not really elaborate dramaturgical structures in the Arab world well this of course doesn't make a lot of sense and it's not right either this one of the reasons why Ibn Daniel is so important that in the 90s it wasn't really until the 19th century that the work of Ibn Daniel was discovered, put together and translated from medieval Arabic into first into modern German and then into English what was discovered was that here was a known playwright and Ibn Daniel was never forgotten he was known as a poet and it was dearly remembered that he had also written other books but these were not, they were only preserved in fragmentary form here and there which had to be reassembled, the poems were rather well preserved and this is what the German scholars did was assemble the elements and put the plays back together again but in any case a trilogy of plays that Ibn Daniel wrote at the end of the 13th century, the late 1200s were collected and were published and much to everyone's surprise was seen to be really quite sophisticated plays now you think of the implications of this and they go in many directions one is that just from a global perspective the first plays of the late European middle ages that are singular plays that connected with particular playwright's names like Adagio and all come out in pretty much the same time so this puts the origins of what I call the modern theatre as far back in the Arab world as they go in the European world moreover these plays from a structural technical point of view are far more complicated and elaborate and innovative than anything that was done in Europe for another hundred years and this is where we get into another interesting question and that is the whole question of what is implied when we start talking about dramaturgy and start talking about dramaturgy's plural probably the first thing that one thinks of and not improperly is that of course the Arab world like the so-called Western world is far from monolithic nobody would think of saying well it is typical of the European theatre or maybe they would but they'd be incorrect it's typical of the European theatre thus and thus and so of course you can immediately go back and say well are you talking about the Irish theatre the Russian theatre the Greek theatre the Italian the Portuguese theatre these are all very different theatrical traditions there's a lot of inner connection and influence but they have very different characteristics dramaturgy play in many cases very different dramaturgical approaches but in individual countries people are much more likely to talk about the Arab theatre as though somehow the Arab world is monolithic as well and even if you in fact are speaking of the Arab theatre as opposed to the Arab Islamic theatre or the Arab Islamic world which reduces things somewhat if you're talking about the theatre from the Arab Islamic world of course you're talking about all the way from South America to Indonesia but even if you're talking about only the Arab countries you're still talking about a vast area much larger than Europe that is all the way from Morocco Algeria and Tunisia across into Central Asia to Iraq and that far east obviously that area although it shares a common general language shares does not have especially in the theatre any individual language we're talking about that again this morning and so there's a vast number of dramaturgies in the Arab world itself that particular aspect of dramaturgies even Daniel as an individual dramatist at a particular point in history cannot address but he addressed another very interesting idea about dramaturgies and I will elaborate on that a moment and toes with this thought and that is even Daniel left a group of three plays that he wrote under commission they were to be presented in the private theatre of a Cairo wealthy member of society who learned to entertain his guests with these plays we don't know the exact date it was right around 1300 the plays are a trilogy in a sense they were all commissioned at the same time but they're not a trilogy in a sense that they're all telling part of the same story they're three quite distinct plays and from a dramaturgical point of view one of the things that makes these plays quite remarkable and very different let's say in the early Renaissance or late medieval plays in Europe is that each one of these plays dramaturgically is a totally different structure a totally different approach from the other two plays the middle play is the simplest and it is what you might call the kind of processional play or a station play we sometimes call them in the West and that is a play of a series of episodes and essentially the situation is that the organization of the play is set up and then a series of characters essentially street entertainers of various kind magicians, sellers of potions animal trainers various kinds of people you might see in a street entertainment or a theater in New York, Cairo come forward and give their spiel as their little act and the play is really just made up of a series of these people coming forward and presenting it now from a dramaturgical point of view this is not terribly specific from a point of view of theater history it's fascinating because we have nothing else like this from either Europe or the Middle East that is the actual words what are people actually saying who are out on the streets doing a street performance in the 13th century this is really quite remarkable what kind of tricks what kind of tricks in the 13th century bear view in Cairo we know thanks to this play we really have a striking very specific record of exactly what they were doing and how they were doing it so in some ways it's the most interesting play of the three but not dramaturgically now the other two are very different the first play and by far the longest play has a quite complicated structure and I guess I would say that it is in general it is similar to the structure of a very elaborate European farce and it's based around a character who wants to give out his homosexual lifestyle and goes straight I of course must say I should have said at the beginning one of the most astonishing things about these plays is that they are very sophisticated from a literary point of view and they are very on scene again which seems a little strange for this period there it is in an Islamic country and the plays are really quite outrageous indeed when I began working on translation I had some difficulty finding a collaborator in a world that was willing to work on this material in any case Prince Vaisal who is the protagonist of this play decides he is going to shape up his life and get married he employs a marriage broker of course we see everywhere in rural folk literature the marriage broker goes out arranges a girl for him that he never sees before the wedding and then in the play when she unveils herself she is the ugliest creature you have ever seen again a kind of thing you will see dozens of farces and there are various elaborations his revenge upon her upon her impotent husband and so on and so on all of this is very much in an elaborate folk tradition and in an episodic style which is dramaturgically very far from the second play but very much connected with the kind of quasi-sequential quasi episodic structure of folk tales the third play then is something else again in this play again there is a very strong sexual element this play basically has to do with a young Egyptian man about town who falls in love with a handsome boy that he sees in the baths and pursues him through the play and it's a really a very it's by far the most complicated structure of the three and when I first encountered this play I was trying to figure out dramaturgically how did this play work what were the operating principles of how were the scenes arranged it came to me gradually that unlike almost any play in the western tradition it's Aristophanic it follows the Aristophanic cover that is to say of the of the opening Aegon the placement of Choricones the episodes which follow the Aegon and so on with that as a clue then I began studying around is it possible that in the 13th century a playwright located in Egypt could have known Aristophanes it's a long complicated story but the nexus of it is that yes there is pretty fair evidence that Ibn Danil and his intellectual circle had very close ties with the intellectual circle at that time in Byzantium where Aristophanes was tremendously popular at exactly this time now this gives rise to then a lot of other interesting questions and they have to do again with dramaturgy and the flow of dramaturgical ideas through the culture and I will only say that in addition to the circulation of these dramaturgical ideas around the Mediterranean that Ibn Danil himself was a product of cultural displacement in that like a lot of modern refugees he originally came from Mosul and Iraq Mosul and Baghdad in his youth were overrun by the Mongols and many of the Islamic population of northern Iraq fled to Cairo and settled there and set up the several artistic community out of which came these times so it's very likely that the dramatic traditions and the dramaturgical traditions that Ibn Danil introduced in Cairo at the end of the 13th century in fact came from Central Asia 20 or 30 years before and then were exported after that into Byzantium from where they moved on out into elsewhere in Europe so these plays unlock a whole way of dramaturgical associations which go not only spread throughout the Arab world but around the world in general and give us more evidence than we ever had before about first of all how important the Arab heritage is and secondly how the Arab heritage is not isolated but is part of a tremendously complex picture of global theater thank you are you going to introduce Khalid Amin? oh right it's a great honor to introduce Khalid Amin Khalid is wonderful to see you I wish you were here in person it's always a pleasure to be in the same situation with you even if we're not even on the same continent but I'm delighted to be able to introduce you Khalid Amin is a leading international star in the European theater he's located at the University of Tetuan and the director of a major international ongoing project in Arab theater and international theater and Khalid is going to speak on alternative Arab dramaturgies Khalid well before Khalid speaks he wants me to show you three clips of three YouTube links that he had guided me through so just hold on a second I'm new now and we're going to see you full screen thank you very much can you hear me now? thanks to all of you to Bahrain, France, Ita Selma, right away this is my first slide the new dramaturgies of Morocco countries of the Arab Spring have developed at the intersection between European modernism and post-modernism and also post-lonely life what we can call manifest decoloniality between the consequent failure of the avant-garde in part in Europe, in America and third of post-1968 moment and the refashioning of the capital in 1967 the 2011 so-called Arab Spring has indeed intensified or rather radicalized the previous Arab avant-garde a feat of modernism regimes of yet overrepresentation re-injecting more world theater in both Arab Spring here they applied three cases that I'm studying along with their bandit who responses and have potential for dramaturgical intervention and advising but we could have that performer as the main agent of the theatrical event and the use of media tertiary the three performances changed or changed caused the dominant dramaturgical forms and prespectatorship to emerge ending the boundaries of aesthetic view in brief relativization is back to the Arab stage after such return is less a return in the story the representation far away from intervening the fabrics of theatrical representation my question presents even when they heighten the awareness of itchiness personal stories are deployed on stage for many reasons maybe as symbolic witnesses the counter agents of its historiography re-initiating its elegance and those exclusions like in the case of Hamlet, schizophrenia also are a source of antipresence like in the case of Muadha by increasing the body of contemporary performance in both Arab Spring countries that deal with autobiographic material focused on notions of its vocation and paradox on the imaginative as well as playful narrativization of personal stories in the three performances under scrutiny is often seen by many Americans as authentic persons using people's actual words in a way similar to the verbatim theater or even women in protocol telmarine companies use professional actors rather than experts of every world and displays of personal narratives on stage demonstrate what a different urge to play with the notions of authentic experience to place the audience in the center of the game as the main agent of conversation in Muadha for example illustrates this the Muadha and the intersecting dance of all characters who live very special fragmented by they are united by a fragmentation posed by shocking and miserable reality that is brought yet waging an example between the personal and also the political this performance helps us follow the broken dance of these four disappointing characters whose projects are short and briefs are shattered which is the other existing templates its narrative brains of traditional history of Europe as well as images and elements from pop culture in order to produce emotional identification and critical history though the effects of the multimedia landscape for example live performance live music, the story in practically one frame telling the story in retrospect with the events of the past their health as present frame couples filter the present hour the present situation this allows you to edit her past modify it, alter it, reinvent it comment on it and interpret it and of course the director seems to insist that every story telling even based on facts maintains by revealing predominant perception the performance finds between you to be more specific how you will dominate the structure within everything that unfolds with the system more than simply a conventional form of conditional discourse that performance schizophrenia is also focused on the idea of different maybe it's schizophrenia creates a tension in the perception of the physical body of the second performer as well and her two dimensional representations on the screen and the backstage that remains unseen by the audience until the moment the very moment she breaks into one stage the interphase application deployed by our chief helpers who is originally a cinematographer but now is the character more dancing with her own comfort he span and grows the tension the actual body of the former adds to the aesthetic role he performs which is contrasted with the immateriality of the screen images of her very work with no appeal to both linear but is protected on the screen is characterized by agency and action the performance happening at the exact moment of its spring the brief exemplary instances like the whole study by this man also which is a character of transplantation if enslares the China monologues and all that happening exactly in both perspective at the moment so perfect instrument yes, just to jump to the conclusion that the style is akin the hybrid nature of American theater has emerged as a result of character negotiations between south and south east and west and, of course, liminality and hybridity have gone such urgent personal with theater but it shows no intersections the trajectory from the late 60s and had the more cruel and hardier the legitimization is revised on the present at the levels of form and so it's funny the legitimization is much more irresistible with theater being at the forefront not only the place of a narrative act in the hands of human budget but the narrative act itself both the theme and object of theater and the means of ordering the world once again my sincere apologies for being with you physically it is a deletion we say, the family is German-American we should be sure to talk about older than you why do you think this goes and how does the factory both drawn events that occurred in Syria since 2010 was continuously questioning and challenging international politics and, on a more social level the worth of human life is these analogs playing? why or what happens when answers are demanded and the individual takes center stage in a brutal regime ruled environment the speaker will briefly analyze the question of human agency in destabilized Arab countries and their theatrical representation outside of the Arab world by looking at two plays that can be read as documentary theater influenced by theories of the theater of the oppressed and Brestian dramaturgies and infused by autobiographical narratives thus these plays and performed on the European stage ultimately function at the intersection of political activism and artistic expression of trauma narrative although I have much to say writing a paper for this conference did not come easy the two plays that I'm focusing on today are Goats and the Factory and they have primarily chosen for their complex constructions and similarities as well as differences as previously pointed out both plays drawn events that occurred in Syria since 2010 other similarities are their respective use of theater as an instrument to address and maybe even change issues in the political, economic and social environment in both plays theater becomes a benevolent weapon that calls upon its audiences not only to witness but to listen and to act furthermore both artists Syrian currently living in Berlin however both plays as much as the playwrights themselves are fundamentally different Al-Aqda is considered by theater critics one of the most important Syrian artists today his widely acclaimed work has been staged globally but not in Syria or other Arab countries which makes sense as Al-Aqda's work usually directed by his long time creative associate Omar Aboussana must be read as a political opposition against the Assad regime and the ruling ISIS oscillating between the individual and the society personal narratives and historical facts the private, intimate and the public all of his plays ultimately address human tragedy Al-Aqda's work continuously strives to make the devastation visible the factory which premiered last month at Paktsolfa I'm in Essen as part of this year's Ufas to be Learned Germany follows Al-Aqda's continuous quest to uncover human tragedies so let us start with the alleged facts Lafarge the French domain client has amidst the war somehow managed to keep the plant which started its work in 2011 open while other multinational companies pulled out of Syria in the midst of the civil war Lafarge was able to keep their plant open until 2014 leading to allegations that the company must have thought that paid off jihadis according to most recent reports they are suspected to have paid only 30 million euros run by the French the company was most recently charged with complicity in crimes against humanity in this semi-documentary text Al-Aqda investigates the narrative with an Algerian journalist Mariam who is living in Paris and continuously tries to decipher the seemingly confused emails of the young worker Ahmad who was temporarily trapped in the 7th factory and one of the last 30 workers who were in the factory when it was stormed by the ISIS in 2014 the third character introduced as a member of a renowned Syrian family Firas who through his connections facilitated the company settlement in Syria the last character is Anwar a Syrian Canadian businessman who started in working started with working for the factory right before it and now is one of the investors Al-Aqda tries to eliminate this intricate way of interest and conflict in which all are guilty only concerned about their own success but ultimately also victims Al-Aqda does not judge but presents the issue from various perspectives trying to reach not only a wider audience but more so an understanding as to how this degree of corruption and criminality is enabled Lila these goats was developed already in 2016 as part of the international playwright program at the Royal Court Theatre in London where the play premiered in late 2017 the play stars more than 3 dozen actors and 6 goats exploring the function and power of propaganda during the conflict and yes the goats were established the Assad regime and is known for their high investment into television ultimately this major investment led to the distribution of what is by now widely known under the term fake news fake news is now a term coined by the current US administration that has already been well established since the late 19th century and has since then and since the turn of this century become more frequently used again in short the term implies the active and within distribution of false news and information as well as the manipulation of information channel often times the popular outlets such as television and social media to control politicized and gain economic as well as political influence and control Yesi herself a poet, dramaturg, playwright and documentary filmmaker creates a bittersweet narrative she puts forth in her own words the lies we choose to believe in goats Yesi straddles the often times very fine line between truth and lies the real and the surreal needs and wants in a small village the families of the young men who die in the quest to free the country of terrorists are reimbursed so to say with a goat generous gift for every young man who dies as a martyr is part of a government program that equally wants to thank the families as well as encourage them to support more young men to enlist by even and lowering the age to join the military from 18 to 60 Yesi too bases her play on real time events as there were indeed and I quote more than two goats distributed to the families of young men who fell it was really hard finding the source for that but I did which is that it's pretty much two of the only images and the sources by doing so but I did find an injunction newspapers that it was mentioned by doing so she emphasizes negotiations of the self and identity as much as truth and fiction in her play particularly it has come right at the time who more than any other character exemplifies how roles are defined and constructed and in being performed help to reproduce the subject and to reproduce the political order the performance of this character who is ultimately able to turn a suicide into an honorable death of a martyr underlines how the deceit spreads to all social structures even those who have suffered and lost most in both plays the view from inside of Syria is offered or at least attempted to be offered both play writes use real time events and the conflict as their source text by drawing on occurred events and utilizing personal narratives the authors simultaneously draw on traditions of autobiographical performances and documentary theater in the tradition of life writing here used as an umbrella term narratives are integral to the construction of identity here encourage the gender and all others can be drawn upon but for my purpose here I will just briefly remind us of what Paul recurse reading Paul recurse reading of the intersection between memory and imagination where memory is on the side of perception whereas imagination is on the side of fiction recurse points towards the repeated intersection of memory and imagination warning not to ignore the fact that sometimes fictions come closer to what really happened than do mere historical narratives where fictions go directly to the meaning beyond or beneath the fact here particularly the relationship to the audience is decisive in life writing in contrast to other theatrical forms audiences are assigned a series of active roles which are connected to the function and possibilities of life writing according to Deidre Aheaden the vast majority of autobiographical performances have been concerned with using the public arena performance in order to speak out attempting to make visible the night or marginalized subjects or to talk back aiming to challenge contest and problemize dominant representations and assumptions about those subjects in both places either Paul or a large portion of the artist involved is personally affected by the Civil War thus clearly foregrounding the question of the self of the performers as they ultimately represent themselves whilst becoming representative for others having two points to the importance of the performance as part of theater and life writing once more emphasizing the role of the audience and the interaction between the narrator performer and the spectator audience underlining the visible presence of the performing subject thus the performing I and the represented I are the same allowing art and life to intertwine through the performance skillfully furthermore just through the performance of the subject that the life story continues the audience here is invited not only to witness the story but also to become part of the performance life story as much as the performance itself in turn becomes part of the spectator's life story moving life experiences and transformative processes to center stage as compelling and marginalized narrative to the foreground one of the recurrent themes of life writing is trauma Katie Caruth notes that the traumatized carry an impossible history within them or they become themselves the symptom of history as they cannot entirely possess while trauma is problematic when raising questions about truth as personal memory is concerned which can be flawed and the play presented essentially circumvent this problem so to speak by utilizing techniques of documentary theater Max Thothard Clarke argues that Gerbetem plays flash your research nakedly where material is left raw veritim theater focuses on the rawness and direct usage of the material ultimately leading to a very text based direct address play as we see clearly in our task the factory emerged in the 1990s veritim theater is according to Derek Pagé a functional theater with a purpose for more precisely a political purpose broadly opposed to the status quo thus veritim theater is a political theater technique that emerges when it's needed Edgar and Stafford Clarke's terminology Richard Chechnya stated that art is cooked and life is raw making art the process of transforming raw experience into political form veritim theater is a contemporary manifestation of documentary theater staying with Chechnya's food analogy veritim is the raw material and documentary great theater is the cooked mean a fitting description to me for the work via these goats as for intricate play uses the murder of fact fiction the personal the public not only for the construction of the text itself but also in the dramaturgy of the play as the characters are continuously performing and retelling narratives the madness and terror of what is happening continuously drives characters such as to retell the story to make it fitting to make sense of the terror that has no meaning to conclude it is precisely here that Eric dramaturgy is on the European stage and located at the crossroads and a continuum of intersections and countries and negotiations a theater that is both documentary and trauma narrative political and utterly liberated in its artistic expression Muhammad al-Altar and Iwai Yaziz both powerfully utilized the unheard voices of the Syrian people in order to retell again a story to draw attention to the humans involved in these atrocities in foregrounding the individual story a challenge European audience to consider a life for a goat and a factory for a nation a couple very interesting play now I'd like to introduce Dalia Basri I imagine many of you know Dalia is a Egyptian former playwright with a long connection to the Graduate Center we're happy to welcome her back on this occasion she's going to talk about a subject that she has both lived and performed in the theater of the revolution Dalia so if you've met me more than one day you know I am the woman with a hundred hats today I am wearing the hat of that the crate so I'm going to talk a little bit about one form of primaturgy that emerged in Egypt in the last ten or twenty years and has been very powerful after the revolution and I'm going to mention one of my pieces in the middle but I'm looking at that form which is the sketch comedy and this is a quote that I mostly translated about how theater and the revolution and the anti-revolution work but I'm looking at is the concept of sketch comedy or sketches and how to present pieces of work compiling together and they are usually seen as sketch comedies and there is a major name in the theater world his name is Khaled Dalaan we'll refer to him a few times today not all of this possibly so the form of sketch comedy allows for a lot of flexibility and one of the performances that was really hip and happening when I went back to Cairo after finishing my work here was black coffee and that performance he used a lot of already working actors who did not really work or make it through so they were already trained as actors many of them are graduates of academies and theater programs or whatever and he is just enrolling in his program often I just show you this this is how he advertised the performances so you don't see the faces the eyes or the names but he offers them as stage on stage where a lot of critics come and watch his plays and he also developed this interesting concept that now is very popular in Egyptian theater so if we're performing and Heather Ruff was in the audience as soon as we finish we want Heather to be with us on stage and we take a picture so he used these pictures and these are pictures with the current minister of education culture important actor personality so every single day you see something in the paper about this so-and-so person who came to watch the play and there's the picture he performs in a 99 person theater 99 seats and the seats are free but nobody could get them so it becomes this amazing hype everybody wants to see the play that the first lady watched or that minister or that famous star or whatever you can lie because the tickets are free but they're not available and if you're friends with Heather or anybody in the costume you can get the ticket so maybe they got out 10 to 12 tickets a day out of the 99 and sometimes they wear empty seats inside but they're not releasing the tickets so it's a fascinating promotion skip but he is presenting this work as a revolutionary theater while most of the people who are in the picture with him are the people who he went to the square to house so this was a very flexible module that allows for improvisation if any of you have been in any acting class you come with totally people let's play on this theme let's create this piece of work it's flexible, it's easy Heather is not available today fine, we just cut this kit we go to the next one it allows us to comment on situations or whatever is happening so that module established something as what is the successful module for creating youth theater or hip theater as I was preparing for this presentation I was thinking about work I created using that module and I could not put it under the same title sketch comedy because it was not comedy and then I realized it was not just me but also two other theater makers not coincidentally females who created work immediately after the revolution in what I'm going to term for now sketch tragedy so the sketch tragedy for the purposes of at least this presentation is some work that happened immediately after the revolution my piece called Khawadifat Tahrir I translated it as Tahrir stories but that's when the Shabaik called hers Hakeemit Tahrir which was Tahrir tales Iblayla Salaman's work came under different iterations no time for art 0.1, 0.2 up to 0.6 were all using almost the same format of improvised work but in this case most of it was also a documentary some of it was verbatim accounts and it was allowing for this flexibility I presented this piece in November 22nd or 3rd in Hanagir Art Center which is still under construction so it's only one kilometer away from the Khawadifat Tahrir square but it also looked like a square there like a rubble where there's no soil working next to like jack hammers and I used the ritual as the way to transport them to help create the energy in the space and we used candles because we're outdoors, we cannot use candles cannot use candles in the Egyptian stages ever after the Venice wave fire so many people died and then they are not really improving any of the work in the theater or the proper like fire extinguishers candles, they're smoking cigarettes backstage next to the pepper so in this particular performance we were able to use candles and created an honoring of the martyrs, the names that were known at the time were 182 names and they were still counting the names and finding southern martyrs afterwards and we followed each name with the drumbeat just to honor the passing later I wrote about four different performances in this book if you want to know more about this performance because each performance changed based on what was happening during that day how many actors were able to make it to the theater because there is a fire in that place or there is a problem in another place so we can talk more of that to stories in the article in that book Lelia Suleiman created work immediately after the revolution as well and she kept changing the piece so it was more an updated version some of the core elements stayed the same and you can see it's almost the same formula where there's some rejection and some people are sharing their stories eventually it became a documentation of the atrocities of Skaf the supreme council for armed forces because that was not reported anywhere in the public media on television in the newspapers and theater was our way of conveying that after a while it became even harder to do this within the alimony space that was open and she was able to carry some of these pieces abroad you can see some of them have a German translation an English translation Tahrir Tahrir opened in May of the same year and Sunduz at the time did not think of herself as a director but she said I'm just collecting stories and together I just want to continue to document what happened in the square since then she's created some amazing work mainly working with people and carrying or recreating their stories on stage I'm not sure if it's the women or the time and not saying all women do a sketch tragedy we will look at other options in a bit but back to the sketch comedy for me one of the really popular performances in 1980 and above which means people born 1980 onwards so that's kind of the younger ones and the problems of the youth and if you look at that formula the word of mouth of course you have to take pictures with the famous artist and the audience and that performance had so many lives it all had the same name so initially it was against the Muslim Brotherhood and particularly when they were in government and then it was not that government anymore and the performance continued they dropped actors, they dropped scenes, other scenes came but they kept the same name but you can see some of the publicity and the media changed all the quotes you will find on the screens are from articles I wrote these are mostly from Ahram online and you will see my trajectory as a critic until it ends it ends with another of these performances and you can just look at the links for them if you want to read more of them because I'm going to go through a lot of them I wanted to see the performance and there was standing room only which meant floor room only they had 500 people in the which barely there was 300 people and so many of the young people around me the performance by heart knew the songs, knew the jokes but they went back and they wrote their friends and for them it addressed something and I was baffled why are you here it is doing something it's working but what is it doing exactly it's possibly the only space where they feel there is some critique of what's going on even if it's back theater it's not really well structured so I think of it as a cultural phenomenon a cultural phenomenon I have a few articles a few paragraphs from that article that you can look at the detail online if you want to in that performance initially there were four women and two of them got married the performance went on for quite a while life changes but they used those two women and so many scenes not really well you can see that I didn't like it that much and it's on my mind I'm looking back I don't think I like anything about it they're working on a new production now called Cinema 30 and it's using the same one that opens actually today or tomorrow but they already released some pictures from the performance and it's also other tabloids in my description media in one year he had three performances two in government theaters and one in a private university called Future University two of them were represented in the experimental festival so I got to review both of them and back to Hamlet the theme we started the day with there is this show where they call and win the millions or something like that and he created Hamlet as if it is a game or show he dissected the play into 10 scenes each scene is done in a style one is historic a little like fancy, ballet and in most of them he really missed the point of the scene so I'm all for Hamlet all what he wanted to say was actually in the play what is a more powerful line then there is something in the state of Denmark he missed that line he missed the line about actors and acting though they wanted people to appreciate their art in the play he cut those out and he made it into whatever 10 scenes that he was able to do and you can also look at my review of it that was not very favorable the other performance was even more problematic for me it was called After the Night and they have one scene where a woman is raped and the whole comedy is about how many men attacked her and they found a lot of comedy that situation another performance recently supposedly written by a woman but it was also the same formula of device theater where they get a lot of fun there as two football commentators describing harassment scene and if that is not enough they do this scene again as if it's an Indian act twice and they think this is a gender sensitive performance presented in a women's festival the performance that ended my career as a critic and I'm not sure if it was coincidental or other circumstances is me critiquing a similar performance by our colleague Dina Amin which used the same idea it was not as dramatic but in its attack of women I just leave you with the final line from that review and we can talk more about some of these ideas in questions and all these reviews are Ahram online and my name is if you want to look at those reviews thank you very much we have up to about 10 minutes people would like to ask questions so maybe I should let our panelists say there are things they would like to add in these few moments we could do that so would you like to just because I was just just because I was just asked GOATS has already published I'm pretty sure there's even a copy here because it had one of its early readings here at CUNY earlier this year I think in Rosine and the factory I do have the German text I did pull the dramaturg card for this one because otherwise you're not going to get the text it's not published yet but I assume if you come with a theater background you might be able to drop them an email and get a copy of the text what's the current situation of the physical thing, the factory is it still running? what's the situation right now? no it's not running since 2014 now I think it was September 19th 2014 and just most recently I mean it was the first time that a major company was actually had to stand for those crimes against humanity so it's something that was widely still being discussed in Europe especially because it's the French that kind of was an issue as well as the country that is most open to words allegedly most open to words are people and then it's from the inside so but now it's closed but it's pretty much a waiting start to continue its work it's a very good shape I spoke to a lot of Syrians so it's very good I promised to talk about catharsis and time did not allow and I'm just thinking about the notion of purification and feeling all this the feelings and identification and that feeling a little bit of relief and I'm thinking that this is a dangerous module in places that are going through our evolution and if you are relieved when you're still in the theatre you're not going to leave theatre and create change so I feel like this module and the way it has been used at least in the sketch comedies is a dangerous module at this time but I'm also thinking about my work as I use this like affecting the audience and I'm trying to remember that I fall in the trap using melodrama and people crying or whatever but I remember immediately after two people came to me and said we were in the revolution and thank you for reminding us when you were not and today we are traveling to Charmiche where the president is hiding and we're going to be like surrounding his palace or whatever so I feel like it worked differently in that module because maybe of our intention maybe we did not really use release or comedy in the same way the other performances did so I felt like I'm not as complicit as I thought I could have been Any questions or thoughts, comments from the audience I'm just curious if in your experience with Syrian and Egyptian artists and with Moroccan playwrights as well if people feel that artists feel the burden of telling the political story or if people feel that they are able to and free to tell a very personal family love romantic story what do they feel the burden of the world on at this point as artists and the the artists I've worked with in Germany and yes and no I mean because there is again the thing with funding like if you want to be heard or you want to produce a certain play you do have kind of to fit somewhere in and I think it's a burden but it's it's also something they need to do and it's the possibility they get so they have been excited as artists most of the time way before they've been exiled out of the country due to that political situation so they've already have faced hard censorship so now it's really and I mean we spoke about that yesterday it's this this being in between it's always that state of being in between of being wanting trauma and equally not wanting to be only a victim or only kind of just screaming all the time so I suppose in short in Germany I feel that there is way more structure to it and people have more possibilities and my UK experience it's very text based heavy towards explaining yourself so it's also something about theatrical traditions of the Cairo scene because this is what I'm familiar with and the political lens is on so if you're doing something non-political it's a political choice the latest play I saw and it was a really painful experience was about the soldiers so it's like army propaganda so it's not about the revolution but it's trying to say we love the government we love CeCe and so like you can I'm not free from it even if you don't try it I was just back from the International Festival of Experimental Theatre in Cairo and one of the one of the most talked about plays at that festival was by Julia the new play by Julia Pacar who is from Tunisia I which is close to Morocco I realize that's not Morocco and I really don't know if you can for example I think Pacar is the leading dramatist right now in that area and Pacar's work is very political, very personal and very loyal and the new play is one of her darkest plays and it has very much to do with how without being obviously said in contemporary Tunisia it clearly is reflecting how a repressive government encourages casual cruelty all the way down in families in relationships between people in authority and partner government people, partner police men and it really is a very uncomfortable play really is sort of one scene after another people treating each other very badly and so it is clearly a political play and yet it comes across really as a much more personal almost family play it's certainly is not allegorical it's very personal I am actually teaching the Cairo trilogy to my students undergraduate students and one of the questions and for those who don't know it Marvin said that it's vulgar it's like really vulgar especially the last last week and well and my students often ask what was it in the medieval Cairo of the 13th century historically that allowed that kind of possibility to perform plays like that to sort of create that environment you know it feels a little bit like the lower east side in the 1960s right, the neighborhood in Cairo what was it that allowed for it really was that Ibn Daniel was in a very favored position the the dynasty then was a not very stable one he served under two or three different leaders but he was a one-time corporal and he was very well thought of and he was yellow friends among the merchant class one of whom commissioned these plays and the plays are commissioned for prior performance in this in this guy's home we know the name of the merchant we don't know anything about the performance conditions but imagine for example somebody an obvious totalitarian government say Louis XIV a lot of really obscene plays were written at that time and done in private theatricals the the we think of the Marquis de Sade but that's just a tip of the iceberg it's a very repulsive society but it's also a society that if you've got the money and the position and the authority then you can get away with anything and indeed I suppose one without going into detail can look at a lot of totalitarian regimes in the Middle East and recent years where you couldn't be surprised to find all sorts of extreme things going on privately and even being staged privately to be honest that really is quite this much and this was not something you would have done up in the streets kind of streets are still very good if you go to the right streets so simply I wanted to hear his perspective about the Moroccan theatre about that maybe to a lady one before you tell us what the Moroccan theatre is there was the last question where they spoke about the theatre right the political aspect of theatre in Syria and Cairo and I was just curious to learn more about the Moroccan space and that space right now and creating sensitive topics about the Arab Spring so in Moroccan theatre at the moment how do you create sensitive material and how is it done yes fine let me just explain one thing the experiences that are in showing that they focus mostly on the personal but for me the personal is very much political what happened during the 20th February movement which is our version of the Arab Spring is that it upturned out a kind of $1 box we repressed stories or simply exploded and put on stage then we can combine all these experimentations during the last 8 or 10 years with the verbal team as well we applied the theatre as well with other kind of brands of documentary but for me they are very much very much late so we got into a little 5 to 6 minutes break so we are almost on time about 5 minutes past 4 we saw the game and it was a very significant thank you thank you very much thank you thank you