 Good afternoon everyone, and welcome to the first session of what is I think a world first actually, a symposium on our dramaturgies and my name is Peter Acasor and I'm the Executive Officer of the PhD Program in Theatre and Performance here at the Graduate Centre, and I extend a very warm welcome to all of you who are coming along for the channel today but also to my colleagues who are lined up here from the left, Professor Frank Hinchgood who's the Executive Director of the University of the Theatre Centre and the co-organiser of this programme and Professor Martin Carlson, my colleague from the PhD Program in Theatre who is, as you probably all very well aware, a distinguished scholar of Arabic Theatre and I think somebody who's very much helped make this happen today and I also welcome our two colleagues from the American University of Beirut, Sahas Asaf and Professor Robert Myers so a very nice welcome and Samar who's been organising this and all the work for us really very much so thank you very much for that as well and just very quickly this is an initiative of an exchange between the Graduate Centre and the American University of Beirut it was an exchange initiated by our two Presidents, President Chase Robinson and President Polo is it Hakuni? Fadl Puri Puri, so I apologise for my Arabic pronunciation this is an ongoing exchange of which we are in a sense the first part of so it's very bizarre and rare in our world of theatre academia that one is asked to begin initiate an exchange program through the bridge of theatre but that isn't quite what has happened here so we've been very fortunate to receive support from both universities and we've had a number of initiatives already as a part of this exchange included a prior visit, a play reading by Sahas Asaf and also a number of our faculty and our students including Ashley Maranaccio have gone to AUB to present papers at a conference there Marlon also went to that conference and our colleague Jean Grant Jones and in a couple of weeks time a group of faculty from the Graduate Centre are going down to Beirut to do some lectures there to meet colleagues there and talk about the future of this exchange so this is indeed a fortuitous opportunity and a rare opportunity to receive support from our universities to talk about neuroplasticity so I'm very much looking forward to the conversation over the next day so I'll just very quickly pass on to my colleagues if you may have a quick welcome to them Thank you Peter, was it on? I'm not sure Thank you Peter, Thelma, Frank, Marlon for putting this together It's wonderful to be here at the theatre maker in Beirut, Lebanon at the American University of Beirut where Robert and I, we co-directed the theatre initiative which is part of this exchange that Peter was telling you about Our thanks to President Chase Robinson and Provost Joy Connolly and also our Dean Nadia Shea, Dean of Arts and Sciences at AUB and for looking forward for a really pushing forward for this to happen It's wonderful again to be here, thank you so much for coming It's great to participate in this conversation and discover together what is at the theatre Thank you Okay and we're going to ask Robert to start the first presentation We have the time limit being 12 to 15 minutes so I hope that we'll be in there and that we really will have to perhaps interact with you We will have the full contributions online or we also plan to do a small publication So I'm Frank Henschka from the Martin & Seagulls Theatre Center We organized this event and we put it together with Thelma and also with the University of Beirut that is the PhD program in theatre So thank you all Robert and here we go It's about the clock is starting So, so how do we do it? Yeah, we'll just call it for a second Thank you The slide show here again The slide show, that's why it's called the slide show Thank you very much I appreciate your coming And thank you I'm not going to use the mic Oh, do I need the mic? Yes Okay, I need the mic So Frank is like Senate or Grassley Five minutes Thank you again I'd like to reiterate my gratitude to Martin to Frank to Peter Equisol to Gene Fram Jones to all of our friends here at CUNY We look forward to many more collaborations and exchanges The dramaturgical model that I would like to describe to you today briefly is one that I developed with Sahara Sop at the American University of Beirut in the last five years I'm simply showing you some images from these productions We believe that it is a singular model in the Eastern Mediterranean Middle East Le Bon It began in 2013 with our first production of an English language version of Tukus al-Isharat wakaha walat rituals of signs and transformations by the Syrian playwright Saqala Wanus which was produced by AB where we both teach and work We've refined this model in more than half a dozen subsequent productions including Wanus' Aleh Tisab The Rape of 2015 production which was also staged in English I'll watch your step I'll show you a bit of film from it later A site-specific faux architectural tour of Beirut's Handaq al-Rameek neighborhood performed in Lebanese colloquial Arabic which was inspired by the Argentine Griseldo Gambaro's play about what is it for foreigners? Information Information for foreigners Thank you And Al-Malik Lear which was translated to Lebanese vernacular by Sahar Nadasab and others and co-directed by Rachel Valentine-Smith of the Faction Theater in London Let me show you another image from it with Sahar who's not only the director who performed the role of Ferdalia and our most recent production another site-specific Lebanese vernacular version of Garcia-Lorca's Blood Wedding which was staged in the Lebanese village of Hamana and many of you who are here today actually came That was the opening event of an international conference at AEB that was cosponsored by CUNY on Latin America, Al-Andalus and The Arab World which traced cultural, linguistic, literary and theatrical continuities among the three regions and this is an image from the play The dramaturgical model we have developed at AEB involves using a production course as at once a practicum in which students have a conservatory style experience in which they work side by side with seasoned professionals and a dramaturgical course in which we engage in translation studies and practice, textual analysis theater and performance history visual studies and workshop techniques guided by Sahar Asaf who is the director of the production and by me I work as the producer and dramaturg and we work closely with local professionals including lighting designers stage designers, costume designers composers, etc. My role as producer is to help conceive of projects to raise money to oversee the budget and to help promote the play My role as dramaturg includes introducing students to a range of topics associated with the play we are staging, acting as a curator for the director and designers engaging in textual analysis and adapting the text that I co-translate with Nandasaf assuming it's in English so we go both ways English to Arabic and that's an integral part of what it is that we do is we necessarily are working with many languages which in and of itself is a very sort of I think unique experience in the creation of the dramaturgy I'd like to give a few examples of how this process has function and our most recent productions make a couple of observations about what it might say about contemporary Arab dramaturgy in general for rituals and signs of transformation I was the co-translator with Nandasaf the text into English which as I said is the second or third language of many of those who were working on the play nonetheless since they could understand the Arab original well which was written in formal Arabic my explanations of the process of trying to find an analogous rhetorical register in English that really required or became a form of textual analysis we also invited a series of scholars to speak on range of topics that included the concept of public private space in the 19th century Arab city stage design and concepts of space such as Bachelards theories and a Shakespeare scholar who came and talked about the echoes the Shakespearean echoes in the play from measure for measure 12th night for our production of one this is the Ray with Palestinian and Israeli characters set during the first Intifada which was also staged in English we discussed the different registers of English used by Israelis and Palestinians in the script you see it in Arabic trying to find some analog in English is a very interesting issue the obvious example I would give is there is a lot of biblical use by the Israeli characters and therefore I linked to talk to Nanda about using a kind of rhetoric derived from the King James version of the Bible as in fact a certain kind of register for the Israeli characters we also viewed films about Shembed Palestinian resistance fighters read and discussed where Obayehos that's the Spanish playwrights play the double life by Dr. Balmy from which Wanous' play is adapted and we presented a lecture by a scholar who has written extensively about the history of torture since one of the play's central motifs is the use of rape as a means of interrogation this is another image from the play to the extent possible in my role as dramaturg I work diligently to make sure that neither of these plays are circumscribed within a universe defined by my own or others conceptions of Arab or Eastern theater or dramaturgy our references like Wanous' these are both by Saqala Wanous both the rape and rituals of science and transformation were thoroughly cosmopolitan therefore our references include Shakespeare Brecht modern Spanish theater feminism settler colonialism at the same time they are informed of simply local elements such as the frame-tail Palestinian proverbs authoritarianism of Arab regime Zionism etc with watch your step which I will let play here in the background a bit as I speak which was inspired as I said by Gambar's play it's a costically ironic premise explaining Argentina's Gerasusia to foreigners so we searched for analogues to the Lebanese Civil War and we investigated a number of possibilities including putting the play in the Lebanese National Museum putting it in the A.B. Archaeology Museum before settling on the concept of a faux architectural tour walking tour in which the guide ignores blatant traces of the civil war Sahar located a neighborhood in the center of Beirut you're looking at it now it's predominantly Shia neighborhood with bullet-ridden buildings a ruthless church and other clear physical markers of the recent conflict I should add that doing site-specific work is in part a function of aesthetics of necessity where we have very little money and we don't have a performance space one aspect of the play is the insertion of actual scenes that were taken from research with students, their parents etc of things that had taken place during the Lebanese Civil War so what's fascinating among other things is that brought Sahar and our students and our performance into contact with people who lived in the neighborhood among them an elderly woman who had lived there for a long time during the Lebanese Civil War and she actually had these extraordinary stories that Sahar incorporated and she performed the role of a haka-wati of a storyteller telling what the neighborhood was like during the Lebanese Civil War so our final production here is a blood wedding and Sahar will talk about it more extensively tomorrow it was in a certain sense the culmination of the work we've done together I suggested that we do the play originally for several reasons first, students in world literature responded to the play as if it were about their world even though it's of course written by a Spaniard second, my academic mentor Maria Rosa Menocal from Yale her major work is about the Arab role in medieval European literary history and she reconfigured literary history through her work and Marvin and I had had a similar conversation about of course that he gave on Islamic theater from Indonesia to Morocco and how you see necessarily the world in a different way so the idea was to do the play as a function with a conference that would look at this new configuration and the play became the initial event which is to say it was the manifestation in practice of the theory then we had a conference about it and that's something that we've tried to do is to marry scholarship with plays I guess I'm just about here at the end but let me yeah okay let me give you a few closing examples of the ways in which staging blood wedding in this village in Lebanon provided what I would point to as sort of enlightening dramaturgical practices that have sort of provided us way forward. First of all, as the basis of the Arabic translation used for our text some are used Langston Hughes English translation supplemented by the observations of a Spaniard who spoke excellent Arabic second we began thinking of this work as a sort of parody of an extravagant Lebanese wedding with SUVs instead of horses and sequences filmed by drones this very common at Lebanese weddings where the lovers might run away and they were followed by drones and do it on the AV campus and we realized that people would never get beyond the idea that they were on the campus and we began searching for spots and Sahar went well I have friends have opened a new artist house in this village in Lebanon let's talk to them and in fact we ended up doing it in the village and it seemed as if it could not have been any other way and yet it was this process aesthetics of necessity finding whatever we consciously chose to set the play in the early 70's shortly before the outbreak of the Lebanese Civil War as a means of the evoking 1930's Spain emphasizing the fact that a feud between families is a microcosm of civil war and that no one in the 70's in Lebanon knew a war was coming and that a war was preventable this is a very sort of Brechtian idea that you could intervene you can intervene in history it did not have to happen this way and theater can tell you that one of the things that we used was LORCA was of course a visual artist and musician a composer a poet and a dramatist who drew on a range of literary and artistic sources and therefore that allowed me as dramaturg as curator for the designers the directors those participating to create a kind of universe a museum from which an archive from which they could draw the final thing and I think this is really telling is that some are located in abandoned cinema in the village and this is the perfect scene for setting for the final scene of blood wedding which is of course a surrealistic scene in which the lovers are running away and one of the staging ideas that we discussed was one that came from me from having seen a John Jeseron play in the 1980s at La Mama annex in which actors ran up on the screen and then off the screen and whatever and it was quite innovative at the time and I think it gives you a sense of the extent or the range of influences and what it has taught me and I hope reinforces that the fact that we're working in this challenging environment and we're defined by the fact that we really don't have that much money and we have actors of varying experience and we're drawing on as many things as we can is it's reinforced to us that circumscribing era of theater within any rubric a simplistic rubric is absolutely reductionist and there's a lot of very creative work and we're glad to be here to talk about our attempt to do some of it. Thank you. So we have time for one or two questions directly to Robert and then at the very end we might have nobody. About why you spoke so fast. Might that be one of your questions? Please. Yes, sorry. And we need to need the mic so we have it recorded. Sorry. I'm sorry, could you just clarify when you said that you don't have AUB does not have its own theater space and you have to do site specific work? Yes. There is an auditorium we're joking we should do arsenic and all lace there in Arabic. It just you walk in and it screams high school auditorium and there was some money which was earmarked in the 70s for the construction of a performance space but according to Peter Shevaia who is still there who is an actor who trained at the Old Dick people came to him and said right when the war broke out that we need this money for a hospital or needed for medical stuff and of course theater always gets shunted aside and there are discussions we've had them for the last five years and then of course Peter Sellar showed up and went oh it's great you don't need it and we were like thank you Peter we really appreciate that but no there's not really any appropriate performance space at AB oddly there are two very good theaters at Levin East American University and there are theaters nearby which we have rented that's one of our options but it becomes quite expensive. One more question? Do you want to do any English or Arabic? That's a great question I think it came up most clearly in the case of Aletisov the rape why is the play being done in English and I think our response to that was twofold one is that we were internationalizing we're in the process of internationalizing internationalizing the program thanks in large measure to Frank and Marvin and others who gave us a platform outside and it was part of a translation project it's a multi-lingual environment the play had not been done in 20 years and even when it was done in Arabic 20 some odd years ago one is disliked the production enormously because Shawwad Al-Assadbi the Iraqi director had cut out all of the Palestinians so people we did get comments it's an amazing play it's a powerful play why is it in English and I think that in part our response now is well it's a multi-lingual environment and we're working both ways in both languages had we to do it over again perhaps that play we would have done but the problem here it's interesting there's a what the playwright calls an unintentional alienation effect caused by the use of Fusar on the stage which is to say especially very pointed material like this if it's not in the vernacular then people are going well this is this distancing mechanism so Wanus' play is in Fusar it's in a high register so but it's a very very very key important question and thanks for asking thank you so much I'm sure we'll have more time to connect I will now ask Lejma to come thank you Robert good afternoon thank you very much for this invitation I really I will not be fast because English is not my native language it will allow me to be a bit slow and also searching sometimes my words I'm very glad to be here because I thought this this question about dramaturgy in our region within the Arab and I would say within the speaking Arab countries it's a very important issue and I wanted to share that and I am very glad to meet you and to exchange about it so through my journey as curator and dramaturge I'm based in Brussels but associate curator to not bad but kind of logic and very logical relationship with many artists in North Africa and Middle East I have been documenting and questioning works instead of only looking to end the result as a curator I wanted to be part of the process and to be close to many choreographers mainly the Mina art scene is a rich and highly creative one that's for sure and all this year we have been looking observing documenting not enough documenting that is one of the key questions of our performing art is lack of archive of the contemporary performing art but there is an although with this creativity and this richness there is an ongoing struggle for sustainability it's a kind of a very like a red line for all this region that we all struggle to be to go on with creation we go to other spaces we don't try to stay in black box because not only because we don't have them but because those black box are significant and are related to main institution and sometimes and often the independence want to make a statement and be outside those venues and be on a roof the Medina of Marrakesh be on public square to block the traffic I know a choreographer and block the square of Marrakesh to say it's we are here we are not apart we are not like the alternative narrative we are part of the society so this link with the society being outside inventing location inventing format that goes with those locations I have seen it in Cairo, Marrakesh, Beirut with many of artists I worked with or I presented it's in a way bringing other alternatives that are they will confront and they will be against the official one the one that we the one that are within the institution within our ministry within our where the money is in fact because finance is an important aspect of it so we those artists are in a public space in a non-expected places so they have to come where you don't expected them to come that's a real line within the dramaturgy of those artists they have a very real strong relation with the society they are not elite they are part of the society although that sometimes it's difficult to to be accepted and that we can transfer code that are within the performance to the society they have this very closely to the society I was in Marrakesh many times I am associate curator to Marrakesh dance festival and associate curator to D.K.F. Cairo and I have been working with the many artists that are in a way obliged to be operators that is also a main line so those artists should take many tasks many positions they are not only doing their creation they have to be engaged because there is a kind of a way of making this independent work part of the big claim the big protest so I try to make this clear so how this pieces challenge context question urgency in a transformative time and translate this growing component of conservatism in our region in the world in general and because conservatism is not only in the Arab world is also in Europe is also here so they with the artists and with creative performances they bring freedom and they could like create a space for the community where we transfer this claim in a poetry in a common and like a possible space like creating kind of utopian space but this will charge the community to go on like from individual resilience we will create a common collective resilience they have in within also the work of different choreographer and have been following and helping us drama group this red red line about how can you be in relation to your past and take this different multi-layered past and one like if you see that in Morocco all these dances from from and all these dances and all the I mean the breathing of these dances the spirituality of these dances so there is kind of material that comes from the past and then they will transfer it and mix it with the actual condition because the condition that well I mean the present condition of the artist and then transfer it on stage so I call it contextualize and decolonize contextualize it's not to be said but it's like this I mean you are in it or you are outside but that's what we have so I am I am Algerian so we experience also the 90s but I mean what is happening in Syria we are all connected with through our smartphone or through friends or through all what the artist or writer like Khalifa and so on so we are in a context that is very difficult this context like in the case of it can be a war time like in Syria but it can be also censorship harassment in Cairo and that is a drawing from Selma Tarzi she is a filmmaker and when she is an activist also and when she was blocked in a protest and suffered from harassment directly physically she started drawing she is doing drawing and now she is preparing a performance that's the context the context is also towards all this condition and towards this difficult moment and more than moment in Palestine it's more than four generation there is a way of how can we be resilient and so many possibilities many format they in that format here a choreographer just stand up silently for hours and then slowly people came and stand near him and he had nothing and he had just a small bag and the police came and so on because in Istanbul front of the parliament and that is a way of how you go with your context you talk about and you transfer it and you create with and that is another piece from Taufi in Marrakech when they want to block the Marrakech protesting because they had kind of no recognition of the art so they just 5 minutes so I should so that's contextualize decolonize the relation with the past reparation what called how can we repair the pain and the sufferer and that is in the case of colonialism and postcolonialism he is an Algerian-French artist and I wanted to share with you this just speak very shortly and I might have more time later on to develop that three choreographers I want to share their work with you it's not that I mean there are many working on this field but these three I choose them because like Dania Hamoudi is from Beirut and she is like a theater educated and she came later on to dance and there is a kind of booming in dance because maybe the body language is now so important because text is difficult communication with text is difficult and this body is just like booming because it's so charged it's contaminated and so on stage they are just booming but there is different way of bringing these performances so Dania Hamoudi from Beirut she used to work with Zopap for the people who know Zopap collective and she is just like against the time she is just like freezing her body it's a kind of reaction toward the complexity and the density and the big the big pressure on the individual and in this case on women and she is just in her performance called Mahalli and in my location or to rest on slow it's just like the minimal gesture and freezing her body that is Dania Hamoudi Hamoudi with Dania Hamoudi I wanted to bring this link between intimacy and a landscape of emotion instead of looking to this landscape the physical landscape that is completely dense and very difficult so there is a kind of creation of emotional landscape through the the silence of it and then I will from Damascus and living now in Paris he did a solo called Displacement and that is another line in his references is about how can you be rooted in Syrian heritage and culture and from that creating a new identity when you know lost location when you know there is a kind of absence of ownership so Mitkal he did a solo called Displacement and then he worked with two other dancers and they did a trio for him it's kind of trilogy solo trio and then he worked with 20 women to make it like a community project he likes also to work with a non with non dancer with people that are that are not formatted in dance school why because usually when you go in education and you you are graduated from parts or other dance school you have kind of references so if he has this dance school references he wanted to be open to someone who is not educated in this format in Tofib is it you the last one from Marrakesh so you might think Marrakesh Morocco it's fine there is no war there is it's okay it's okay it's not the case because if you just publish everything is in fact controlled any text any flyer you put there is a real censorship in a very discreet way and when we are on public space we we always like ask permission to be on public space and then we don't of course we never get it but we ask it and then we do it we do our performance but we have always like people civilian in coming around and checking what we are doing and controlling and asking questions so there is this kind of dream from Tofib to have a kind of golden revolution and that's why he worked with Hassan D'Axi who is a visual artist and I will one minute so that's the also another important maybe comment on those words is that usually in this with all this project I could see that there is kind of loose boundaries between disciplines so they work more easily with visual artist with the musician there is less kind of expected way of doing it because there is kind of invention going on and that's why these loose boundaries in disciplines brought many many rich performances and other way of looking to it if I can or later maybe just a small video from it I had for each a video but I will show where is it maybe we will post the link maybe we can take one or two questions let's take the microphone so we can hear you I will send you all the links thank you thank you for coming first I have a comment and then I have a question my comment is that I am also a fan of some of the audience she is featured in marketing mentoring for teenies daughters which is currently on youtube my question is specifically about it's a broad question about how does activism tie in with dramaturgy more specifically how you know from the the dramaturgy of activism how it's tied in with science specifically you mentioned you're contextualizing some comments I mean there is one important thing is how if you document the fact as an activist you are documenting the facts but then there are many ways of documenting dramaturgy is which kind of which ways are you going to use from which position so when I am working like Selma also where is she from where she is taking this fact and how the reading can be so and then other layers who can be who can read this and what he will see like you have another example is working a lot with fact and with the testimony from prisoners and so on so all her work in dramaturgy is to be able to re-write the history but this history will say something about our present and our future that's Selma any one more question I am curious about in Brussels what is the given some of the anti-Arab and Muslim sentiment going on in Brussels and in Europe is there how is it received plays just cultural output about Arabs I am curious with a lot of curiosity it has a kind of proximity of question I will give you an example when they bombed Gaza my neighbors they already organized themselves to have some solidarity action we are so it's not to be proud of my neighbor it's because we are connected every time so when Erdogan is doing his campaign you can go walk in Brussels and you will see who is for Erdogan and who is not so for me Europe is really like a very important mirroring of forces and like equilibrium that we can find so we are so connected we are not anymore far from Palestine or Syria I am living in Brussels but I am really very often in discussion and there in Marrakesh and Cairo but it's sometimes I don't need because you know what's happened and the Viber is working 24 hours it's always like this I receive images I receive documents this solidarity and this exchange of ideas is very important because that's what they left us this is a very big question this is why we here maybe you can also have a follow up I should tune the time but that's a very important question thank you so much so we move on to Emma can she just say thank you should I start with the academic paper I'm writing or should I start with my own story or should I start with so many stories of artists in the Egypt, Palestine I personally know and others in London but you can actually find their names and know their stories today so I'm a storyteller okay I'm a storyteller so I decided to tell it from a story that I wanted to do for 14 months my brother and I met each other the reason was that I participated in a dance performance that was displayed probably when my brother saw a photo of me on Facebook from our performance I covered in mess he held me shouting how could you dare to dance in public it is not respectful for a girl to show her body like this it is not our culture it is not our culture it is not our religion I hang up the phone playing in our society myself included for my brother's angry reaction being on stage being on stage that night that night when then I go with 25 other women it was not an easy decision to make neither for me nor for any one of them for all of us it was a long journey of learning how to accept our bodies and defies the norms of fear and sadness for so many years although I was so proud of being part of this performance I couldn't invite anyone from my family to attend and as much as I wanted to share the photos of the performance with the people I love I couldn't I had to keep these photos hidden on my Facebook profile reset their privacy and remove the tags that links them to my account it was the same as I hid my passion for dancing for so many years because of the fear and shame being on stage that night was a life protest against a culture of shaming women's body in a specific and dancing in general my story is the story of other artivists resisting a culture of shame and fear in Palestine, Egypt and Tunisia I don't know how many of you can recognize these photos this is actually the Reda the first Reda in Egypt and for so many years they Reda and Farida were the symbol of dance somehow a respectful kind of dance that would grow in dancing and also the black cat in Palestine so Susan A. Reed in her article the politics of dance touches on the fact that dance has been always closely connected to the construction of national identity Reda states that dance is a powerful tool in shaping nationalist energy and in the creation of national subjects which becomes more evident in many post-colonial nations where the dancer of the valorized national dance comes to be idealized as an emblem of an authentic post-colonial past in Egypt this was the case with the Reda True the one on the left which first began as an independent folk dance company in 1959 but later the state took over and became part of the public sector and on the Palestinians the same project of utilizing that cat on the right as a symbol of national identity was also carried out but there is a huge gap between this photo and the status quo of North Africa and Middle East because for so many years the only estimated kind of dance was the folk dance and no other dance form was accepted or respected however after the transition the situation has been drastically changed with contemporary dancing entering the theme as a way of documenting people's life and telling their stories one of the one of the artists named Mejha Shuwara from Palestine and the documentary was actually that was that it documents the life of Mejha Shuwara and the subtitle is CCC right stage documentary film was directed by Thomas Jarvis in 2014 about Mejha Shuwara by the opinion from Tim B. Banser and the former political prisoner who was trying to run a dance school in Ramallah Palestine however being on the Dubai lands of Palestine Shuwara is not only confronting an Israeli server is also confronting a culture of shame and fear because many of his family and friends doesn't know or seem to appreciate the kind of the kind of resistance he's trying to achieve so from many points of view dance is an activism but the other people don't seem to understand this goal another dancer is Reema Baridasi she was born in 1995 and she is a contemporary dancer she made a film about the Kalendaya checkpoint this is actually the link to her film and here she doesn't always speak about the problem of the people who has to go through the Kalendaya checkpoint every day but also she's speaking about the woman's was the checkpoint and was the occupation in general this is actually a quote from her own personal facebook a woman rich, this is a movie about a woman rejects confining to restrictive social binaries as she struggles to dance over one of the most first and politically intense zone of the West Bank Kalendaya checkpoint this is a piece about a politically oppressed nation who further unfortunately represses this woman this is an actual quote from her facebook account and actually you can see more of the words that she she participated in and I'm sure you have seen Reema Baridasi because there is a famous video of her dancing in the streets of Italy yeah going to Egypt this is another contemporary dance performance was directed by Sharif Gezi and it features four women dressed in red while using some of the masculine some of the masculine instruments like the Goblet drums known as Dabla or Darabocke and also Taktib they use the Taktib the stick fighting also known as and the feminine anklets the dancing and also the dancing of the Egyptian dancing I see maybe you can share the links and this is the performance my brother and I didn't speak because of it it turns uncovered in nice the stage and setting in theatre in 2017 it was directed by Zosia Josemond in collaboration with studio we in this performance there were 25 women from different ages and different cultural and economic background this is actually the link to the whole performance and there is a documentary about the film the performance of these links to again Egypt those artists contemporary dancers are trying to explain the public experience and make contemporary dancing accessible for everyone so one of the platforms for implementing such such projects is Mahathos for contemporary art and Ballerinas of Cairo contemporary art actually performance go to the metro to the public squares and to different places when you wouldn't expect them at all and they will just start dancing and Ballerinas of Cairo they are the Ballerinas from after about getting outside in the space of opera to the streets wearing these colourful dresses and dance between the public this is actually an expressive photo to normal Egyptian women and the Ballerinas just sitting in the queen trying her shoe Ballerinas of Cairo came with the main mission of competing harassment and making art accessible for all and going to Tunisia I don't know how to pronounce this in French but the English translation is I will dance despite everything this is a project that was initiated by Bahari Dany Ahmed and other dancers the interesting thing is we don't know the name of those dancers they just come to this photo to the market place and start dancing in the space actually this project in Tunisia started in March 2012 the revolution according to Bahari they were just performing in the streets when some customers interrupted the performance saying that go inside your theatres the streets don't belong to you anymore that's when the idea of Danseh Syedwayans or dancing citizens came to Bahari and he actually dance with other dancers in the street to make art and dance accessible for everyone and there's a series of these videos and some of them they are in the market place and some of them they are in the metro station and in other places they are just dancing in front of the Ministry of Interior and they have been important but this is the same place where they were interrupted just to mention other art and dance festival in Egypt I personally go through every year and they are very active and successful for the public and sometimes you are you don't know where to go this festival or this festival so one of them in the Egypt downtown contemporary art festival Mahragan Gostevalet with no master and actually it is different because it is not only about but also about other forms of art today like films songs and interdisciplinary art and also it focuses on people with disabilities and the main aim is to make these festivals accessible for those people so anyone with disability can just call them to facilitate to facilitate going to the festival other contemporary dance festivals are contemporary dance night Lady Draxim Mahra CDN and Theater is a must it conducts so many workshops for creators art directors and to be continued actually for so many years we are just going to workshops and to be continued for free and artists from around the world they came and conduct workshops for everybody who wants actually in one of the workshops it says that above 18 someone who wants he was about 14 and he just participated and the last one is creating more festivals it is a site specific dance festival that explores the ancient and old historic spaces in Egypt in a different way through dancing and that's it, thank you I have one question or one thought can you keep the mic any I hope the mics speak loud, I'm sorry I kind of started going into it but I was wondering so most of the dances here the ones that want to learn like non-traditional dances so did you say they're mostly schools or most guys get together to learn or yourself taught do you use it for the public to know or do you guys kind of underground so how do you guys dance how are you trained as a dancer are there schools that are trained or is it underground or do you just educate yourself for workshops actually it's a mix of all what you mentioned so we have a dance school in Egypt one dancing school a very contemporary dancing school and also other dancers are self taught other dancers go to the workshop facilitated by some of these workshops to get some training and conduct workshops later and most of the the performance like the one uncovered in dance school first workshop and then we came back performance after the just one comment from that it's an important issue there is almost no schools there are initiative that are supported and done by choreographers like Karima Mansour but it's a really main issue because usually they are educated outside in Europe or in the state and then they come back and there is also a question how can you some of workshop create a training so those are questions that we are all discussing there and they are a big gathering with all these artists thinking about the school that we may become in Morocco and that we do the link between the list and other because this link is quite also needed in the mobility of artists and mobility of knowledge thank you thank you so much and there is much more that we talked about maybe even in the university so let's go to speaker Rashi Rashi and I am from India I have just completed my master's in performance studies and I am very happy to graduate center of Unipah Halimina so I was in Janine for the last two months and I was working with the freedom theater I was interning with them I was on a fellowship on human rights and it was my first introduction actually introduction to other theater and so my research was based in understanding how the cultural resistance of theater productions work and how does how does the resistance actually perform so I will start with a with a small video of their play The Siege Aqas di Kahujo Sigharet Manthoro So I will start with a with a small video of their play The Siege This was the play called The Siege which I saw last year in NYU's Kerbal The play was performed by the freedom theater and it's based on the Siege of Bethlehem Church of Nativity military in 2002 during the Second Intifada when 200 Palestinians, along with 13 armed freedom fighters, took refuge inside the church and were trapped there for 39 days with a limited supply of food, water and medical help. The play is a retelling of the stories of six of those freedom fighters based on their personal narratives about those 39 days in siege, their struggles and debates about the decision to continue their fight for justice or to surrender as a payoff for ending the siege. The play opens with an enthusiastic tour guide, a native of Bethlehem, who takes the audience on a tour to the site of the siege inside the Church of Nativity. On the stage, the set is a close replica of the church with intricate detailing of cakeways, old-looking walls and ornate lanterns. It is a realistic play with all these elements, the set design, sound effects of gunshots, tans and loud speakers, video projection of actual footage of the siege and even and even the smell created through the incense smoke. Creating an affect which transports the audience back in time to a depiction of what happened inside one of the holiest sites of Christianity during the Intifada in 2002. The play, written by Nabil al-Rai and directed by himself and Zoe Laferty, brings to us a different narrative of the event, which is a counter-narrative to the mainstream propaganda by Israel. Most of the western media depoting during the event in 2002 had deported this incident as a terrorist attack on the church. The play on the other hand carefully crafted through research and interviews with the now-exiled fighters. Now-exiled fighters breaks away from either glorifying or demonizing the fighters as terrorists. The gunshots, cries of a wounded soldier, shouts of anger and frustration. The violence and the general loudness of the play creates an atmosphere in which the reality of the fighters trapped in excruciating circumstances is portrayed. There are scenes where these armed men are seen fighting boredom as they play games, talk about delicious feast in the times of absolute hunger, have conversations about religion and philosophy, and remember Mahmood Darwish's coffee and Mahalo's cigarettes. The fighters come across as normal human beings caught in extraordinary situations. The encounter between the audiences and the performers in a live theatrical setting allows a relationship to form between them and from where the audience can relate to the characters and the narrative. In a realistic theatrical production like the siege, the audience removed from the actual time and space of its happening, witnessed the reenactments of the historic event. It is this reenactment and the idea of witnessing that disturbs the consistency of the occupation. Performance of the siege in New York was thus mired in controversy and attacks that attempted to ban its performance. Some of the actors were denied U.S. visas to come for the show at Skirgoj. The freedom theater, its actors and the Palestinian population in charge are accustomed to such routine restrictions and controls by the Israeli authorities. The Israeli occupation functions in a way to create an all encompassing continuing siege for the Palestinians. The movement restrictions through physical impediments such as checkpoints, roadblocks and permit system controlled by the Israeli military administration create an architecture of occupation that governs every aspect of the lives of Palestinians. It's geographically divided, it geographically divides Palestinians into isolated blocks that captures the society's cultural and social fabric. Moreover, a systematic attempt to erase Palestinian memory and history functions to disallow a Palestinian identity and the demand for a Palestinian nation to exist. In the face of such tactics of occupation, the fluidity of theater, its power to hold different spatial and temporal implications through corporeal and narrative manifestations of transference, allows it to be a force of resistance towards the siege that the Israeli occupation constructs and the epistemic side that it performs both literally and metaphorically. The freedom theater embody such power of theater and resistance performed both through its place and through its functioning under conditions of occupation. The freedom theater, located in the middle of Gen. and Deputy Camp, was started in 2006 and has been functioning since then with the aim of building cultural resistance against the Zionist occupation of Palestinian land through theater and arts. In an interview with the artistic director of the freedom theater, Nabil Al-Dahi, he spoke about how the freedom theater itself is a story, a narrative about making art, particularly political art under occupation. There are some of the other pictures from the play. Freedom theater's production, storing to different cities and villages within the West Bank, is another such act challenging the siege. As the place and the artists travel within West Bank sharing stories of Palestinians living in different zones that face different forms of military operation, the performances bring the Palestinian communities closer to the realities of each other. The process facilitates construction of a shared Palestinian identity. One of the freedom theater's projects, which specifically focused on such an exchange was the Freedom Bus, which started in 2011. As part of which artists, activists, journalists, et cetera, would travel to different cities and villages within West Bank with the aim of building alliance and promoting collective action. In this freedom drive, they used an interactive form of theater called Playback Theater. Theater through which the actors gathered stories from the audiences and performed those stories as improvised pieces at that location. These stories would then travel to other villages and cities and would be performed at these other locations. Through this process, the artists associated with the freedom theater gather a number of stories that are later interwoven into a play. One of the plays that came out of this process is a production called Return to Palestine. The play directed by Nisera Miranda, leaves into stories from the general refugee camp and city, Desheh refugee camp in Bethlehem, Bukhakra in Gaza. In the small video, the play revolves around the story of a young boy named Jar, who is an American born Palestinian who comes to Palestine for the first time. Through Jar's journey, as he travels from U.S. to Israel to West Bank, the audience witness how the occupation functions. He goes through interrogations at the airport, racist attacks, checkpoints, and other forms of violence. Jar's narrative and his travels through the West Bank bring together the real life accounts of Palestinians living under occupation that were gathered during the freedom buses tour. The play is choreographed in a way that it can be performed anywhere on stage, street, any other place. It is minimalistic in terms of set design and costume, like music through the musical instrument out creates multiple effects throughout the performance. The actors stand in a small rectangular platform, which is the performance space, and the theatricality of the play is brought out through the movement and physicality of the actors' bodies. Actors use Jack was like force inspired my moments to create various visuals of deserts, wind, waves, the road, journey through the fire valley, and so on and so forth. Movement thus holds a central focus in the play both in terms of its performance through actors' bodies and in terms of the process of making the play, which included working on the different stories and different cities brought together seamlessly into a single narrative. The play for the audiences within the West Bank resonates deeply. It provides for them a moment of attachment as they see their lives being performed on stage as well as an understanding of how others are facing similar oppression. Return to Palestine thus becomes a way of bringing together a shared reality of the Palestinian communities, community and a collective Palestinian consciousness to the people. Lastly, for this, some more pictures of the performance. Lastly, for this presentation, I was also asked to present the work of some other theater artists from the other world whose work interests me. So, I would talk about a recent play that I saw in Jinnin called London Jinnin. The play was performed by Faisal Abu al-Rija and Allah Shadi, Shadi Hala, two comedians, theater artists from the West Bank who believe in the power of comedy as a means of resistance. Faisal during an interview about the play quoted George Orwell saying, every joke is a tiny revolution. The play, which is a white comedy, is a narration of their personal experiences. While the direction of the play that collaborated with another Palestinian theater artist, her name is Paula Ibrahim from Golan Heights. The play is set in an immigration office's waiting room. The play in London Jinnin is a humorous portrayal of the experiences of these two comedians from Jinnin who grapple with questions and uncertainties of migrating to another country, whether to move to London, a city that promises a successful artistic career and the luxuries of the first world, or to go back to one's homeland where familiarity and a sense of belonging works strong. In this waiting room, the two worlds collide as memories of Jinnin wrestle with the aspirations and dreams of living in London. The play moves through the varying emotions, making certain subtle social and political comments and delivering into philosophical questions about home and identity, all this while keeping the humor intact which allows a humanistic connection with the audience. The simplicity and minimalism of the form of the play complements its rich content. Empty chairs lie in different formations, transform the scene from that of a migrate immigration office to an airplane. The preparation for seeking asylum is in itself a challenge for the two Palestinian protagonists, from preparing documents to having a convincing premise for migration. Allah and Paisal discuss their options and dwell into the possibilities of playing the stereotypes of for both Arab and English sensibilities. For a Palestinian Arab man, convincing case for seeking asylum in UK would be if he was gay. Paisal talks about the small, simple things that he misses about home, like the one last barbecue that his mother prepared for him before he was leaving for Britain. In Palestine, the idea of one last time, which is to do anything and everything as it's for the last time that one is doing it, dominates in people's consciousness as the occupation creates a reality where there is no guarantee for what the future holds. To this, Allah shares his extreme fascination with Dr. Martin Shoes available in London, which have a lifetime warranty. Contemplating whether to buy the shoes or not, Allah tries to find out if and how the warranty of the shoes could comply with the shoes taken to Jinni. Thank you. I have one or two questions or remarks or thoughts, and we can give you the mic so we can hear you whether we can or not. If you could say a little bit more about the freedom theatre. A little bit more about just a little bit more about the work of the freedom theatre. Sure. So the freedom theatre, it was started in 2006 and was co-founded by this half-Palestinian, half-Israeli activist Juliana Meikhamis. And actually, like the history and background of freedom theatre was much before 2006 as its mother, Arna Meikhamis. She was the one who came to Jinni in, sorry, during the first Intifada during 1987-88 when she started this project for the children of the refugee camp where she was using arts as an alternative education means and also after a few years she called Juliano there and Juliano and Arna they started this theatre called Stone Theatre in Jinni refugee camp which was destroyed in 2002 and unfortunately Arna also she had cancer and she passed away in the 1990s. So in Juliano went back to his, he was a professional actor, filmmaker and doing a lot of other things. In 2000, like when the Second Intifada started and Jinni was like one of the main areas where like it was the one of the main resistance spot and there was like a lot of attack from the Israeli forces and it was a complete siege that happened inside Jinni refugee camp. Also in a lot of houses and all were destroyed at the time that is when Juliano he came back to see to see that most of the kids that were working with Arna in Stone Theatre they had either become resistance fighters and they were martyred like most of them there were only two of Arna's kids who still survived and so what Juliano he actually made a documentary film called Arna's Children and in that he talks about how two of the kids was still alive during the the recording when he came back in 2002 and during the beating of the film one of them, one of them was killed and so that Juliano Arna's Children kind of brings the whole story together and after the film was produced the money that he got he and there was another Swedish activist Jonathan Stanzik who was in Palestine in Jinni in 2004-2005 and they got together and they thought that there is a need to have like a cultural center in Jinni refugee camps especially after what had happened with Stone Theatre and for the kids of Jinni refugee camp and that is how freedom theatre started in 2006 and unfortunately in 2011 Juliano was also right outside the theater but anyway the freedom theatre has been like doing a lot of work like talking about cultural resistance making production which talk about like the occupation from Israel but also occupation of like you know the corruption of Palestinian authority and also like what's happening in the society and all those things they've been working on like continuing to work on Juliano's legacy and Arna's legacy. One more question or remark Can you take the mic? Sure. I'd love just to talk a little bit more extensively about how the difference it was to bring the scene and just to kind of give this audience the politics of Palestinian equality anywhere in the United States. So this play I've seen last year and as I mentioned I have saw it on this curve wall and when I went to the freedom theatre in Nabi who is the director, the current director, artistic director of the theater and he's also directed the siege I spoke to him and he told that so the siege was actually supposed to be performed like it was supposed to premiere in 2016 with another venue in New York and it was the performance was cancelled the last minute they weren't allowed. In 2017 and finally like things progressed and they were I mean that's what he told me that once they were even like you know since they got the commission there was a lot of pressure on the New York University there was a lot of pressure to not have that the play and a lot of actors were not given their visas and they had like they had to get other cast and Nabi also keeps talking about this idea of baiting and he says that whenever we are supposed like as Palestinians whenever we have to like go on a tour international tour the the time period that we always keep in in our mind is like we go to the airport probably like two or three days beforehand because we know all the all the hassles that would happen for us during security attacks and these are all those things so that's that's what I know they also had the same performance in Britain I think and there were like a lot of protests outside theaters there were a lot of pro-Israel groups who weren't happy with the the play happening in Britain so there were a lot of protests happening and the theater site was at that time when the stage was being performed in New York you know getting a lot of abuses on the Facebook page and it's like thank you we'll have some time after the presentations also all to talk to the panelists who come up front but thank you so much thank you so much and I would like to ask Ashley to come she's a student here at the PG program in Seattle thank you would everyone you won't hear me if I speak without holding the mic yeah okay great talk acting training project um thank you so much for having me Robert Sahar and to our faculty Peter Marvin Frank our faculty here that's joining us in my cohort and friends here it's exciting I'm going to be talking a little bit about some of the research I did this summer in the ash tar theater in Palestine so I'll be reading a bit showing some slides we are not producing artists we are creating leaders in society the words of the late Julianne American based founder and artistic director of the Freedom Theater in Jeanine Palestine still resonates seven years after his assassination this month the Freedom Theater will relaunch at its professional theater school after a year and a half hiatus the professional theater school is an intensive program that offers professional acting devising and cultural resistance education to the youth in Jeanine the northernmost city in the west bank which has seen numerous conflicts over the years and continues to emerge as a hub for Palestinian culture this presentation will look at the unique relationship that youth theater has on shaping communities in Palestine by drawing on specific performance examples from the ash tar theater in Ramallah the Al-Rawad cultural and theater center in Bethlehem this past summer I received a CUNY Provost pre-dissertation fellowship to conduct research in Palestine and Jordan and my presentation is based on a very small piece of the large body of research I collected over the summer otherwise in 2017 a Palestinian central bureau of statistics report showed that 30% of the 4.95 million people living in the west bank and Gaza are between the ages of 15 and 29 the unemployment rate among these people has reached 40% disproportionately affecting those between the ages of 20 to 24 on top of that the unemployment rate of college graduates was nearly 56% a number that has grown steadily from the previous year these sobering statistics combined with US president Donald Trump's recent cut of 200 million in aid to the United Nations relief works relief and works agency for Palestinian refugees Iraq set up what would look like from the outside of framework for despair we as cultural workers do not have the luxury of despair says Dr. Abdel Fattab Soar founder and director of the Al-Rawad cultural and theater training center when you have a child who's eight or nine years old talking about their dreams in a storytelling session and they tell you that their dream is to die because nobody cares they've reached the summit of despair because they don't see anybody trustworthy and the political promises from politicians have only caused more oppression this is not the legacy you can leave to children and generations to come Al-Rawad is located in the Aida camp between Bethlehem and Bejela in the central west bank and its staff work with the youth of Aida to create what they call quote beautiful resistance the belief that every occupation and resistance against injustice is a beautiful act of humanity choosing culture arts and education is one way of doing this quote the aim is to save lives to inspire and to give our children every opportunity to express themselves in the most beautiful and creative and nonviolent ways says Abzuar quote miracles will not happen on their own we as artists need to make and provoke miracles this is our responsibility Al-Rawad offers children in the Aida camp training in theater, visual and finance additionally they offer vocational training and often create jobs for those who take part in their programs similar to Ashtar and the freedom theater many youth who partake in the community at Al-Rawad evolve into assuming leadership positions at the organization when they become adults Dr. Abzuar spoke of additional challenges that Palestinian theaters face in the creation of work highlighting the lack of financial support including funds that are only allocated to fly in international artists to do one-off shows and projects with the community as opposed to giving money directly to the organization to build infrastructure and execute ideas and projects of the local artists with their own community additionally an overwhelming problem that both Palestinian cultural leaders and those working with Syrian refugees in Jordan are currently dealing with is negotiating around funding for projects that don't support the youth or mission of the organizations for example Al-Rawad was offered $5,000 by a large NGO to create a show about AIDS when Dr. Abzuar expressed that the transmission of HIV and AIDS was not necessarily a pressing issue in the Aida camp and that needed to be addressed in the show about dental health the water crisis education or the occupation is more relevant the money was revoked in many cases large NGOs often hold the purse strings that allow for theater projects to be realized NGOs functioning as dramaturgs in areas of conflict is not a new phenomenon but with the current refugee crisis it's notably notably increasing detrimental and even downright dangerous as NGOs often employ non-theater makers to delete projects that often ask young people to perform traumatic stories of displacement and violence to meet the United Nations sustainable development goals without providing the proper mental and emotional support there is an ever-present robust and continuously thriving theater and performing arts scene in Palestine that creates various genres of work including classics Shakespeare, dance theater and oral traditions inspired by Hakkawadi a centuries old Arab storytelling tradition with roots that can be traced throughout the Middle East the stakes are high for theater makers across Palestine just last month on August 9th the Said El-Michel Theater and Cultural Center in Gaza was razed to the ground by an Israeli airstrike the building had been one of the last cultural spaces to bring music, dance and theater to the residents of Gaza shortly after the bombing hundreds of artists and community members gathered on the ruins to perform and show strength and solidarity the space has also been the base of the youth group for the Gaza branch of the Ashatara Theater since 2008 a five-year educational program for young actors founded by actors and writers Iman Awun and Edward Moellam in 1991 Ashatara was the first theater school in Palestine it offers young people ages 14 to 24 rigorous training in acting techniques physical theater theater of the oppressed as well as dance as well as chance to develop and amplify their leadership skills beyond the stage this past July the nine graduating students of the Ashatara Theater helped coordinate the fourth annual Ashatara International Youth Theater Festival which brought together artists and theater trainers from across the world to participate in 10 days of workshops showcases collaborate with other Palestinian organizations such as the Yes! Theater in Hebron the popular theater in the Alamari refugee camp and collectively devise a final performance together the Ashatara International Youth Theater Festival provided a rare opportunity for both Palestinian youth and internationals delegates traveled in from Russia, Poland, Germany, Norway and the United States for cultural exchange and to build fellowship and solidarity through physical theater and movement exercises and improvisation students work to transcend language and geographic locations challenge stereotypes and train and devise theater pieces together festival attendees spent 12 hours a day together in classes rehearsals watching performances and eating all meals as a collective this experience of living in tight quarters for 10 days with performers and theater specialists from across the globe had a profound impact on all its participants inspiring new friendships collaborations partnerships and unbreakable bonds that are maintained through regular social media contact and Skype calls long after the last event of the festival this experience also allows for solidarity to be created between Palestinian and international cultural workers theater students put into practice the lessons they've learned in classes over the years regarding physical preparation performance techniques and moreover physical endurance beyond the psychosocial impact that theater has providing youth with structure and discipline and instilling them with a strong work ethic and professionalism is of utmost importance to the Ashatara staff on the night before the festival opened during one of the nerve sessions following tech rehearsals for Pierre Gent a new ad Arabic adaptation created by Iman Aoun and email Andres Saba an alumnus of Ashatara Saba the director and Mashu Kapustina the choreographer set and costume designer there did not hold back in providing honest feedback to the students quote there's no excuse to not have your costume changes down and to not know your choreography remarked Kapustina Saba called in several of the students who we're not giving them all good we're not giving them all reminding them that in ensemble productions everyone's responsible and one weak link or bad attitude can ruin an entire production the bar is set high and Ashatara students are expected to not only reach it but surpass it each of the young people seem to have an understanding of this and we're working extra diligently to prepare for opening for the youth of Ashatara creative expression and political resistance are deeply interwoven every festival gathering including the most mundane bus rides evolved into a party with traditional dapka dancing and singing quote our spirit will never be broken and our culture will live one of the youth proclaims as she dances on a bus while passing an Israeli checkpoint quote we will sing and dance our way to freedom on that particular evening the bus went through the checkpoints without being stopped this would not be the norm for other rides but explain that due to Israeli travel restrictions in the west bank well a lot of youth have never seen the sea before in pure gint there's a lot of talk about water and the ocean so it helps students imagine a lot of elements of water are missing in our daily lives it helps the youth to talk about it and to see it on stage also this fantasy element is important because our lives are very ingrained in the reality and concrete gray blocks so seeing something that encourages you to think and to imagine and to travel somewhere else with your mind is very healthy and important quote art can be a very strong tool of revolt and fighting back against depression but it can also be separate from that adds Amir Zabadat who plays the title role of pure gint political art does not need to be as direct as a poem about the occupation or a painting of the colors of the flag when you break people's expectations and smack them in the face with something new that's when you start making change when you give them fantasy even if people have a negative impulse towards it it does something end quote similar to other areas of conflict throughout the world theater in Palestine is imperative in providing a space for imagining alternatives and new features Palestinian youth are using theater to challenge expectations the expectations the world has for them and the expectations they have for themselves as Michael Balfour Jenny Hughes and James Thompson Wright in performance in place of war quote the imagination is the first stage of creating or recreating an external world that has a life beyond the body and generating material and social connections that reinforce protection and resilience of individuals and communities end quote Ashtar al-Rawad and the freedom theater and other programs like these are providing a space for youth to not only imagine the future for themselves but to also create it thank you and I'm pretty disilleged about your life as a playwright and how you work with the U.N. and the White House yeah I did you're right absolutely I have a history of working I started in NGO this is years ago before I came to school before I came back to school and we did a lot of the work in collaboration with the U.N. with the White House and I actually left the I left the organization because I found a lot of those practices problematic and against the nature of the work so yeah it's a problem it's a problem here and it's a problem across the world it's this larger problem of arts funding lack of arts funding and lack of giving resources to the artist as opposed to having other people dictate with the White House as a playwright I'd like to submit anymore to like the U.N. and like that one with that process of life it wasn't I didn't submit directly to the U.N. it was through organizations that do it you don't submit there's no as far as I know there's no direct submission policy to the U.N. it's it's you make the connections through organizations one more thought or remark or question good and so I think yeah since we really I would like to say all the practices that we have and kind of kind of have a front and we have an open an open discussion or talk to people and we can ask for more additional questions whether we have half an hour or something and we'll we'll just sit down first thing we're going to share my up here which is here right now and just a a general sure best way to the sub company else you just another question here is a general question um are there ways between archives performances of Arab inspired plays like what ways that we as audience members can we view them do you know if there are just you know the year performing arts libraries for example um I know do you take the microphone or something I know no deep deep deep in terms of the plays this summer from Eshtar they're they're on HowlRound on the we did a a live beat of everything so you can find them archive done with HowlRound all of the plays from the festival maybe other stuff can you see the place Robert can I see your plays yes close up yes most of the productions we have done our archive but we have a Facebook page theater initiative at the American University of Beirut and also a webpage which we try to update um we're currently working on um a sort of final cut of the film that's based on blood wedding is the the most recent thing that we have there but we have um a great deal of material associated with all of these productions that I talked about today that are there and relevant in so far I know that um Elham how this Egyptian corridor are initiated um platform called how to archive into it and there is also it's within some collective and festival like Decay and Memshi festival in our case there is they have um um Facebook that is um very true but we will find out on this so thank you so for please give them so we have that um Decay um Memshi Memshi Memshi from the future I'm sorry most of the performances have been done I'm sorry most of the performances have been done but most of the performances have been done um um yes our ours are and uh I'm built uh to go back to this question about translation which I didn't really adequately answer because I didn't have time um uh certainly the plays in um Arabic are um a subtitled into English and when we performed at least the rate we projected titles in Arabic so that people would not feel excluded if English was not you know one of the languages they spoke and in addition to that a number of the scripts themselves um have been published or will be published there's a collection of uh one news place that I co-edited and co-edited it's coming out from Yale early next year and then another from Burrill of political plays from the Levant and so you can actually look at the texts uh there too um but yes the short shorter answer um is yes their subtitled the long answer to to the translation question is that the American University of Beirut is an English language university and yet we're in this very interesting moment in theaters playing it out of what language you produce and and the classroom is it's the last question yet um since a lot of the performances kind of have to do with resistance and expression is do you guys find it difficult with these productions whether involvement or from stories that to get people involved with them whether it's just seeing or being part of the production is it difficult to engage people to see your productions or participate speak about the Egypt so yeah it's hard to some some of the times that we received the from the audience that it was hard to watch these the performances in some other cases they won't understand it but um and some of the playback and psychodrama performances it is really hard and and intense for both the performance and the audience to participate in such such experience in such experiences yeah I think the the relation with an audience is a relation that can be built step by step and that takes time and that is one of the responsibility and and maybe the concern how can we address and to when we address performance and I think it's a process also it's we need to work on and sometimes it goes smoothly and sometimes it's kind of unfinished conversation between the performer and the audience well certainly I concur with that idea that you build a community and we have looked at looked at it as building a community and one of the things that we have tried to do in the process is to dismantle receive notions about what constitutes a theater audience or who it's for and try to say it's for everyone but one of the things that we've encountered is that since we work within a university environment which is not so rare in say the U.S. where you have you know Yale rep and Yale drama school and whatever and people take it quite seriously there is a sort of other tier for university productions the university of theater festivals and to try to reinforce the idea that the model that we have is new we want very very aesthetically sophisticated within a very limited budget productions on which students are working side by side with professionals and we have virtually no money so we're trying to do all of those things at once but we have through language through social media everything else and through site specific work reached out to as wide an audience as we possibly can and that's one of our our main goals is to to increase that audience yeah it's that hard you want to say something? yeah so for freedom theater I mean I was cooking novel about this and he says that it's interesting when they bring their plays like what happened with the siege especially like in Britain and all that then always there's like a very divided audience but there are people who would like very pro-Palestine and they can't also call like you know to show some solidarity and there are people who are against pro-Israel and they would have like all these protests and stuff but what is also interesting is like the so how freedom theater it said when it started in the refugee camp and then interaction with the community there and the theater like the audiences within the within the community and how the audience there has grown seeing the plays and it's very interesting like now he talks about how like now there they become very very like you know they're very critical about freedom theater's performances and also it like initially of course it was also difficult to get the audiences to the theater because there were a lot of restrictions you know women performing on stage was kind of a taboo and so like progressing through all these things has been also a journey with the freedom theater the audiences of the community camp and also other places in West Bank Yeah I have a question for Iman I'm curious about the films uncovered on mass would you tell us anything more about the inspiration who were these women on the old dancers was it part of the project just a little bit more about those things I guess of the good ones okay who was the old studio metadata in Facebook of the dance Justin predationing for participation dancing the sub workshop because the workshop that conducted by Zosia Domont she was in residency program in collaboration with Zosia Madeline she's from England and she came to jump to get one workshop for women because not in Egypt not only the women would go to mix the dancing workshop and not to a dancing workshop in general so it started with with just one workshop dancing the self one and there was a huge participation so many women and wanted to participate so Zosia conducted another workshop dancing the self too and came and she kept conducting conducting the same workshop for around a year and none of them were attached where none of them have even tried dancing professionally before but it was a journey that was about discovering the self and actually in the it's a main documentary about making the show a working creator so you can see women from the workshop speaking about their experience from even touching their own body both at a way they they've been discovered they got to discover that during the participating in the workshop and after the year the social socialistic to make appearance to the course of topic and 25 women were character of the two go to one of the stages was our first experience came with lots of mixed feeling because we we didn't don't have no our first time to be on the stage but actually it was a great experience for each and every one one of us actually you can see the movie and people women speaking about their experience and Zosha actually it was a part of her master thesis some movement for women this is a part of her thesis and you should see the movie yeah I encourage you all to see the movie because it's a a few journeys that I discovered a bit louder sorry I have a question for for Zosha and um because like as we know Julian was kind of and as you mentioned there was there were very few surviving memories of our in this program so I'm curious like now if from if the work that the film is doing still seem to be posing a threat to the occupation and so how are how are the movies negotiating this threat so firstly Juliano he was terrified in this um like they don't they still don't know who actually here is Juliano so of course there is like a lot of um threat that the the theater faces make up especially make up for what happened this is like I mean the for the theater was also herised after Juliano was there because it's very like you know people from the theater were taken into custody and they were like kept in prison in interrogations and all happened and the it's very dispossesable like you know suspecting people from the theater itself and it was like a dory dory's dark period for them make more recovery from the incident and also going through these kind of attacks but I think they're continuing they're continuing to do the work and it's I mean so um there's this quotation by the students the graduate students from the acting school who who learned and who who were trapped on the Juliano and they talk about like how like Arnaz legacy continues and after Arnaz did and here Juliano student and you know you know work on like the the the values of cultural resistance that Juliano used to talk about so there's of course there's late morning and there is a large space that Juliano has left but also like his words and I mean I have been reading and I've been watching his interviews and it's very personality who was very charismatic was mad at me and just listening to him because they so inspired him for me as somebody who has met him so I'm pretty sure they put them it's it's actually like a battery now that they have to continue this question but also for everyone we love sorry is um is there any do you see there's any lasting legacy of um the so-called Arab Spring with the arts is there any is anything unleashed that hasn't been with that in the box or has it the cultural expression have it changed is something or is it just repression you know in Egypt but also I'm curious about you know actually after the art spring most of the women in the workshop were participants in the art spring they were participants they participated in the art spring actually most of the artists spoke about today were activists in the art spring and somehow dancing has provided them with another way to resist and to tell their stories and even if they you have even that the revolutions and things and so they resorted to another way to complete this resistance and continue continue their journey so that energy is still around this the energy is still around yeah maybe in Jalia you can make a comment I feel like the margins of expression were kind of exploded or open widely because for a while there was no government in so many countries and that allowed so many people to find a voice to claim spaces like to graffiti on government buildings and that public space is not open anymore but other spaces that opened within people and I teach in the university and the students I teach now have seen five or six governments in their very short life I've lived under one dictator for 30 years so change is is becoming part of the way they are operating in general so the public spaces are not as open the margins of expressions are closing at least in the Egyptian countries and they are closing they are closing and the censorship is really tight like they objected to a word in my last day word dirty they didn't want you to use the word dirty so they're they're really very active in targeting people they arrested a whole crew of young performers performing something in a a sporting club they're still in jail they've been in jail for a few months because they didn't get the right approvals or so the those spaces are closed but something inside the psyche of people that opened is is not going to be under that's what I'm curious about so that is oh that's still open yes I I believe so I would like to to add to this because I completely agree on that and then I have seen it although like the censorship is really now very high they are they are sophisticated ways of limiting like the sort of theater or performer and some dancers but in fact that there is kind of trust now what happens happens like Ben Ali and Mubarak are gone and this is there because like when we are in Tunis and when we attempt Dream City it's a very important platform for art and in the urban fabric or really all the urban fabric so it's you can really feel that there is a kind of the claim for dignity is the common space and it's no more we can no more go back although we know that it's not done it's not in our hands but but performances are going on in theater there are many plays in Violet making new contemporary order in Tunis in in Morocco bloggers it's also for me a way of writing plays so I think that there's this possibility that we never we've never erased it which I love that's why I love it well in terms of Lebanon I think Sahar and others can probably speak with more authority than I can but I would make a couple of observations number one is that in spite of Lebanon's reputation or openness there are moments in and the recent example of reading of a gay play that was shut down should dispel that myth it's open except when it's not but I think that what has taken place that is a very encouraging sign in Lebanon there's still a little place for a little public space for action and I think people have come to the realization they cannot wait for the government to act nor wait for NGOs or whatever to act and the creation of this new secular party Medina is incredibly encouraging and that people are looking not so much to these sorts of social signifiers that are seen to be progressive in the West but you know how's your garbage getting collected how are you going to get clean water that is these are things that cut across you know all categories whether they're confessional categories categories of sexuality of all kinds of refugees so I do see that energy in that recognition of a kind of activism Sahar and Amal they have you know sort of other ideas since they have you know insights and others here but those are two things that I've noticed that seem in part to be as a result of the so called the Arabs are maybe just just to add exactly what Robert is saying but we have to do even us and you know working in the academic institution we have to deal with the censorship all the time right you cannot put anything on stage before prior censorship you have to send your text to the censorship office they they like you like they did with you they sometimes even 11 and they will give you they're on whatever word in Amal and I were working going to try and they actually edited the text so instead of saying that word they suggested that we use us you know Alta what do you say like a softer so they're acting as good grandkids you know this mistake Robert yeah so so you I mean you either there's two ways that Lebanese artists are doing it you either be very provocative to an extent that your play will never open but you know and then they use this for marketing and sometimes like what we do is we sell censorship before sending the text because we want the story to be out there so we just you know we we do some compromises like we did the the play that Robert mentioned rituals of science and transformation that play has many things amongst them homosexuality so there's a couple of bodyguards that come out as gay and bisexual on stage and what I did before sending the text to the censorship office is I removed all the stage directions because if you read the words the dialogue it's can be you know between any two men and then we were lucky that they didn't come and see the play but if they saw the play they can you know so yeah it's not as people like to portray you know Lebanon it you know we love to say that we have we're more free or liberal like liberated than the rest of the Arab it's not true simply yeah we have many dictators you had one dictator we have a few of them you know well it's also I think vitally important children of the that number one this kind of censorship say Great Britain was taken place until the mid-six weeks so before anyone forget you know if you go and look at like that's a lot you know the censorship office you know you will find you know the it's kind of most grotesque homophobic notes from the censorship office as raced recently as the mid-six you know less anyone think of you know West East and the other thing is I think that a lot of the work we've tried to do is we put the theatrical work first and therefore if we're doing blood wedding or we're doing King layer or whatever we're doing it's about here and it's about now and that's also true obviously of Wannous's work when we did that work and other sites specific work and there may be things in it people like or don't like or the sensors will accept or not but you're trying to create complex art as the first sort of step for social activism I think that in fact you'll find quickly what it is people don't want you to talk about and it may not be exactly what you think you go oh you can't talk this way about women or sexuality or you know the clergy or you'll think these certain things or the actually and it there are some other you know sort of things that you'll discover it's worse than you thought it's worse than you thought maybe extending the conversation about the censorship I wanted to ask Ashmi and Sha'a about the situation in Palestine so the funding aspect is the cutting the money at the source but are there other like more detailed textual work who interferes with the text who can stop the work when it's about the open the Israelis stop a lot of the work in Palestine and how many of the youth have spoken to having experiences where they were putting on shows and couldn't because they were afraid that we'd get shut down by the Israelis and that does happen often you know we did see a show by the Yes Theater where they toured a piece called a Grumina suitcase about domestic violence in Hebron and they did it in Ramallah and they were actually touring all over it but I saw it in Ramallah and it dealt with a woman's place in society in a woman's place it are they in the house like housework and then also in the larger society and there was a talk back after and the talk back got so heated that people were leaving people were being pushed out like it became a huge debate between audiences between the actors speaking directly to the audiences about it and one of the actresses in the piece was the first woman in Hebron to ever be on stage and received death threats and you know has a a history of being censored in that way so there's there is internal censorship but a lot of the censorship that most of the people I spoke with are dealing with also comes from the Israeli the freedom theater is like is there is like the Israeli forces they already see the theater as a as a kind of kind of studying that you know one of the funds he was at the crossing one of the checkpoints and they they saw that he's from the freedom theater and they were like he was a theater at this this is so funny to me like what do you mean we were theater at this we were theater at this anyway but so I think there is like when they're performing there is a certain kind of self-censorship in terms of when they when they have performances in Genine Refugee Camp in terms of like how much because there are still like a lot of doubt news about what can happen on us in the theater on stage and what should be so in terms of that I think there is but when like you know they never talks about occupation about talking about the occupation they're already facing the order that's from the and the other probably like the censorship that they also face is in terms of funds that they receive from all the integration the other side and they talk about like this occupation which is like one is like this very occupation the other is like Palestinian party and third is also like the funders or a lot of funders when they're sending funds they would like always have this thing that would mean to talk about this but maybe they try to be like you know I mean it's even when you look at our funders or so it's so once again back in the day so it was good so I would say thank you of all that's in this session here we I would like to see you all five minutes to six we're going to start on time at six o'clock again here it's going to be very interesting taught by Lapa Bilal I think we should go on this that is a significant contemporary artist and he's talking about his work in visual arts but also in performance and you can it's in the sense of drama, toji and I would like to thank you all for coming and taking your time to listen to this really important significant theme and it's been for us we know perhaps it's the first conference on drama toji and the in arab theater and the americas but perhaps also a worldwide so we haven't heard of something else so this is a very significant beginning and not everything can be said and we will include more but I think it's a it's a very good start and I would really like to thank all the participants I apologize for the time pressures I put on everybody but I think it worked better we get an ideal inspiration to be here for two days so you can talk and ask them all the questions we will make a little documentation as a booklet but also as a PDF and then perhaps to the arab stages magazine so again a big applause for our audience