 We're going to take up the discussion where it was left last night with the last question, which was a big one. And I think all of us, after that extraordinary performance by Leila Mohamed, was directed by Waleed Shameel after that extraordinary performance. When someone said, and can we please talk about the role of theater in the Arab world, we all did. So we did not do that. So we're going to do that now. And so we have a fantastic panel with experience from many different Arab countries as well as from Iran and as well as from the experience of bringing theater from the Middle East and larger Muslim world regions to the United States. So we're going to have a rich discussion and we're very fortunate to have two wonderful policy commentators. You will recognize Nadia Oadad, who was our fabulous translator last night. No offense to me. Okay, you did a good job. Nadia is getting her PhD from Oxford and she's writing on a little known subject of moderate Islamic thought. And as soon as she finishes that, which will be very soon, she's going to launch something. Oh, can I say it? Sure, please. Thank you. If anybody steals this idea, Nadia is going to personally kill me and send her brothers after a means of don't. And it's going to change the world and she's going to launch a website which will publish online for free. Novels in Arabic and moderate thought and writings from the early 20th century in Arabic that will be as accessible online as are all the Jihadist texts. And last but not absolutely least, we are very fortunate to have Kala Esfandiari who runs the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson Center and is a well-known scholar particularly of Iran but runs a wonderful program there. And of course I'm sure many of you heard about and perhaps read her book about her incredible ordeal in the prison a number of years ago and were very happy to get to be here and Nadia. I'm going to begin and begin. We are so fortunate to have Professor Martin Carlson here who many of you know as the dean of theater in the Arabic world. So I'm going to begin Martin with you to ask you to give a few general remarks on your thoughts. Obviously you can't find what the role of theater in that Arab world is too broad. So some thoughts and believing that we get at the general through the specific, maybe some a couple of specific or one particular specific example to give us a sense. And remembering that we're looking at the intersection of theater and politics and I think this is now going to be an area where we're going to see a slight difference between what theater is in the United States compared to the role theater plays in the Arab and larger Muslim world. Thank you Cynthia. Let me begin since we're starting the second day of the conference now to by expressing for I'm sure everybody on very deep gratitude to Cynthia and Derek for organizing this. I personally have never been to a gathering quite like this before and it's astonishing that it's taken us so long to realize this is the kind of thing we ought to be doing and I hope we'll be doing a lot more of it. Cynthia says to talk about theater in the Arab world is a project that can last many, many hours and I'm going to indeed follow what she suggested and talk about really a specific example but I think you will see why of all the thousands of examples like this one. And I think you could also and I will try to point out why it what questions this raises that can stimulate further discussions this morning and later. Of course I will only say before beginning a specific example that as I'm sure everybody in the room is well aware when you speak of the Arab world you're speaking of a very large number of countries a very large number of cultures and often indeed usually within individual countries within the Arab world a very great variety of cultures and cultural backgrounds so all of which have various kinds of theater performance that one could talk about almost none of which do we in the United States know anything about. That's the challenge and the opportunity and the subtext of all of this is try to find out more about this and try to connect more with that theater. Now I'm going to be talking first of all very quickly I'm going to talk two or three minutes about something local and then for another two or three minutes about the same phenomenon on the global level. For local I'm moving back now to the very beginning of this conference which I think very auspiciously started out with Cynthia remarking on the influence of Arabesque in Alexandria, the knowledge of that project and the work of this and then the very first speaker was you'll remember Alicia Adams from the Kennedy Center talking about briefly about Arabesque and so it seems to me in terms of local nothing no place to be better to start than with that festival and I want to talk about one particular production in that festival there are two productions in the Arab world I'm only going to talk about one of them and that's the Tunisian play, How Soon, by Julio Baccar. First of all let me remark that you may not realize how daring and how significant that production was to the best of my knowledge and I would challenge anybody to disagree with me. This was the first time, not likely, but I'm going to take them on. To the best of my knowledge this is the first time in the history of the United States theater that any production of any play from the entire Arab world was given in a professional theater anywhere in America. Now think about that there are thousands and thousands of such plays. This was the first one and I think what an enormous step that was and what an enormous credit it is to the Kennedy Center for doing this. Thank you Alicia. Alicia, thank you very much. Now Alicia forgive me, now I'm going to make some complaints. No right head. That's the good, that's the good. I have to say that I'm in great sympathy and I imagine Alicia is too with Peter Mark's very informed comments about a number of the problems that face this kind of production and I made a trip down from New York to see this production on one of the two nights it was given. Now that's, as Peter pointed out, that's not much. It's a lot better than nothing, but it still isn't a very big exposure. And another thing that Peter pointed out that resonated very strongly with me is that the major point surely as this conference I think is designed to illustrate is that it isn't simply a matter of doing more plays from the Arab world. It is using that process to better inform the American public and policymakers of who these people are. What is going on in these other causes? What do they think about? What are their concerns? What challenges are there for them and for these? In that case this seemed to be... Let me interrupt you just one very quick thing just because I'm just reminded one of the times when I was at the Arabesque Festival and President Obama came into the Kennedy Center. It was actually a celebration, I believe, for Senator Ted Kennedy. I guess it was struck, there was a whole thing. President Obama came in the motorcade and everything and there were a number of Arab women outside the Kennedy Center and they started lullating because they recognized that it was President Obama and I just thought, how crazy is this? That he is actually coming to the Kennedy Center while this festival is taking place. But Michelle came to some things. Is that correct? But could it come an hour earlier maybe? Because they're going to disconnect. Wouldn't that have been nice? Yes, yes. That's really, that's really is the point that the opportunity, the door packed open a little bit, but not very much. And again just following the play out for a moment and then I'm going to think about globally. Locally, what if really as a culture we had paid more attention to this play? I don't know any of you aside from Alicia knows this play, but let me just very quickly tell you that the play was commissioned by the Tunisian government as the centerpiece to be performed at the National Theater for the 50th anniversary of Tunisian independence. The play was written, was submitted, and was banned. The government did not allow this play to be presented. Now there's a variety of reasons. Some religious, some, but mostly political. Now in the play, the motivating incident of the play is that the, really the hero would, the mother of a young woman is running the center of the play in June that my car played that role. But the daughter is sort of the pivotal character. And the daughter's best friend, the daughter is a school teacher. The daughter's best friend, a young man, blows himself up as a suicide bomber. He doesn't tell anybody else who blows himself up in the courtyard of the school. And the play then is about the desperation on the part of both religious and civic authorities to try to keep this under control so everything doesn't erupt. Does this sound familiar? Less than two years after this, you may remember, a vegetable salesman set fire to himself in Tunisia and started the era of spring. That is, this play is a picture of a country on the brink of an eruption that could be set off exactly by this kind of incident. Did anybody notice that later? I don't think so. Who knows this play? Who remembers it? And yet there it is. There is a clear indication of, let's look at what is, especially because it was made. Okay. Can I just do one second there? I'll just make a very small pitch and then I want to ask you a question. Actually, Nadia Ohadad, who's there, and I wrote an article for CNN during the Egyptian Revolution the day before Mubarak, stepped down, which was called, Why Washington Was Blindsided by the Egyptian Revolution. We talk about, unfortunately, not this play. I'm embarrassed that we didn't talk about that, but we talk about the Yakubian building, the Egyptian novel, and say if policymakers had paid attention to what was coming out in the cultural sphere and not what government officials were saying, they would have recognized that it was a pressure cooker and the question would be, why didn't this happen sooner? Rather than why did this happen? But I'm curious, was this play ever performed anywhere else? Was this, and the first time it was performed? We make a great team. She said, we're going to know. She set up the next part of my commentary, which is the, I might say, at the time, because I was very interested in this play, I translated another of Bakar's plays, so she's an artist I'm very interested in. And so I was watching this very carefully and reading the Washington news and reviews of the play, and nowhere was there really any commentary about this aspect of the play. It talked about the lighting and the dancing and so on and so on. And even stranger, it seemed to me, was, I never found any reference to the fact that the play had been commissioned by the Tunisian government and banned, which seems to me an interesting and worthwhile thing to say. Now, we're going to go into Cynthia's question, which is exactly where I want to go next, which is global. Something else, another point that I want to make is, not only as a culture are we tremendously misinformed, or uninformed about the theater in the Arab world. As a theatrical culture, we are tremendously under-informed about the theater of anywhere in the world, except the British office. We do pretty well with the British office. But even countries as close to us as France and Germany, as a theatrical culture, we know almost nothing about what's going on there. And Bacar is another good example. That is to say, when the play was banned in Tunisia, where, then, was it presented? Well, in fact, it received its world premiere at the Odeon Theater in Paris. Now, those of you who know Paris, the Odeon is the second national theater. It's the other Comédie Française. The Comédie Française traditionally does French work, although it now does international work. At the Odeon in recent years, traditionally does international work. So, this is the biggest, most important theater in Paris that premiered this play. Did anybody in Washington notice this? No, Dr. Vyn Office. Especially since the French picked it up when the Tunisians abandoned it. Now, since that time, Bacar... Well, Bacar was already well-known in France. That is to say, several of her plays have been presented in major theaters. She's three times appeared at the Arrignione Festival, including the last two years. Do any of us know anything about that? No, why shouldn't we care and say France? Now, you might say, oh, well, the French. After all, this is Tunisia. It's a former French colony. The French have a kind of paternal avant-garde interest in North Africa. So, they can do it. Why should we be interested? Well, let me go on there and talk about the Germans. Now, the Germans have got no business. They never had any business in North Africa. They were there, but they didn't have any business. And yet, Jolina Bacar has also been produced in many of the major theaters in Germany. Half a dozen of her plays. The year 2003, the Berlin Festboken took as its leading artist Bacar and Jolina Bacar, her director. They presented two of her previous works and commissioned her to write a new play, which was premiered in Berlin. And they also did three of her plays. This is in 2003. At that time, nobody in Washington even knew who Jolina Bacar was. That's the difference between Germany and the United States in terms of Arab theater and Arab drama. Of course, when Hamsun came out, it was also done in Berlin. You might say, who's paying for all of this? Of course, it's at the National Theater in Paris, so you have a good deal of state money. In Berlin, it's also essentially state money because it's in theaters, big theaters like the Deutsches and the Schalbühne. And she came really in under the Berlin Festboken, which is an annual international producing organization. Now, only one other quick point and that is, I did say, we are at least fairly well aware of what's going on in England, unlike our long was total lack of knowledge of what's going on anywhere else. But even at that, I would say, the British are light years ahead of us in terms of Arabic theater. We had already the Sheriff's Report on the British Council that has been admirable in this. There is, as we speak, a major international Shakespeare festival going on in London, which includes plays from the Arab world. Before that, the Royal Shakespeare did a similar international festival, which included plays from the Arab world. Briefly, briefly interrupt there because Walid has a student acting. Yeah, Romeo and Juliet in Baghdad. In Baghdad, which is part of the festival going on right now. In fact, it's this week. This week, as we speak. And, of course, the Royal Court has been an exemplary model of this, which has set up two different seasons with encouraging work from playwrights to six different Arab countries. Again, there's nothing like this yet in the United States, although, thank God, there is more than there used to be, as my fellow panelists will testify. But the main point is, I want to say, not only do we have a long way to go, but we don't have to make it up. Other people are doing it. Just look at what the British, the French, the Germans are doing and just become, even if we're not going to be becoming more aware of Egypt and Tunisia, at least become more aware of Paris and Berlin. Thank you so much for another great way to get us started. Before I turn to you, Ali, talking about what theater is actually like in Baghdad and in Iraq, let me just turn to Nadia for a minute and ask you to respond to what Marvin has said. You'd be drawing in also other art forms such as literature and see if you found something similar. Nadia also was an analyst at Grand, so she's lived in a policy world as well. First, I want to say that when you spoke about the contradiction in the Tunisian government's action, Bani played after they commissioned it. Ali, if you look at the scene of literature and arts in the Arab world, it is full of predictions. So, to give an example, while the Akhubian building was allowed to represent Egypt in various film festivals, the writer of the novel was not even allowed to come to the theater when the movie premiered. They literally, the security forces prevented him from attending the movie as if he was a thug, so they wanted to humiliate him. Although he won Egypt all these awards, because basically they turned down the novel three times, which is available in English, by the way, and I highly recommend it. It's one of any that is actually translated, but he bypassed the censorship by publishing it basically a few pages at a time. But they attempted to ban it three times. But also, you know, we have so many novels that are the equivalent of Animal Farm, but speaking of Animal Farm, to tell you how absurd the censorship in the Arab world is, that book was banned in Kuwait because it has a pig on the cover. They did not even read it, because most of the time those who decide to ban something, they either just aesthetically they don't like it, or there's something that they haven't read it at all, or it's totally shallow. It's people usually who are clerics or who know nothing about literature. So it's quite sad actually. So most of these novels written by authors from all over the Arab world, tackling issues, I mean just name it, the environment, the educational system, democracy, women's rights, every single one of these issues have found a beautiful way to express the frustration in novels. Mostly published in Lebanon, where there's more freedom of publications, in London, in Paris, and in Germany. So the Arab world is yet to have access actually. To most of its most brilliant minds, and those that make it through extremes, are bestsellers. The bestsellers are not the religious texts, they are these novels that expose all. They basically hold a mirror and reflect to us without any euphemism what's happening. So we can no longer pretend it is not happening. But at the same time I really feel so proud of what's coming out of the Arab world. And one initiative that actually put that genre on the map is the book of prize for the Arab novel. And this is the first ever service taken so long. But the first initiative internationally to recognize these novels, and truly they belong to humanity, they do not belong to the Arab world because these issues are human issues. And I can't wait for this to be translated. Thank you so much. That's a wonderful thing, the idea that the Arab world has yet to have access to its most brilliant minds. Yes, yes, everybody, feel free to jump in. That is the Boonsbury Press and the Color Foundation having projects together where they are. And a lot of SWEET has been involved with this to translate work by Arab authors into English so as to increase that access. That's been going on for a couple, maybe two or three years now. It depends on what they're translating. Are they translating government puppets? No, absolutely not. Or are they translating? No, absolutely not. Okay, so I'm not actually actually looking to it. We need a massive translation effort. No, there are a number of translation efforts that are the best by far. So are the plays, for example, that were at the Royal Court or when you presented them to me, were they in translation or were they in Arabic? So the plays were presented in Arabic? Yeah, it's a complicated process but I'll talk very quickly, very briefly. The Royal Court had two, I think two, maybe three workshops in the Arab world. They were in Damascus. They were in Cairo. I think they're maybe in a third place. And Janine, what's up? Janine. Yes, thank you. And they, through their connections in these places, they found a number of promising young playwrights who began to develop plays in these workshops and then they picked six of them from six different countries or five different countries, brought them to the Royal Court and worked for about six months and developed the plays in English and then the plays were given readings. They weren't given fully staged productions. Subsequently they came to New York and also were given readings there. Some of these plays have since been fully staged. They're all short plays and two or three of these young playwrights are now doing clear slives of Solomon, the Egyptian representative, just has a play opening in Belgium later this month and is working on a production in Berlin. So there is, they're working in English. I mean that project is in English. I'm going to just keep moving so we get to hear from everyone. But that, by the way, sounds to me like an absolutely model cultural engagement methodology of going to the place, finding people, bringing back the training, creating the works, and going out with them as opposed to just sort of parachuting in and out. I actually, I think what would make sense now is to turn to you and Hala and since we're talking about censorship and political topics in theaters, maybe you could talk a little bit about those subjects in Iran and then we'll go to the individual countries. Sure. Thank you. It's great to be here. Thanks for organizing this. It's, I would call it a threat production. We've been producing plays by and about in the Middle East, in San Francisco since 1996. It was before 9-11, before Middle East was sexy. And it was mainly really for us a way to survive because there were two or three playwrights, directors from the Middle East who were working in the US and we were trying to create a home for ourselves to build an audience and to create basically a production company that could in an informed way produce this work that is very much about our experience of immigration, displacements, revolution, etc. If you wouldn't mind talking at this point about when you were with Yankee. So in 2010, I had an opportunity to take a sabbatical from this exciting work at Golden Thread Productions and go to Iran. My thinking was, as you may remember in 2009, there was the election and all the demonstrations and I imagined the atmosphere would be quiet, possibly hopeless in Iran. I wasn't really expecting a lot of cultural activity because everything, the cultural work in Iran is centrally funded, centrally approved. They have to go through a government approval process, so I wasn't really expecting much given everything that had happened a year before. So I was planning on an applied six months to focus on my writing. Well, nothing could be further away from the truth because when I made it to Tehran within a week on this year, I have many friends in Iran who are doing theatre. I was invited to a couple of plays and the plays were overwhelmingly political, all about the elections, all about what had happened, whether they were adaptations of other non-Iranian work or original writing. The political content of the work just blew me away. I was seeing them, where were they being done? They were really done in the city theatre, in the main theatre of Tehran. They were public, so they were known to the government. This is not underground music, this is not, you know, this is public, this is youth, younger people, older people, audience is mixed. I mean, it was very different from what I expected and it really took me by surprise. I spent the next few months just trying to meet some of the artists and talking to them one-on-one and learning about what are they thinking and how did they get around the censorship process because it's interesting because there are all these different gateways of censorship. So from the moment that you think about a project, you have to get that idea approved. Well, maybe not that. From the time that you write a play, you have to submit it to the Office of Dramatic Arts for approval to get funding for production and rehearsal space and resources, basically. That process could take months. It could take years or it could possibly not be approved at all. But for many, if you get approved, they are given a fabulous budget for production. They are given a venue to rehearse and perform and they also take away, they take their box office revenue. So it can be, you know, a nice job, basically. For many who work in the theater office in the Tehran, they have a salary and they have their production. I would kind of like to get into the political kind of, why are these things allowed? They censor movies all the time. All the movies, people are in jail. But why are they allowing these things? So as Nadia said, it's a contradiction. It's a society that lives in contradiction. It's not black and white. It's not logical. One of my favorite censorship stories is that one playwright who produced this play, let's say in 2005, then wanted permission to publish it. So they refused permission for publication saying they had a problem with one particular word. Let's say the word apple in the play. So what the playwright did was that he replaced the word apple with number 325. And just, whenever the word apple appeared in the play text, he put it, he put the number 325. It made no sense. It was clear that it was a direct replacement. He submitted it for approval and he doesn't approve that. He has since been produced that way. So is it logical? No, I actually have a clip. Can I show a clip of a play? This is while you're getting it set up. The edifice clip. This is a university professor who's working in community centers in southern Tehran, which is the, can you run it without sound while I'm talking? Okay. It's happening in a community center in what used to be the main slaughterhouse of Tehran that has since been turned in the 90s, it was turned into a cultural and work facility. He works with basically the residents, the school residents of the neighborhood and his college students. This particular production is a very free adaptation of edifice and you may be interested in this professor because you put together that whole book of collection of plays. Yes, yes. And this is another one. Do you have a copy of this text? I can ask for it. Yeah, sure. And it's a very free adaptation. It begins, as you can see, in the hallway the performance begins. The audience is standing there and the actors begin the performance in the hallway and then you'll see that the audience gets ushered into this huge open room that they're using in a very free format. The audience is on risers that are movable and the scenes take place in different parts of the room. And the audience is moved in those scenes of the content of this. So if we can have the sound, it's basically about class and being stuck in your fate. She's complaining that times have changed. It used to be that he cares that my child is dying and the guy on the motorcycle says I'm too busy. I don't have time. And inside there are these scenes of one of them is a public show of the story of the edifice and then the other one are sort of contemporary representations of that theme, but in contemporary Tehran. So there's actually rap, sing, game, but there's somebody who commits suicide in the middle of the... It's very amazing. It's a two-hour show, 70 performers. Most of them non-professional who have rehearsed this were over in here from workshopping. And then how long was something like that run? This ran for 16 days for two months. And then people came every year. It was packed. And again, it's in the slums of Tehran. It's not, you know, where the intellectual upper echelon or society goes, but they actually did go because they made so much noise. But did the people live there also? Absolutely, because their kids were in it. They were really mixed audience. You know, once again, it's worth noting this incredible hunger and appetite and interest in theater, in other parts of the world, among young people. And I think what happened... Yesterday in China, for instance, it's really interesting. In terms of just the general policy of the... There is no... There are guidelines, official guidelines for censorship, for example, you can't have nudity, you can't criticize the prophet, but other than that, anything pretty much goes in theater. And one of the theories for why theater can get away with controversial content as opposed to film, for example, that can't get away with it is that theater has a small audience, historically, and the government, positively, the government doesn't think that it has very much impact, but I think that it has had an amazing impact, actually. Thank you. I'm going to then turn... That is so fascinating. Thank you so much and thank you for showing us that. I was going to turn first to Halah if I can, if it's not here. Then I'll come back to you and then we'll look at this. I have a question. Yes. Okay, well, go ahead, Asger. I was going to ask you... I'm going to just call that. And you can call me to respond to what Taraj has told us in terms and give us maybe a slightly broader picture or put that in the context of censorship in Iran, and how you see ideas bubbling up in Iran or not. And if you can, does the United States have a role in this? Could we play a positive role? Are we playing a positive role or is there no way to do that? And how aware... Sorry. How aware are U.S. policymakers of the kind of engine of ideas that culture is in Iran? I'll take you back to... A little better. Okay. Usually they tell me I should know you. No, no, no. If I take you back to pre-revolutionary Iran, there was an American cultural center in Tehran called the Iran-America Society. And a lot of modern plays, especially by American playwrights, were produced by Iranian groups. So this was one aspect of the road that the U.S. was playing in pre-revolutionary Iran. And since Iran is among those handful of countries that does not adhere to copyright, so therefore, as a translator, you are free to translate any play you want. And I'm not focusing just on plays and not on novels or anything. And therefore, you can produce it. In the early days after the revolution, when the government was very busy with executions, purges, and putting together a new state, the artist, for a brief moment, had a free hand in putting together whatever plays they wanted, as long as, as Torain said, it didn't discuss religion, the Prophet, but basically Islam. But that was a brief period. Once the regime settled, and they found out that there is this activity going on in a number of theaters, the most important one, the city theater. So they, I think, started focusing on the theater and providing some loose guidelines on censorship. But again, as Torain said, the censorship is very bizarre because you take the script to the Ministry of Cultural Guidance. And again, they might, if you know people there, they will go through it within a couple of months. If you don't know people there, it might take even a year. And they call in the author and say, you have to change either this whole section or you have to change this word or delete a section of your script. So you think you are done. When you do what they want you to do and you start rehearsing, in recent years, a censor shows up during the rehearsal and tells you what you can have or what you cannot have. So this is the second stage of censorship. Finally, it comes to the production. The production might last a couple of weeks on stage, a couple of months, depending on how successful it is, but still the censor has the right to come in and either stop the play or ask for more changes. So you never know from the first day that you produce a play until it is over what is going to happen. And of course it's very difficult for the actors to stick to the script. They improvise and if you just so happen that you improvise while the censor is there you are getting into trouble. But nevertheless having said that again because of what Toran said, they don't pay much importance to plays because the audience is relatively smart and limited. And Iranian theater has not gained the fame of Iranian cinema. Iranian cinema is the biggest problem, the success of the Iranian cinema abroad because they are, the government is in a dilemma. There you have a movie like Separation which wins the Oscar and other awards. But then what are you going to do with it in Iran? I mean, you know, you cannot ignore it, but you cannot also approve of it 100% because for them, any movie, any piece of art, any play that gets an award abroad is part of a soft revolution that the United States and the West is planning against Iran to overthrow the regime. So they are really torn on the one hand. There are these young Iranians who get international fame and then there is the policy, the fear and phobia of the regime. And a couple of years ago, they started sending out, you know, their own troops abroad, thinking that this is one way of reaching out through culture, this is their way of cultural diplomacy. For example, the Tehran Symphony Orchestra was sent to Geneva and Brussels, but their performance, the piece of music they performed, was so terrible that people used to walk out of this performance. But again, there is a woman director who puts together plays based on stories of the book of kings in Iran. Her name is Pari Saberi. She has been in a way lucky because she has been allowed to take her troops to Italy for performances and she even won a prize there. So because she deals with ancient Iranian history, has history, stories that are approved by the regime and it is at a very high caliber, high quote on quote within the context of Iran. So she has had the possibility and has had the funding to take it through abroad. But I believe some of you know that in 2011 there was a festival of Iranian theater at Briggs, you know, in New York. And it was very successful. Some of them, and when I was reading about it, I was moved by one sentence by an Iranian playwright. His name is Nassim Soleimanpour who said, and I'm quoting him, for someone like me, this is more than exciting. It's about me writing something down here and an actor in New York doing it. It's like, oh my God, this is connecting us all together. It's a very different experience and I like it. Thank you, Halia. Well then, there's so many interesting things. There are also, I think we're observing with our Iraqi friends, which I'm going to turn to you now, Willie. Just in your performing this play here, one of the things we talk about is what will it be like then when you go back to Baghdad and talk about performing it here. And it is one very basic thing is simply being noticed. You know, then people in the United States had some experience of what real life in Iran is like through these plays. What real life in Baghdad and Iraq is like through this performance rather than simply through the media about the bombings and nuclear weapons and nothing about human beings. But I want to turn now to you, Willie. Thank you very much for that very rich discussion. But I want to turn now to you, Willie. Thank you very much for that very rich discussion and talk now more specifically and we'll do that with the rest of this great panel. Tell us a little bit about theater in Baghdad and don't sugarcoat it. Well, talk about theater in Baghdad. This simply we don't have theater donkeys. We have only two theater donkeys. Department of theater at the university and the nationality. And that's all. The rest of the theaters are humiliated or changed to be stores or simply not existed. And the bomb, of course. And no, the government don't care about rebuilding it. Maybe they are busy doing priorities, however. Within that limitation, we have theater people. We have playwrights, we have actors, we have directors. But we don't have theater in the broader sense. And from that, it seems like theater instinct is working very, very... and it is... theater is a project of individual, not systematic. If you look at it, it's here and there and students sometimes do theater in the parking lot. Like what Haytan did in the parking lot that did the play talking about democracy. And the other student did a wonderful job in a room, a building, a suicide bomb in that building. In that two weeks, he came with an idea to make this event and he put a play on that destroying building and make a sense of a community. And it's run for two weeks. I just want to make sure everyone understands this, because it is so moving to me. The idea of going to a site where a building has been bombed. And going to that very place and starting a performance there that draws in the community and starts to rebuild the community and create a sense of community and possibility again. But also in a church. And also two years ago, a suicide bomb in a church and the church called the Saint of Lhazan gave these observations and one of the students also did a play inside that and gathered all the people who was in a real estate. But these are individuals, not systematic, it's not supported by it's just an initiative of people. If we go back to previous regime and Saddam regime, the theater was just for entertainment. It's censorship. You can't talk about politics or religious or sex. And these three are forbidden. Probably. So do whatever you like but these three are incantation. So the theater we call it commercial theater which is law theater. Okay, you can do whatever you can but don't test these three. Now, this time, you can talk about everything but nobody listens to you. It's a very limited audience but individuals doing work like what you have seen last night, some other works, we do play. We challenge, we go through many things but very limited as, as I said, it's a very limited audience and it lasts for two or three days and only friends and intellectuals and theater people and not forbidden. Theater, in fact, is not the core of the culture in now. And also because of the security situation. I mean, security situation not allowed to go and have an evening with your family. Now it's improving, I guess. In the last three years, life is going back to normal but what is normal in Iraq? If you go to the news, you see bump and you see destruction. However, what I want to say is theater is in the theater people, in the blood of the theater people but unfortunately, we are waiting for, have a place to do, I mean, buildings to do theater and this is normal. Thank you. Thank you so much, William. Very, very beautiful. I'd say for English not being your first language, I think you may have a future as a poet. I just want to point out that something that has come out here is a theme that I've noticed a lot and that is that the enemies of freedom and tolerance and openness and human rights and democracy and all of these things always recognize the power of culture. And so they censor it. They take down the buildings. They bomb the Buddhists in Baalia but ironically, the supporters of all of those values in the United States but other countries also don't seem to recognize in the same way the value of culture and support it. So for example, as we have discussed, there is one theater in Baghdad and there is no movie theater. Seven million people live in Baghdad and the second largest city in the Middle East of Karkaero and no movie theater in Iraq. Can you imagine? Just one movie theater and a VIP club. So just think of the work of rebuilding a country and really totally reinventing it for people and completely, you know, we expect them to suddenly cash democracy from the air and put it on and go. And no movie theater. Think of the amount of money the United States has spent in Iran. How is that possible? And then, you know, talk about public diplomacy. What kind of movies are they going to show? Of course they're going to show American movies. I mean, others too, I'm sure, but largely they're going to be American movies. So the thinking really bothers the mind or not thinking. Ruben, I'm going to turn to you. Which is going to be a dramatic contrast. That dramatic contrast may be something that we talk about. Ruben is doing incredible things in Abu Dhabi where he is doing theater at NYU there, which is, you know, there are many universities, American universities in the Middle East, including Georgetown has a very impressive branch of the School of Foreign Service in Doha, and I have to say that what NYU is doing in Abu Dhabi I think is really head and shoulders about anything else I've seen anyway. And witness the fact that they have such a vigorous theater program. So I would love for you to talk a little bit. I'm asking you don't talk so much about your company because I really want to get to what you are doing in Abu Dhabi to cross what I thought were all kinds of red lines in society in Abu Dhabi and in the Emirates and bringing people together and broaching subjects because they've got plenty of censorship there too that aren't always broached. So please go ahead. Thank you. I think the framing that started this conversation which is the idea of there being so many narratives and so many different conversations of predicaments throughout the Middle East, it's all incredibly different challenges. I feel that in hearing some of the narratives about Baghdad there's a bit of overlap and a whole lot of other conversations you were saying. I'm the artistic director of theater which is my company as you mentioned. Is everyone here? Louder and slower maybe. Great. Not too slow. So I'm the artistic director of theater and I'm the director of theater and the core of our work has been to investigate global traditions in theater to create a training and a methodology that then we manifested our work. About five years ago I was approached to head the theater program for a new venture for New York University which is part of the global network which is what it's called. The idea was that a university in Nogave which is a four-year liberal arts university and not only by nature of where it is by nature of the research that I've been doing in the region but simply the largest challenge of all which is actually to enter and begin a conversation about theater and of the actual ecosystem in a place that actually doesn't really have one. And when I first said to the conversation I thought well of course it does. It certainly does. Now there is performance and there are touring MCs that come in. In fact the piece that we're seeing tonight arrived in Dubai and only recently. So there certainly is that but an actual ecosystem in the region in the Emirates doesn't exist and that's been shocking actually. Again there is performance. There's a large extended tradition of songs, a ritual and a western theater that arrives and leaves one night or two nights. So the challenge seems beautiful and overwhelming. I have a couple of quick slides that I think will give great context. If you go to the next one I think people forget that Abu Dhabi is incredibly young. This is a picture of Abu Dhabi in the 1960s. So this is what it looked like. And what's essential to me is actually that the place is actually younger than I am. So if you go this is what Abu Dhabi looks like now. And so I say that because with all its work coming and trust me there are many which I'm happy to speak of but politically certain at every level there is a nascent to it. The culture that the Emirati people in the UAE are divided into these three layers. One is what's called the desert generation which are the people who actually lived in the desert and all of a sudden in 1971 their life changed completely. Completely. I mean images of them truly truly in the desert intense. There's what's called the middle generation which are the people whose lives they were children and they were being changed but they essentially have a little bit of a bound memory of them. And then there's what's now called the new generation which are most of whom have grown in this moment, in time and actually have no memory of the other. And so you're seeing these different questions and different relationships to art in the theater. And so we've arrived as an UAE Abu Dhabi really are the first of a group of artists and liberal academics that are arriving at least in Abu Dhabi and in that region. For me I think the theater program with my company one of the challenges was producing the theater. So as always I point over here to my associate producer Tyler and with me on this journey. And it was about what does one produce there, right? I made a commitment with my company that we would continue producing the work that we do. Certainly reacting to where we are but not necessarily saying well now we'll do a thousand one Arabian lines so we're going to pull it up to not simplify the context. My name is very kind when we started to he was remembering some production with my company that he's seen and that's exactly the work that we said we were going to take. The first piece that we did if you go to the next slide is a piece called chaos. And one of the big things that I wanted to address was actually to try to diversify the audience conversation, right? There's no way that the strata of audience in Abu Dhabi is humongous, right? According to formal documents 80% of the population are between 78 are expatriates, right? That's shocking. So when you walk around and you see the world it actually often feels like you're not at all in the Middle East. It's certainly not the Gulf, right? 10% is what's called the worker population which are immigrant workers coming from Southeast Asia, from Nepal, from Pakistan, from Afghanistan, right? And then a smaller about 10% is the Emirati population, right? That's incredibly confusing when you are there, right? Now that said there is a huge population that's undocumented that changes all those numbers and the belief that there's probably more to 30 to 40% of the population that are illegal workers that are coming in from all over the region and it's as far as Morocco that are coming that are non-Dhabi workers. So for me and for my company it became important to not necessarily change what we do but actually change the geometry of space of how people encounter the work of the threshold between audience and performer. The first piece we did we did on the Cornish which is perhaps the most important part of Abu Dhabi because I wanted people to run into the work, right? And the place people are going to put in theater people aren't going to show up at eight at this place so we built this stage and actually went into the ocean and if you go to the next and I'll jump into the next one and you'll see a little bit it'll run by itself I think if you go to the little video and I'll stop it this is the formation that's the senior that we built and the performance itself was based on a series of Karendel short stories and plays that spoke about the questions of migration and workers and how does hope survive how does tradition survive and in doing that we were able to really engage at every level of audience that at least we are starting to discover if you go the next piece that we did was we did a if you go to the next turn the lights down a little bit please give them a thank you actually you can leave it on leave the video on for a moment one of the things that was interesting about the work with chaos was actually the producing of the piece right which is that there are also lighting back that there are no theaters but there's also nothing with which to physically make theaters now that's how it's like in a place that's opulent and that there's you know gold walls and gold hotels and all these things but as theater makers you realize that our art form is not something that is supposed to be so distant and worshiped but rather engaging and so truly again chairs like this impossible impossible I think it's a big yes these huge they want to give us literally the argument was I want people to feel like it's really such a such a it sounds like oh what a silly complaint but to realize that the community toss of the theater is actually really complicated to achieve in a place that doesn't have that right and if you go on to the next slide please that the next piece we brought was a really radical adaptation the death of a salesman that we have done where it was done with four actors and a series of 15 raku style puppeteer objects from the 1950s and it was really about looking at the work of compensation for this one I actually wanted to reach the expatriate community which I think often is ignored the way that people arrive in Uddabi and engage in tokenism of saying well there's some Arabs in my theater that counts right but that population is in a large a large percentage to engage in them in a conversation as well right and in fact had that be a key thing and the last thing I want to mention I think if you go to the next death of a salesman if you go to the next slide was to begin to actually push the agenda of other views in the conversation and so we were able to do this again a very physical adaptation of the Ramayana this ancient Vedic poem right something that was really key to us was could we take a piece and have it deal directly with the different standard audiences so the one manifestation of the piece was actually in this opulent opulent hub of a gallery called Manara which is going to become essentially the Guggen and that right and the the communication the marketing the reach-out really was to reach this opulent group of people who got CPS then later that the exact same day we would do which are these work of camps that exists now a few things that are key that have been shocking to me is the the production you saw chaos that was the first professional production created and produced in the history of Abu Dhabi right now that to me is terrific exciting but also kind of dangerous we are not from Abu Dhabi right so what does that mean and so the conversation of navigating this if you go on to the next I'm so sorry I've just gotten a complete deadline and I have to make sure that I include JJ and Tracy so I'm so sorry no problem these are just the images from the work that we did in the workers villages and it was really incredible to have to be able to do that there's much work to be done in navigating that but I get very excited about the work we're doing with the questions and I'm not going to let you ask them and I'm so sorry about that it's really terrible people have had such interesting stuff to say and I do want to turn to Tracy and JJ and I wanted to let you all know that we're not going to have a break we're going to go right on to the next panel so if you're dying you must yes we are sorry Darren Woodstock but that's none less what we're going to do so everyone get ready and if you're I think one observation following up on what you said I just written an article for a Georgetown it's a very impressive journal of international affairs which is put together by our undergraduates and it's on Abu Dhabi as a cultural hub and in that article I make the point that if Abu Dhabi really wants to be a global cultural hub I don't think it can do that without being generous with its resources with at least other Arab countries if not more than that and I know you are already doing that you're not blaming you I know Ruben you're already doing that but that was that wasn't that more of a government in Abu Dhabi but I think that's the definition you can't just build up your own place you have to bring other people in so J.J. and Tracy I'm sorry you're going to have to kind of speak in tandem but I would like you to talk about the incredible work you do you're using multiple multimedia and also the kinds of audiences you've brought in and so just to give us a little brief introduction I'm a British American theater director and I'm just a director of hybrid theater works and I found it with J.J. and I'm coming out of the Brandeis University acting together on the world stage that was my undergraduate experience so we met when we were working in the Arab American comedy festival together because comedy has been a huge part of both the Arab American community and now going into the Middle East in terms of breaking down stereotypes reaching people I've worked for the comedy festival for about eight years now J.J. and now comedy is such a huge part of especially Egyptian culture that's how people communicate that's how they express themselves and there's a lot of touring now of the comedy festival within the Middle East I just wanted to kind of bring everybody who is their daily show equivalent who's taken off wildfire I'm going to have to let you speak now I'm sorry just to tie into what we do part of what Hyde Theater Works really aims to do is like the Arab comedy festival create events that are in and of themselves fun accessible entertaining and breaking the boundaries of traditional theater so one of the programs that we've started that's been tremendously successful is the artist response forum a few years back and we we wanted to pick global issues and topics and then invite artists to create short form work we're talking about 10, 15 minute pieces in direct response to those global issues as they happen and the goal of that of course is to shorten the time period between the thing that happens and the artistic response which usually happens like a year or two later right so we wanted to sort of condense that experience and bring this up really quickly very you know click of a button I want it now and also to encourage artists to engage with issues of the world around them rather than create work you know solely within their experience or personal world so an example we work a lot with Middle Eastern artists and Arab American artists and also encouraging US artists to engage with issues in Middle East so one of the artist response forums that we did which is great the revolution and this was I think before I think so yeah so this was done at L1 for the arts which is so this producing a nice place Monday night no yes so Monday night and Monday night at L1 this place and what happened to be in New York 7 p.m. L1 New York City 9 parts of desire if by any chance you didn't get to see it here L1 is a Middle Eastern cultural center in New York that presents work I have to say L1 is actually the most formal theater space we've ever presented and usually we're on a rooftop we're in the middle of a street we're blocking traffic we're praying to God it doesn't rain we're gonna be arrested for our documents we're gonna be arrested or like some gets in the car we need to go off with that I mean that's part of our purposeful to get a diverse audience to get an audience that's not just people going to the theater to get people walking on the street what's happening why is there a person hanging from a fire escape like our event last week I guess we're engaging a wider public community for us can I go to the next slide? I'm gonna have to ask you guys to describe just this and I'm really sorry we're gonna have to all right so this event was about we asked artists to respond to the Arab Spring to the Middle East Uprising we had Arab American artists we had artists from Iran Lebanon Egypt Libya Dubai and the Middle Eastern artists were actually presenting work either that they had filmed the Middle East and sent us videos of or we had visual artists and the slides we had poets that sent us things in and then there were a lot of collaborations that happened one I have to mention because Naseem Salimunpur is one of the artistic associates of private theater work so when we say we're a producing company in New York that's true but we have a collective of artists that we work with all over the world Naseem and I had a four hour Skype session wrote a play and I was literally holding up my laptop saying this is Harlem Naseem I know you can't come because you can't get a visa this is what it looks like that experience was absolutely transformative and I know Tracy's had similar experiences collaborating with artists of the Middle East and that was one of the pieces that we premiered in this particular show and also with this event so Susie a lot of our artists were in the Middle East we did not funding to film them all here but we were representing their work in New York and we wanted to include them in the event so for the whole event we live streamed the entire event online and we had a Twitter feed basically so the international audience could interact with the New York audience while they were watching the show and a lot of the international people they took naps the time difference of the issues a lot of them took naps and took their alarms to wash it and we're up for it and we had a painting in 12 countries yeah so this painting right here is a wonderful artist who lives in Dubai and she's like I really want to present my artwork in New York and so we presented her paintings and we communicated online for the past year and we finally met her in New York a few weeks ago and it was a great experience to have collaborated with her in this sense and then finally make the personal connection we have one more minute one more minute this is just briefly last summer we hosted Sheppie the Deal and we were all talking and it was a great reuniting seeing them again we can go to the next one we did a series of readings of their plays and we produced a night of theater called Trading Theater under Violet of Rule I have a show something like that it was a great conversation if I could just hold here for a second I just want to highlight this is one of my favorite moments of their visit because I think that diplomacy often has this sort of grandeur to it and when you're doing person to person diplomacy which is what Roberta and I often talk about in the context of theater without borders work it comes down to moments like this sharing cheese fries from Shake Shack which are the greatest thing that New York has to offer so this is a real moment of cut through all the stuff and just be people which I think is really important just to wrap up one final point because a lot of the talks have been happening about work that's about politics or that's political and doing diplomacy in that way presenting viewpoints one way that we want to work as a company is not only creating diplomacy by presenting viewpoints but by actually creating diplomacy through the collaboration through having people from different cultures different countries different viewpoints creating work together and through the process having diplomacy that way or process the product which is interesting to be heard about that in the case of the opera yesterday which is like the diametric opposite of what you're doing but you know it happens in all context so I just want to thank you all so much I think you did such a rich rich assortment of ideas and inspirations I hope everyone will seek you out and we are going to now yield to our faces to the opera talk so watch it it takes five