Arab Dramaturgies on the European Stage: Liwaa Yazji’s Goats (Royal Court Theatre, 2017) and Mohammad Al Attar’s The Factory (PACT Zollverein, 2018)

A goat for a life; a factory for a nation. Liwaa Yazji’s Goats and Mohammad Al Attar’s The Factory both draw on events that have occurred in Syria since 2010, whilst continuously questioning and challenging international politics and, on a more social level, the worth of human life. Yazji’s and Al Attar’s play inquire what happens when answers are demanded and the individual takes center stage in a brutal regime-ruled environment. This paper will analyze the question of human agency in destabilized Arab countries and their theatrical representation outside of the Arab world, by looking at two plays that can be read as documentary theatre, influenced by theories of the theatre of the oppressed and Brechtian dramaturgies and infused by (auto)biographical narratives. Thus, these plays, performed on the European stage, ultimately function at the intersection of political activism and artistic expression of trauma narratives. Liwaa Yazji’s Goats and Mohammad Al-Attar’s The Factory are relevant in this discussion for their complex constructions as well as their similarities and differences. Aside from both dramatic texts drawing on events that occurred in Syria since 2010, their respective use of theatre as an instrument to address and maybe even change issues in the political, economic and social environment is noteworthy. In both plays’ theatre becomes a benevolent weapon that calls upon its audiences not only to witness, but to listen and consequently to act.

Mohammad Al Attar’s The Factory (2018)

Mohammad Al Attar is considered, by theater critics, one of the most important Syrian artists today. His widely acclaimed work has been staged in America, Europe and across the Middle East. Although plays such as Could You Please Look Into the Camera (2012) have been staged in Beirut, Lebanon and other Arabic countries, his work remains controversial. His texts are works of fiction but are always anchored in verbatim and non-fictional source material. Thus, Al Attar’s work, usually directed by his longtime creative associate Omar Abusaada, must be read as a political opposition against the Assad regime and the ruling ISIS. Oscillating between the individual and the society, personal narratives and historical facts, the private, intimate and the public, all of his plays ultimately address human tragedies. Al Attar’s work continuously strives to make the devastation of human actions visible. The Factory, which premiered August 2018 at PACT Zollverein in Essen as part of this year’s Ruhrfestspiele in Germany, is no different from his earlier work, and follows Al Attar’s continuous quest to uncover atrocities.

Fueled by economic greed and directed by political ruthlessness, the case around the French cement giant Lafarge became critical in understanding the Syrian civil war and its global impact. Lafarge, the French cement giant has, amidst the war, somehow managed to keep the plant, which started its work in 2011, open. While other multinational companies pulled out of Syria in the midst of the civil war, Lafarge was able to keep their plant open until 2014, leading to allegations that the company must have paid off jihadis. According to most recent reports the company is suspected to have payed nearly € 13m to militant groups in order to keep their operations going (Agence-France Presse). Run by the French, the company was charged mid-2018 with complicity in crimes against humanity aside from numerous individual charges against company chief executives including “financing terrorist groups” and “endangering the lives of others” (ibid.).

In his docudrama, Al Attar investigates this timely issue through the narrative of a Franco-Algerian journalist, Maryam, who is living in Paris and continuously tries to decipher the seemingly confused emails of the young worker Ahmed. Ahmed is the second character we meet, having been temporarily trapped in the cement factory and one of the last thirty workers who were in the factory when it was stormed by the IS in 2014. The third character introduced is a member of a renowned Syrian family, Firas, who, through his connections, facilitated the company’s settlement in Syria; the cast is completed with the character Amr, a Syrian-Canadian business man, who was one of the first hired at the company and later became an investor. Attar tries to illuminate an intricate web of interests and conflicts, in which all are guilty, only concerned about their own success and gain, but ultimately are also victims. Al Attar does not judge, but presents the issue from various perspectives, trying to reach not only a wider audience, but, more importantly, an understanding as to how this degree of corruption and criminality is enabled.

Liwaa Yazji’s Goats(2017)

Liwaa Yazji’s Goats was developed in 2016 as part of the International Playwright Program at the Royal Court Theatre in London, where the play premiered in 2017. The play stars more than three dozen actors and six goats, exploring the function and power of propaganda during the conflict. The Assad regime is known for their high investment in television. Ultimately, this major investment led to the distribution of what is, by now, widely known under the term: fake news. Fake news is a term not coined by the current US administration but has already been well-established since the late nineteenth century and has, since the turn of this century, become more frequently used again. In short, the term implies the active and willing distribution of false news and information as well as the manipulation of information channels, oftentimes through popular outlets, such as television and social media, to control, politicize and gain economic as well political influence and control. Mass media and especially the use of social media have greatly influenced Arab revolutions since 2011.

Sari Hanafi argues that within this political climate of change Al Jazeera, for instance, “turned from the ‘principal of non-interference’ in internal Arab affairs to a stance of ‘solidarity’ with Arab public grievances” (60). An arguable development that in fact raises questions of professionalism and objectivity, however, the influence of the only two 24-hour news channels in the Arab world, Al Arabiya being the second one, is indisputable, as Zahera Harb argues that both channels “became rivals representing political and national interests and not just news competitors” (n.p.). Both channels raise questions about satellite channels becoming “tools for democratic political change” (ibid.) whilst oftentimes being the only channels offering any sort of information. This precisely leads to questions of political autonomy and subjectivity, ultimately questioning whether Arab revolutions have freed the region of totalitarian regimes or gradually entered the public into new ones.

Yazji, a poet, dramaturg, playwright and documentary filmmaker herself, creates a bittersweet narrative in which she puts forth, in her own words, “the lies we choose to believe” (“Liwaa Yazji on Goats,” Royal Court). In Goats, Yazji straddles the oftentimes very fine line between truth and lies, the real and the surreal, needs and wants. In a small village the families of the young men who died in their quest to free the country of terrorist, are reimbursed, so to say, with a goat.

Goats. Photo Credit: Johan Persson/Royal Court Theatre, 2017.

This generous gift for every young man who dies as a martyr, is part of a government program that equally wants to ‘thank’ the families as well as encourage them to support more young men to enlist, even lowering the age to join the military to 16. Yazji too bases her play on real time events, as there were, indeed “no more than two goats,” distributed to the families of young men who fell (Ahmed, n.p.). By doing so she emphasizes negotiations of the self and identity as much as truth and fiction. In her play particularly, it is the comrade Abu Tayyeb, who, more than any other character, exemplifies how “roles are defined and constructed and in being performed, help to reproduce the subject and to reproduce the political order” (Tripp 204). The performance of this character, who is ultimately able to turn a suicide into an ‘honorable’ death of a martyr, underlines how the web of deceit spreads through all social structures, even those who have suffered and lost most.

An Attempt to Truth: Life-writing meets Docudrama

In both plays, a view from inside of Syria is offered. Both playwrights use real-time events and the conflict as their source text. By drawing on occurred events and utilizing personal narratives, the authors simultaneously draw on traditions of (auto)biographical performances and documentary theatre. In the tradition of life-writing, here used as an umbrella term, narratives are integral to the construction of identity. Here, Ricoeur, Jolly, Lejeune, De Mans and others can be drawn upon, however a gentle reminder of Paul Ricoeur’s reading of the intersection between memory and imagination, where “memory is on the side of perception whereas imagination is on the side of fiction,” will suffice here (Kearney 154). Ricoeur points towards the repeated intersection of memory and imagination, warning his readers not to “ignore the fact that sometimes fictions come closer to what ‘really’ happened than do mere historical narratives, where fictions go directly to the meaning beyond or beneath the fact” (Kearney 154). Al Attar uses the case of Lafarge as a metaphor for the civil war, allowing much creative freedom and theatrical perspective into his work. Yazji focuses on an event that has been hardly publicized and was, for the most part, not known around the world. In both instances, we find that personal tragedies are in the forefront of each theatrical exploration, functioning as a vehicle to understand the civil war and the worth of humans in this political and economically charged conflict.

However, a continuous problem remains in the question of truth and verity of the information provided, thus the relationship to the audience is decisive. In both plays we find that the channels of communication are politically influenced, while the same channels, such as social-media, are also part of the cultural self-expression of the community. This twofold function of media and the transmission of information is challenging, as it provides for varying narratives. Al Attar’s play is firmly grounded in factual information surrounding the French cement giant, however the narratives that are told are clearly constructed, some purely fictional (yet probable) while other personal narratives are borrowed. These provide entry to his play that illuminates a web of corruption, power and money. When the Algerian-French journalist Maryam receives a confusing E-mail about Lafarge and its workings she is intrigued. Although she identifies herself as a journalist, in her opening lines she says that her relationship to her chosen profession is laced equally with “disgust and lust” (Al Attar; translation by author). In her own words, she tells the audience that the more she tries to move away from journalism, the more she is caught in the lure of unveiling the stories. It is precisely this web into which we are introduced as audience members. The author notes in his stage directions that all characters but Ahmed are to be masked when coming on stage, suggesting that Lafarge is not only the catalyst of the story, but also functions as a symbol for human greed, destruction and political gain. Here, the journalist and factual information are used as entry points into the dramatic text, and as the play unfolds on stage, we find that the effect of authenticity, achieved through the numerous projections of images of the factory as well as through source material, allows audiences to collect information themselves, and suggests the possibility of sifting through this information to come to a personal (and informed) conclusion.

In life-writing, in contrast to other theatrical forms, audiences are assigned a series of active roles. In Al Attar’s play this is not only achieved though the various factual source material but also through the staging of the play in a minimalistic setting. According to Deirdre Heddon, “[t]he vast majority of autobiographical performances” use the “public arena of performance in order to ‘speak out,’ attempting to make visible denied or marginalized subjects,” furthermore allowing “to ‘talk back,’ aiming to challenge, contest and problematize dominant representations and assumptions,” for which minimalist settings offer the best environment (20). A great majority of these performances are by performers who are largely drawing on their own lives, making these autobiographical solo performances that dominate the stage. However, in discussing Arab-American artists, Dalia Basiouny and Marvin Carlson argue for a new development where “current exilic Arab-American performance…deals entirely with non-autobiographical material, the life stories of others collected, arranged and presented, often in the form of a solo performance” (216). By moving away from the personal narrative into a Brechtian Verfremdung, an effect of authenticity is created. Furthermore, Al Attar is able to use all theatrical possibilities by merging biographical narratives, facts and fiction. This approach was clearly reflected in the live performance, too. The four characters in Al Attar’s plays, as well as in the performance directed by Omar Abusaada, were seated to the far left and right, the back as well as the front of the stage behind a desk. The stage was flanked by screens. The screens had multiple uses, including being a projection space and aiding in creating specific places (for example, grey concrete projections suggested being surrounded by concrete walls).

The Factory. Photo Credit: David Baltzer, 2018.

The dramatic text itself suggests that although the four characters are continuously together on stage they are seldom interacting directly as their characters. Mostly situated behind their desks, they leave their designated space to walk center stage to enact a certain moment, a presently narrated scene.

The Factory. Photo Credit: Ant Palmer/Ruhrtriennale, 2018.

Costume changes are made visible, the fourth wall never present, further heightening the immediacy of the event. The audience is never allowed to rest, continuously stimulated through a series of factual, narrative and fictional drama.

The effect of authenticity is furthered in both plays by the fact that either all or a large portion of the artists involved were or currently are personally affected by the civil war, thus clearly foregrounding the question of “the selfhood of the performers” as they ultimately represent themselves whilst becoming representative for others (Govan et al. 59). Heddon refers to this as the “visible presence of the performing subject” (5), which ultimately allows for a renegotiation of the relationship between the narrator and the listener, as well as the performance and the spectator. The docudrama strives to fuse the “performing I” with the “represented I”, allowing art and life to collapse into one. By eliminating the fourth wall, using various factual material and endeavoring authenticity in the performance of the play, audiences are not only made witnesses to the story as it unfolds, but also become accountable.

The power of moving life experiences and transformative processes to center stage is compelling as it moves the marginalized narrative to the foreground. This can be particularly seen in Goats, as here Liwaa Yazji set her play in “a villiage in Syria, 2016” (5). In the live performance, the story is already unfolding as audiences are entering the house, as the ceremony has already started on stage. The staging is decisive here too, as Yazji’s author’s note states that the footage which appears continuously on multiple television screens “is a combination of live recording from the stage, videos prepared in advance, and archival material” (5). In contrast to the expansive space in which Al Attar’s play was staged, the Royal Court, where Yazji’s play premiered is rather intimate. Although staged in the Jerwood theatre downstairs, the multiple screens on stage, continuous sounds emitted from speakers, dozens of people on stage and the constant bleating of goats is overwhelming. Here audiences may be treated, according to Yazji, as villagers furthering the intimidating and often overwhelming sensory stimulation (5). The intensity of the setting is furthered by opening with the funeral scene, numerous coffins appearing, and the somber setting being interrupted by flickering television screens, a reporter fixing her hair, and a cameraman continuously trying to capture the mourning family members around the coffins.

Yazji opens her play by restaging familiar images that went global, including maps of Syria and images of journalists reporting from rural areas. In her quest to uncover the truth and verity of these images, a reporter and a cameraman continuously retell live on screen what we see on stage, thereby constructing stories right in front of the audiences’ eyes. The doubling of the narrative and the varying interpretations of the witnessed event question the integrity of news coverage per se, and the impact these interpretations had and remain having on the transmission of information within the torn country as well as the rest of the world. The role of satellite channels and social media in the Arab revolutions have been greatly discussed (c.f. Hanafi, Harb) although they remain controversial. Sari Hanafi argues that “[w]hile mass media, albeit less important, were a means to report the events, the national television stations were completely misinforming the publics” (60). In Yazji’s play Abu Al-Tayyib, chair of the local political party, at the beginning keeps the camera’s rolling, insisting that “[p]eople will be expecting an evening programme” (9). He tries to control the narrative, opening the play with a speech at a funeral, aired on television, amidst the coffins, acknowledging the losses the village has seen whilst continuously underlining the people’s relentless fight against terrorism and for political sovereignty.

Goats. Photo Credit: Johan Persson/Royal Court Theatre, 2017.

While Abu Al-Tayyib desperately tries to perform the funeral with the presenter as a celebration, Yazji continuously points in the stage directions of the text, as well as in the performance at the Royal Court, to the performativity of the ruling power in the scene. Abu Al-Tayyib’s antagonist is Abu Firas, who has lost his son, and insists that the coffin of his son be opened so that he can confirm his son’s death. Although supported by the local Sheikh, the narrative does not seem to allow the father’s final wishes. While he continuously fights how his son’s body and the ceremony are misused to promote martyrdom and the recruiting of new, younger soldiers, he is repeatedly interrupted and shut down by the government official and the reporter, who are aiming for a different kind of truth. As the coffins are carried away, the presenter “smoothly and professionally covers up the disorder” by addressing her live audience in the camera: “We have been reporting live from the ceremony to mark the sacrifices made by the nation’s martyrs” (15). Her speech is followed by the “Martyr’s Anthem” and an image with a cake in front of a picture of Abu Firas’ son, as if they are claiming that it is his birthday, too. Abu Firas is vivid, angry, calling out “Where the hell did you get that photo? Firas!”, while the stage direction notes, “The PRESENTER appears on screen again. Abu Firas can still be seen and heard yelling behind her. WOMEN start to ululate to cover up the sound” (15). Human suffering is turned into a recruitment possibility through the celebration of martyrdom.

Owning the Story

Both plays are written by exiled authors currently living in Berlin, Germany. Both authors use metaphors, a goat and a cement factory, to analyze the workings of the civil war in Syria. Although they are not using their personal narratives, the authors’ individual traumatic experiences cannot be denied, as it is, at the end of the day, their homeland that is devasted in the course of this continuing political upheaval. While trauma is problematic when raising questions about truth, the authors of the plays presented essentially circumvent this ‘problem,’ by utilizing techniques of documentary theatre, hence becoming “voices of truth,“ eager to unfold the “complex relation between knowing and not knowing“ (Caruth 3). Both plays offer critical reflections of traumatic events that have occurred during the civil war. Beyond idealizing the Arab revolutions, these plays carefully present human suffering

Max Stafford-Clark argues that verbatim plays “flash your research nakedly,” where the material is left “raw” (Hammond et al. 51). Verbatim theatre focuses on the rawness and direct usage of the material, ultimately leading to a very text-based, direct address play, as we see particularly in Al Attar’s The Factory. Emerged in the 1990s, verbatim theatre is, according to Derek Paget, a “political purpose broadly opposed to the status quos” (original emphasis; 138). Thus, verbatim theatre is a political theatre ‘technique’ that emerges when it is ‘needed.’ These two plays are in fact needed, as they are essential in focusing on the personal, on the human. In line with Stafford-Clark’s terminology, Richard Schechner states that “art is cooked and life is raw. Making art is the process of transforming raw experience into palatable form” (Performance Theory 30). This is a fitting description for the work of Yazij’s Goats, as her intricate play uses the merging of fact and fiction, the personal and the public, not only for the construction of the text but also in the dramaturgy of the play, as the characters are continuously performing and retelling narratives. The madness and terror of what is happening continuously drives characters, such as Abu Tayyeb, to retell the story, to make it fitting, to make sense of the terror that has no meaning.

To conclude, it is precisely here that Arab dramaturgies on the European stage are located at the crossroads and a continuum of intersections, encounters and negotiations; a theatre that is both documentary and trauma narrative; political and utterly liberated in its artistic expression. Mohamed Al-Attar and Liwaa Yazji both powerfully utilize the unheard voices of the Syrian people in order to retell a story, to draw attention to the humans involved in these atrocities. In foregrounding the individual story, they challenge European audiences, to consider a life for a goat and a factory for a nation.

Works Cited:

Ahmed, Yusra, trans. “For every dead, two goats: Assad’s reward.” Zeman ALWSL. November 20, 2013. Accessed September 27, 2018. https://en.zamanslwsl.net/news/articles/15.

Al Attar, Mohammad and Omar Abusaada. The Factory. Unpublished Performance Script, 2018.

Baltzer, David. The Factory. 2018. Germany.

Basiouny, Dalia, and Marvin Carlson. “Current Trends in Arab-American Performance.” In Performance, Exile and ‘America’, pp. 208-219. Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2009.

France-Presse, Agence. “Lafarge Charged with Complicity in Syria Crimes against Humanity.” The Guardian. June 28, 2018. Accessed February 24, 2019. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/28/lafarge-charged-with-complicity-in-syria-crimes-against-humanity.

Govan, Emma, Helen Nicholson, and Katie Normington. Making a Performance: Devising Histories and Contemporary Practices. Routledge, 2007.

Hammond, Will, and Dan Steward, eds. Verbatim: Contemporary Documentary Theatre. Oberon Books, 2012.

Hanafi, Sari. “The Arab revolutions; the emergence of a new political subjectivity.” Contemporary Arab Affairs 5, no. 2 (2012): 39-74.

Harb, Zahera. “Arab revolutions and the social media effect.” M/C Journal 14, no. 2 (2011).

Heddon, Deirdre. Autobiography and Performance. Palgrave Macmillan, 2008.

Kearney, Richard. On Paul Ricoeur: The Owl of Minerva. Ashgate, 2004.

Paget, Derek. “New Documentarism on Stage: Documentary Theatre in New Times.” Zeitschrift für Anglistik und Amerikanistik 56, no. 2 (2008): 129-141.

Palmer, Ant. The Factory. 2018. Ruhrtriennale, Essen.

Persson, Johan. Goats 4/12. 2017. Royal Court Theatre, London.

—. Goats 5/15. 2017. Royal Court Theatre, London.

Schechner, Richard. Performance Theory. Routledge, 2003.

Tripp, Charles. “Performing the Public: theatres of power in the Middle East.” Constellations 20, no. 2 (2013): 203-216.

Yazji, Liwaa. Goats. London: The Royal Court Theatre, 2017.

Sarah Youssef

Sarah Youssef is an Egyptian-German internationally working freelance theatre maker and research scholar. She has completed her undergraduate studies in Theatre at the American University in Cairo, Egypt and her graduate degrees in Text and Performance Studies at RADA/King’s College London and in Cross Sectoral and Community Arts at Goldsmiths University. Since fall 2012, Sarah is editorial assistant of gender forum – An Internet Journal for Gender Studies and research assistant at the University of Cologne, Germany where she also teaches. Sarah has been a CUNY visiting research scholar in 2014 and 2017. She holds a PhD in English Literature from the University of Cologne, Germany, where she completed her dissertation on her decade-long empirical research on UK and US prison theatre (forthcoming 2019, Intellect Publishing). She is currently working on her research as well as her practice on immersive theatre productions and the reimagining of classic texts in theatre and performance.

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Table of Contents:

PART 1: Toward Arab Dramaturgies Conference