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Author Archives: Maria
The Freedom Theatre: Performing Cultural Resistance in Palestine. Ola Johansson and Johanna Wallin, eds. New Delhi: LeftWord Books, 2018. Pp. 417.
A Step Towards Arab Dramaturgies
In a time where Arabs are at the forefront of news cycles worldwide, theatre plays a vital role not only in recognizing, but also in presenting and creating narratives for Arabs, about Arabs, by Arabs. In an effort towards identifying …
Amal Means Incurable Hope: An Interview with Rahaf Fasheh on Directing Tales of A City by the Sea at the University of Toronto
Tales of a City by the Sea by Samah Sabawi has received critical acclaim in its touring and several stagings in Palestine and Australia. It is an eye- opening play based on real-life experiences from the 2008-2009 Israeli siege on …
Time Interrupted in Hannah Khalil’s Scenes from 71* Years
Israeli soldiers burst into a Palestinian home in the middle of the night, hurling orders for the residents to “stop filming.” A young Palestinian woman skypes her cousin in London and nervously asks if the cousin can send her a …
Iraq’s Ancient Past as Cultural Currency in Rasha Fadhil’s Ishtar in Baghdad
The US-led invasion of Iraq in March, 2003, and ensuing occupation, was seen by some Iraqis, initially, as an act of liberation from the brutal dictator Saddam Hussein. Such enthusiasm, however, was quickly dampened as the allied forces were ill-equipped …
Arabs and Muslims on Stage: Can We Unpack Our Baggage?
When it comes to countering the implicit, and sometimes explicit prejudices that the larger society exhibits toward Arabs and Muslims, American theatres are not particularly ahead of the curve. While some theatres have bravely and commendably gone out of their …
Dancing the Self: A Dance of Resistance from the MENA
In her book Choreographing Difference: The Body and Identity in Contemporary Dance (1997), Ann Cooper Albright situates dance “at the intersection of bodily experience and cultural representation” (Albright 119). However, Albright declares that dance studies and its practices are still, …
Towards a Crosspollination Dramaturgical Approach: Blood Wedding and No Demand No Supply
In the absence of a developed playwriting tradition, government support, and funding opportunities, and with the presence of prior censorship, theatre-makers in Lebanon find themselves using every accessible artistic method that would get the stories they choose to tell to …
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 …
Contentious Dramaturgies in the countries of the Arab Spring (The Case of Morocco)
Introduction
‘Alternative Dramaturgies’ in contemporary Moroccan theatres have become highly visible, re-framing our preconceived questions related to both classical and modern dramaturgies. In the present undertaking three case studies will be explored along with their public responses and their potential …
The Politics of Presenting Arabs on American Stages in a Time of War
There are two things that I know are true.
1.Theatremakers (which includes artists and audiences because you need both to make theatre) hunger for stories because we are so in love with life we are not content to simply live …
Traversing through the Siege: The Role of movement and memory in performing cultural resistance
The Freedom Theatre, located in the middle of the Jenin refugee camp in the West Bank, Palestine, was started in 2006 with the aim of building cultural resistance against the Zionist occupation of Palestinian land through theatre and arts. The …
A New Dramaturgical Model at AUB
The dramaturgical model I would like to briefly describe to you today is one that I developed with Sahar Assaf at the American University of Beirut over the last five years. We believe that it is a singular model in …