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Al-Ahram Weekly 5 - 11 August 1999 Issue No. 441 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 5 - 11 August 1999 Issue No. 441
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Stages of development
By Youssef RakhaBorn in the village of Al-Falouga on the banks of the Euphrates Youssef Al-'Ani -- actor, director, playwright and one of the Arab theatre's most prolific pioneers -- developed his talent for acting in school theatres and deepened his knowledge of grass-roots Iraq through the contact he made with the Tigres boatmen among whom he lived while a secondary school student in Baghdad. He followed closely the careers of such pioneering actors and impresarios as Youssef Wahbi, Bishara Wakim and Naguib El-Rihani. During his years as a law student at Baghdad University he formed an amateur theatre troupe, Gabr Al-Khawater, a vehicle for his belief in a theatre that addresses the real problems of the people. Upon graduation Al-'Ani surpervised artistic activities in the Faculty of Commerce but was soon expelled due not only to his involvement in radical politics but also because of the oppositional flavour of the plays in which he participated. He subsequently enrolled in the Fine Arts Institute to study acting, and was once again expelled.
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In 1952 Al-'Ani, together with Ibrahim Jalal, founded the Modern Art Troupe, for whom he wrote and directed most of his mature work. In 1958 he travelled to the German Democratic Republic where he discovered the epic theatre of Brecht, perhaps the most lasting influence on his stagecraft. In the 1960s and 1970s he developed contacts with theatre people throughout the Arab world and, despite insisting on remaining in Baghdad ("it is a position I've adopted", he points out), has worked in Egypt, Syria and the Maghreb and participated in festivals worldwide.
Youssef Al-'Ani
Photo: Randa Shaath
EMERGENCE OF A VANGUARD: "Initially I would like to point out that avant-garde experiments in the Arab world had been occurring since the early 1950s, though these are generally overlooked in reference works documenting the development of Arab theatre. These experiments expressed leaps in the theatrical context, in terms of both form and content, but only later did we discover that they could be seen as part of an avant-garde movement. "In 1949, for example, I remember writing a play entitled A Madman Challenges Fate, inspired by the psychology I studied at Law School. We were taught by Ahmed Khalifa, the Egyptian professor who later became minister of social affairs under Nasser. Khalifa encouraged me to write for the stage, and the text I produced, an experiment which in its own way sought a theatre of the absurd, was quick to receive his blessing. But I must emphasise the fact that, at that time, we were not yet familiar with the Theatre of the Absurd, nor did we know of monodrama as a genre.
"The play I'd written, which had only one character in it, was directed and produced in 1950. Dr Nehad Selaiha has since pointed out that this was the very first attempt at monodrama in the Arab world. And such experiments continued to be undertaken throughout the Arab world. They assumed various forms, and adopted numerous modes of representation and expression.
"The intention of most of these early experiments, if not of all of them, was not to adapt the Western model to the specificity of Arab culture, however. Rather, at least within my own practical attempts and those of such dramatists as Al-Tayib Al-Seddiqi, Qasim Mohamed and Saadallah Wannous, the point was to benefit from the Western theatre that we had studied, practised and/or were influenced by. Our intention was to develop the base, the material out of which theatre is made, which was invariably Arab, so that it could benefit from, and utilise, the techniques and experiments of Western theatre. For a long time we were in the process of seeking an identity for Arab theatre, a process which, due partly to the fact that it didn't always solicit the seriousness and depth of vision it deserved, left many behind."
DEMISE OF ARAB THEATRE: "People would stop midway to their destination. The reason, to my mind, is the fact that such experiments demand a ceaseless, perpetual continuity, and an accurate assessment of every step, something that can only happen within the specialised apparati of college and art institutes, especially their theatre departments. And while it is true that colleges and their drama professors continually assay such attempts in the theatrical productions they undertake during the academic year, their efforts are confined, the audience is tiny, and there is a persistent danger of falling out of touch. Hence the importance of a larger apparatus. This is why I insist that such experiments must be undertaken in relation to the state, so that the conditions necessary for a viable theatrical experience will obtain. These experiments, then, were without roots and without the depth necessary for their continuity and development. "As for what is sometimes called conventional theatre, it did not deteriorate on its own. Its demise has been part of the general demise of Arab theatre. And theatre has deteriorated because of the political and economic disturbances through which the Arab countries are passing.
"Most shows aim to make the highest possible profit at the expense of theatrical values. Most of our theatres contain cabaret shows, better suited to nightclubs. Not one show is without dancing, singing and heap upon heap of crude, even obscene, jokes.
"The only standard of judgement is to laugh and make others laugh, at anything and everything. Levels of culture have themselves fallen. Economic and psychological decline, in the course of our contemporary history, have also affected individuals, exhausting the capacity, the comfort, let's call it the stability, that permits an appreciation of theatre or art which, rather than flattening human experience takes the form of a sustained creative effort that seeks out the new and the beneficial."
THE MISSING REPERTOIRE: "A repertoire, as you know, is one way of accustoming the spectator to variety in form and content but this is no longer possible in the context of current commercial theatre, where a play is produced with the object of keeping it running for as long as possible. When the sole criteria to judge a play is commercial there can be no repertoire. So I don't think it's the lack of a repertoire that caused theatre to decline: it is the decline of the theatre that resulted in the disappearance of the old repertoires and the situation where new ones cannot be created."
FUNDING SOURCES: "Official support is a way of animating theatre though in some cases it can fall prey to rigid restrictions that prevent change for the better. Theatre that does not receive a subsidy, however, finds itself seriously limited in its room for manoeuvre. And non-governmental institutions, in my view, are incapable of providing sufficiently sustained support. Which is why theatrical productions are so frequently cut short, resulting in experiments that remain incomplete and lack continuity. What is really at issue is the political order's vision for the theatre, whether and in what way it is desirable. But this is an issue that requires a separate discussion."
THEATRE AND POLITICS: "Theatre as I understand it is a human, cultural and intellectual phenomenon, and the more we inspect its roots the more we see the influence of politics, be it positive or negative. This is something quite obvious, something that doesn't require proof. A lot of what Arab theatre produced was bound up with political events, whether directly or indirectly. "Iraqi theatre, for instance, and what I mean is actual theatrical activity rather than texts written and published simply for people to read, started off as political theatre. There are theatrical texts written in Iraq that go back to the end of the 19th century, as well as various attempts at theatrical production now and Again, here and there -- school productions and productions that arose out of cultural gatherings and things of the sort, especially in Al-Mawsil. But what I'm talking about here is the emergence of theatre troupes, which was preceded by theatrical activities in intellectual associations and cultural gatherings all of which were somehow related to the 1920 Revolution in Iraq, that revolution which spread through the whole country from south to north. Writers were, directly or indirectly, expressing that revolution. Theatre became one of the factors that motivated the people to oppose the British and confront them as a unified and effective power. I can refer to plays written by poet Mohamed Mahdi Al-Basir and a play entitled Wahida, written by Moussa Al-Shabandar under the pseudonym Abu Sharara.
"This theatre, which can be called political, remained close to the people because it was an expression of their thoughts and dreams. And the 1950s witnessed a continuation of political theatre, though it displayed a more conscious approach on both the artistic and cultural planes. Such a situation was common to Egypt and Syria as well as Iraq, and the theatre that arose out of it remained, for a long time, in conflict with power. My own troupe in Iraq, Al-Masrah Al-Hadith (The Modern Theatre), was subjected to a good deal of harassment. I was personally prevented from standing on stage as an actor because of the plays I had written. The position of the authorities in the time of the monarchy was fierce. The authorities realised soon enough that theatre could be a factor in awakening people and making them conscious of what was surrounding them. I was imprisoned, prevented from working and even sent away from Iraq, and all as a result of my political theatre in the 1950s."
RECAPITULATIONS: "My experiences in the 1950s theatre made me, if anything, all the more eager to remain involved with a people's theatre, and to enrich myself intellectually, culturally and artistically through contact with other theatres, though without falling unthinkingly for the glitter of the West. What I wanted to do was to contemplate other theatres and utilise them insofar as they enriched my own experience and the experience of Iraqi and Arab theatre. Thus the influence of Brecht's theatre on me in the mid-1950s was part of the search for a new expression harmonious, for the most part, with the contents and at least some of the forms of Iraq's theatrical heritage. So I wrote Al-Moftah (The Key) after the 1967 defeat, then Al-Kharabah (The Empty Lot), followed by Al-Mokouth which was published in Cairo. "Currently I'm working on texts that I call 'saloufiat' a coinage that combines the word for tale (saloufa) with that for play (masrahiya) to produce something in between, something the object of which is not simply to protect our heritage of folk tales but to employ their techniques in combination with other theatrical devices to tell stories on stage. This is different to both the hakawati [story-telling] and the samer [popular group performance entertainment] traditions, and clearly relates to the experimentation with which my career began."
