Reflections on a highlight from 2024
It’s two hours till 2025, and I promised to write about the work I saw at Oman’s Dhofar International Theatre Festival (DITfest) in its 1st edition (October 2-8 2024). Before the year closes, I want to reflect on one of the most eye-opening theatrical experiences I have had in ages. This remarkable festival was perhaps the highlight of my 2024. Moreover, it that has left me with several important issues I need to unpack for myself during 2025.
These are: notions of competition; the tension of body-based theatre within a literary theatre tradition; adaptation of literary texts into non-verbal theatre; scale and “elemental community-theatre-warts-and-all”.
Look out for future blog posts unpacking these topics and I am keen to hear your comments. (See opportunity at the end of this post.)
Jury: Ensemble production
I was invited to attend this festival with only two weeks to plan for it. I went with feelings of trepidation due to my inadequacy in terms of language and cultural understanding. I had mixed feelings about making judgements in a competition together with some fears around security due to the ever-increasing crisis in the Middle East.
I was chosen to sit on the jury committee for the Ensemble Production. There were several other competition streams taking place at the festival including Mono Drama, Duo Drama, Street Theatre, Children’s Theatre and Public Performance.
I joined Dr Miguel Tito Loreface, Dr Sami Al-gmaan, Amal Dabbas, Ayman Elshewey, Dr Murshid Ravi and Dawood Hussain. Most were fluent in Arabic, some in English, Portuguese, Chinese and Italian. I think I was the only one who spoke only English spending many jury sessions lamenting in my head my limited language learning. Though neither my ‘O’ Level Latin, nor my ‘A’ Level French or German would have helped me in this case. Nevertheless we navigated our way through six evenings of watching and debate. It was challenging to say the least.
There were six pieces in our track from six countries: two from Oman, and the other four from Tunisia, Iraq, Syria and Italy.
Myrawsh from Tunisia translated in the programme as, alternately, They Do Not See Me and Blackout, was a beautifully executed human-sized puppet play, a study of ageing. It was a skilful blurring of puppet and human which was detailed and poignantly held throughout. I witnessed slippage between object/puppet and actor in a way I haven’t before. I saw and felt in equal measure human life with all its vulnerability caught within the spell of puppetry and human animation. I dared to think about puppet as costume, where puppet-costume becomes animated transcending its usual place in the traditional theatre hierarchy. (Look out for future discussions about this ‘heirarchy’.) Only the animal puppet fell short. Being four-legged, it appeared to bounce about rather than walk/trot. I dared to consider puppeteer as actor. I recalled the work of UK based Trestle Theatre from many years ago and thought how far this piece from Tunisia travelled from that first remembered touchstone. It raised for me issues of hierarchy within the design space along with the issues around physical theatre and literary text. It made for impassioned discussions on our jury. Here’s a link if I have whetted your curiosity.
https://www.festivaldehammamet.com/fr/programme/mounir_argui_blackout
The second piece came from Iraq: Khalaf written by Muhaned Al-Hadi. Two versions of the title in translation being Disagreement and The Dispute. It was a four hander if you count the voice(s) but more a duo drama really. It was interesting how these rules could be adapted. It was an ensemble piece – two voices as I recall – the son and the narrator voice and two physical people – the policeman and the mother. This makes me think hierarchies of persona are also challengeable.
I was glad to receive the translation of the piece, but I couldn’t fully appreciate the text until I finally re-read it for this post. Being the second piece I saw I was getting more confident asking for help from my jury colleagues who summed it up as a dispute between a mother, a son and a policeman concerning the son’s involvement in an assumed act of terrorism and her potential suspicious collaboration in that. Though somewhat clunky in its performance through the visual effects the drama and its executors were strong and of the traditional kind raising for me issues of the place of scenography within the literary text when probably the actor’s job might not need to be ‘propped’ so much. Our jury discussions now concerned acting technique and the strength of the script. Later in the week once we got onto the non-verbal acting that presents itself in dance/physical theatre it reappeared as a challenge raising the question of what we mean by “acting”. This is something I have reflected on long and hard and want to further unpack during the coming year.
One of our jury members Dr Sami Al-gmaan in his lecture on Arab Theatre, in particular the history of the emergence of Saudi theatre alludes to the fifth stage
“of renewal as I call it ((1996-2015). Among the results of this stage: It took Saudi theatre to the horizons of experimentation which constituted a new phase of renewal in all artistic elements. The texts are directed towards issues with a common human dimension……The first beginnings of the image theatre began to appear, that is the theatre that takes care of the scene and the scenery. The theatrical performance escaped from the authority of the text to find another authority that disputes its formation and crystallisation that is namely the authority of the director and the authority of the scenographer. ”
Though he is talking about the theatre of Saudi-Arabia. Is this stage posting applicable to Iraqi theatre? Is the development similar or different? What was the impact of the war that this play referred to, on the history of Iraqi theatre? All this stuff buzzes through my head as I reflect on the amazing performances in the context of the festival.
Speaking of the authority of the scenographer, Saqifa translated as Penthouse or Shed from Syria was yet another framing of text through the installation of the scenographic spectacle. And in this case the scenography seemed to mask the multiple struggles for the actors in the piece.
I didn’t receive any pre-information about this piece, so my response was instinctive. The ensemble played beneath a net or web structure. The acting suggested the frustration of women’s voices and there was a hint of a trafficking theme. There was very little discussion around this piece in our jury, which proved challenging for me since I needed a bit more explanation. It was this piece that raised issues around competition for me. My jury explained about to me how the Syrian war had had an adverse effect on Syrian theatre. That made sense but I did wonder how we might reward this offering in the same way we considered the wonderful Palestinian show The Woman’s Dog which featured within the Public Theatre track. The political theatre within the festival challenged me but not so nearly as much as some tricky but empassioned jury conversations emerging from considerations of Romeo and Juliet – The Final Hours, from Italy. This was a dance piece exquisitely staged by Walter Matteini and Ina Broeck challenging the idea of experiment with body, light, music and scenography. I have yet to see such a strong adaptation by a young ensemble. Well deserving in every category of these prestigious awards it collected the Special Jury Award. Whilst jury discussions are private, for me I can say that this piece more than any raised questions around form, the relationship between body driven work, the literary text and what we mean by the actor’s voice. This well-known Shakespearean story told by ImPerfect Dance Company with style, ambition, flare and utter conviction was challenging in the festival context in Oman for reasons I have yet to understand. For me it raised issues of blind casting in terms of age and sexual identity which seem key to its understanding. Here’s a clip which doesn’t do justice to the living heat of this production.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WnoXJ2Ey-5k
Finally we come to the two Omani pieces, examples of what I would call ‘folk dance drama’ for want of a better definition. Presented by Mazoon Theatre, Moushka like ImPerfect’s innovative Shakespearean homage oozed ensemble wonder. Moushka was seamlessly led by Tunisian actor dancer Nadia Bin Obed and Omani famed actor …. Both conveyed the spirit of the actor that dances so familiar to me in my own training. So for me I was in a comfort zone that combined a broad sense of physical theatre and elemental community-theatre-warts-and-all” that I love so much. Both Omani pieces conjured the spirit of Omani folk theatre, about which I know so little, but which I instinctively associated with the best of the work of Bare Essentials, a company I co-founded back in the 1980s. The simplicity of Moushka with its pulsating repetition, memorable bagpipes and thrusting drumbeat held everyone enthralled. It took most of the awards. Its sister production Evening of Death with similar themes of a more personal and less mythical nature, though not quite as strong, did finish with a rousing finale preceded by the most extraordinary pre-show audience participation I have ever witnessed. In the end the tribute to community theatre and all that is amateur within that field married with professional flashes won the competition.
Thinking about this competition on this eve of a brand New Year my own participation in competitions comes to mind. Like when I played ‘Clog Dance’ and ‘The Little Wild Rose’ on the descant recorder at the British Federation of Music Festivals in Nuneaton in 1966. And like when I had the audacity to think I might stand a chance at the Edinburgh Fringe First competition with ‘The Dig’ in 1992. And I won one of those oblong shaped brassy plates that still hangs on my wall. And a more recent competition comes to mind. Only 2 years ago I entered the Sparks Award by the Society of Children’s Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI). But I haven’t heard a peep. And I still console myself that the online application just can’t have been received.
Descant recorder certificate
Sharm and Dhofar Certificates of Appreciation
Fringe First The Dig 1992
Those are my experiences of the “injustice” of competition. But I have felt the levelling sense of equality at the Arab theatre festivals I have attended. No one it seems misses out and those of us who are honoured to judge receive gorgeous certificates of participation and are made to feel like even we have won something.
So in conclusion I am setting myself a New Year’s Resolution in terms of four issues I need to probe in 2025:
How is competition useful to the artistic process?
What are the rubs of physical theatre and literary theatre?
How does non-verbal theatre sit within adaptation of literary texts?
What are the lessons we can learn from scale and “elemental community-theatre-warts-and-all”. I will explain what I mean by this in later posts.
Happy New Year to you and Happy New Year to me as I seek some useful answers. I hope everyone’s a winner!