Damascus Theatre Festival (review)

Theatre companies and solo performers from twenty-one countries presented work in the thirteenth Damascus Theatre Festival. The biannual event began in 1969 after Sadallah Wannus and other Syrian playwrights called for such a festival, and its creation reflected the desire of the Baath regime to project an air of openness after the disastrous 1967 war and the loss of the Golan Heights. The Syrian government discontinued the festival in 1990 during the Persian Gulf War and did not revive it until 2004. With over forty different productions presented in eight venues, organizers of the 2006 festival were clearly striving to raise Damascus's status as a cultural center in the Arab world. Most of the theatre companies came from Arab or Middle Eastern countries, although Italian, Swedish, and Swiss companies and performers were also represented. In addition, other festival activities took place: audience talk-backs each morning to discuss selected productions from the previous evening; a salute to the recently deceased Syrian playwright Mahmoud 'Adwan; and three panel discussions, "Theatre and Globalization," "New Arab Theatre," and "Young Practitioners and the Revival of Theatre."

The festival included original plays, devised works, well-respected Arab plays of the last fifteen years, and translations and adaptations from Europe's ancient and modern theatre. Translation also figured in the many devised works (the most common genre presented) through quoted texts. In some cases, the adaptation or excerpting of foreign plays allowed theatre practitioners to comment on recent political events without explicitly critiquing contemporary Arab governments; in others, these translated texts connected a contemporary Arab grievance to longstanding human struggles. Finally, the three productions from Tunisia were performed in that country's distinct dialect. Several Syrians told me that they understood roughly half of the dialogue but had no trouble connecting images of state repression and the pressures of capitalism to the Syrian context. Thus, while translated texts did not dominate the festival, an examination of its use provides perspective on some of the strategies that Arab theatre practitioners use to examine their societies.

This subtle social examination operates in tension with how the Syrian Ministry of Culture frames productions. From the festival's inception, the ministry has asserted that it demonstrates and strengthens Arab pan-nationalism, and similar claims were repeated in the present opening ceremonies. However, several productions undermined such assertions with examinations of fratricide directly or implicitly related to events in Iraq, with critiques of government repression, and with at least one comic depiction of Arab emigration. Audiences would hardly have expected such self-reflective fare after the opening ceremonies, which began with a film celebrating the participants in the previous twelve festivals, and continued as the Minister of Culture Muhammad Najee 'Atree presented awards to forty-three theatre practitioners from nine Arab countries. In his lengthy welcoming comments, the minister noted the presence of Palestinian theatre practitioners and announced that Syria and all Arabs of the theatre were united in the struggle against Israel and in their support of the Iraqi insurgence. (By contrast, festival director Jihad al-Zaghbee briefly drew attention to the range of participants and thanked his staff in his comments.) The opening ceremonies reached a self-congratulatory frenzy when Syria's Enana dance troupe performed an Orientalistist phantasia worthy of Disney. This piece, titled Sinbad, featured more chartreuse than the collected episodes of I Dream of Jeannieand celebrated Arab victories since the conquest of Andalusia to the "resistance and will of defeating invaders" of present-day Iraqis. Typical of the troupe's acrobatic choreography, one scene depicting the customs of the Arabian Gulf featured groups of men battling with bamboo rods only to drop them at the end of the conflict and warmly embrace.

The Syrian Antigone's Emigration, written and directed by Jihad Sa'ad, suggested a very different image of present-day conflicts. The play is Sa'ad's fourth adaptation of an ancient Greek text. In The Podium(the daily program notes of the festival), Sa'ad explained that "Antigone's departure is a departure...