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THE HANDSTAND |
OCTOBER 2003 |
.AL-MIDAN THEATRE, HAIFA It seems tha Makram Khoury has actually been given too much support in times gone by if he is going to resign now, just now, in this critical period of the history of Palestine, from his directorship of the Al-Midan Theatre. He may think, as thousands do, that his world is hungry and not concerned with culture; but it is just now that the theatre must move ahead into a new world as though a catharsis has been obtained for the actors. "Culture never kept a man from going hungry" wrote Artaud, but "to extract from culture ideas whose compelling force is identical with that of hunger," is the thread the Makram Khoury needs to follow. But perhaps the first paragraph to Artaud's preface of The Theatre and its Double explains the crisis better: "Never before, when it is life itself is in question, has there been so much talk of civilisation and culture. And there is a curious parallel between this generalized collapse of life at the root of our present demoralisation and our concern for a culture which has never been coincident with life, which in fact has been devised to tyrannize over life..... We need to live first of all; to believe in what makes us live and that something makes us live - to believe in whatever is produced from the mysterious depths of ourselves. The terror of the Israeli occupation stems from the European system that thoughts are derived from action. For the Palestinian the essential is to identify acts that stem from thoughts. Due to the economic slide from a running theatre structure to a run-away theatre management, it can be seen that the actors need to collaborate together and perhaps emerge into street theatre in order to keep going. A street theatre that would ask for benefits in kind in order to keep going. Artaud says "All our ideas about life must be revised in a period when nothing any longer adheres to life; the poetry which is no longer within us and which we no longer succeed in finding in things....our powerlessness to take complete posession of life." For the new generation of theatre people it has become essential that they must find someway to keep their art active and political as the theatre is "the most perfect artistic form of coercion" Augusto Boal. The tragedy that hangs a pall over the Middle East at present needs theatre to concentrate thoughts on the essential relationships that are the wonderfully strong identities streaming through the river of the Arab people.This river that is being abused by individual monsters that have been identified in the occupation forces. This river that is bound up in house curfews, held up at the dams of checkpoints. This river that is silent but a force for turbulence among the old, this river that is for a child's play. Arman Gatti wrote "Writing political plays is for me a way of remaining faithful to the child I was at seven to ten years of age.My world is the world of road-sweepers, deportations and escapes. Shakespeare's universe with its kings and princes rings hollow for me. My kings live in shanty towns. They are of more consequence to me than the kings in great literary works." It should be understood that the history of Jewish Theatre is based on the nomadic Jewish or Yiddish theatre groups that Kafka knew, that eked out a living and were considered a kind of "music hall" much as the "music hall" in England that could last be seen in the vicinity of The Strand, London under one of the arches beyond Charing Cross Railway Station in the l950s.It would not be relevant to Arab theatre possibly.Gatti himself was a concentration camp survivor and he set out his own definition of culture thus: culture is "first and foremost an act of creation, a fundamental act through whichn one achieves a new awareness capable of initiating a new considered line of conduct." For actors he sought for them to find it in themselves to break the chain of events in which they had been caught up and to choose, not suffer, their destint." Gatti, for instance worked with a great range of "survivors " from different histories and worlds. He once worked with a group of young Kabyle women of whom he was particularly proud for they made a film Les Tisserandes, which reflected on the culture of their country and the loss of that culture among those in exile. He also worked with the handicapped on a project that failed because of the unforseen resistance encountered among their "institutionalised" nurses and doctors. These actors of Al-Midan Theatre
also have the choice: to look back on life as it might
have been, learned from their older generations - or to
fix their minds firmly on the future. "I reject men
who lie down on the ground and accept the death imposed
on them by another." These words refuse to
contemplate a future that is closed.There was to have
been a meeting on September 5th to discuss the
"future".... I have no knowledge of the outcome
but I hope the actors decided to stand on their own feet
and maintain the existence and rejuvenation of their
craft.
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