Preview: Arab Nights - Myth, Politics and Dictators at Soho Theatre

Preview: Arab Nights - Myth, Politics and Dictators at Soho Theatre

07 November, 2012
by: Spoonfed Theatre Team

We talk to Raja Shehadeh and Tania El-Khoury about their new theatre pieces, 'The Tales of the Two Djinnis and the Wall' & 'The Tale of The Dictator's Wife' as part of Metta Theatre's Arab Nights, curated by Poppy Burton-Morgan. 

Metta Theatre create theatre that insists the audience are included in the telling of a story. From 21st November, they'll be at Soho Theatre with their production of Arab Nights, a collection of short performances that respond to recent ongoing events in the Middle East and North Africa, giving the audience ultimate power over the protagonist, Shahrazad.

The line-up includes works by Hassan Abdulrazzak, writer of Baghdad Wedding, Egyptian Storyteller Chirine El Ansary, writer and journalist Ghalia Kabbani, live artist Tania El Khoury and Palestinian human rights lawyer and Orwell Prize-winning writer Raja Shehadeh.

The works take their inspiration from 1001 Nights and explore issues that vary from the “security wall” bordering Palestine to the Louboutin's that belong to President Assad's wife. We spoke to  Raja, Tania and curator of the event, Poppy Burton-Morgan about the powers of myth in dealing with contemporary politics.

What do you think of the language used in Britain around the subject of the uprisings in the MENA region?
Tania: The uprisings further impress upon the world the need to understand the MENA region and its people on its own terms. Unfortunately, that continues to not be the case as terms like Arab Spring, Arab Awakening, and a host of other phrases used to describe recent developments seek only to perpetuate the plotting of the region and its people on a linear trajectory in which the West is advanced and the rest is behind trying to catch up.

It is not so much about appropriateness or style. It is about the ways in which the language being used seeks to blunt the sharp critique that the uprisings offer about the status quo of the MENA region, the role of Western powers in propping up such a status quo, and the insistence that everyday people in the region are incapable of charting their own path, knowing their own interests, and asserting their own preferences.

Poppy: Semantics is a tricky thing – to allow us to maintain any kind of discourse on the subject we need a shared set of terms by which we can debate. But equally, generalised catch-all terms can and do perpetuate  ignorance. I struggle with the term 'Arab Spring' – implying as it does a finite time period (with events having started long before Spring 2011 and continuing to unfold even as I write this in 'Winter 2012'). One of the 'Arab Nights' writers is Iranian, but Iran is not an 'Arab' country. And there are significant populations of Arab Christians in the 'Muslim World'. Ultimately I think it's vital that we keep interrogating these terms and that we don't necessarily accept the language of political scientists as the best way to represent the diversity of the subject. Language is often an imprecise tool and equally a constantly evolving one – yesterday's 'politically correct' term can be today's 'morally abhorrent'. 

Other than its setting, what appeals to you about the tales of Shahrazad?
Poppy: I love the mixture of magic and fantasy with social satire and political commentary. With the original tales, there is a perception in Britain that the 1001 Nights are rather 'soft' stories for children but the original tales are full of sex and death, and satirising of oppressive regimes. Also I find the character of Shahrazad herself a huge inspiration – a brave young woman using the power of her words (rather than brute force or her beauty/sexuality) to confront and eventually transform an oppressive tyrant.  

Raja: First and foremost they are wonderful tales, highly entertaining and so well narrated. Then there is the world in which they take place, a lighter more permissive, bawdy world colourful, rich with imagery and without the narrowness,  pettiness and abnormal fragmentation that blights the Middle East of today.

Tania: Not a lot appeals to me about the tales of Shahrazad. I wrote my piece independently of 1001 nights. It was the director's concept of putting the different pieces in the setting of the tales of Shahrazad and I believe she could make a good job of it."



Why is myth useful here?
Raja: It allows me to free myself from the constraints of present-day reality and see it as absurd and unsustainable. I can express the yearning that is felt by many in the region to transform the way things are now. It also helps to overcome the fatigue that stifles ambitions and makes it harder to even dream of a better future. 

Tania: In thinking about the past two years in the MENA region, one has to consider the ways in which a number of myths about the region were disrupted and shattered. For too long, there was the myth of the endlessness of authoritarian regimes, the myth that what had transpired over the past twenty years, sponsored and celebrated by international powers, was reform; the myth that the United Kingdom, the United States, and other Western powers were committed to principles of democracy, and the myth that the peoples of the region were complacent and accepting of the status quo in their countries, and so on.

All of these myths were shattered. Dictators were forced to flee. Regimes were brought down. The people spoke loudly and acted in unison. The fallacy of Western democratic commitment was exposed through the UK/US’s support for regime change intervention in Libya and regime survival intervention in Bahrain. All of this was clear to those of us with critical perspectives prior to 2011, but unfortunately mainstream coverage, commentary, and analysis perpetuated such myths.

Can you tell us something about the place of dictators and control in these short performances? 
Raja: Oppression works primarily by convincing the oppressed that their miserable life is the only possible one. That they are doomed to live in this way. The ability to poke fun at dictators and oppressors is the first stage in the long road towards overcoming their control over the lives of those they dominate i.e. laughter is the best medicine.

After laughter comes the important stage of placing the oppression and the oppressors in context. In the case of my piece about the wall and the checkpoints I wanted an audience to see the newly created Israeli reality as absurd and dangerous not as something inevitable and necessary for Israel’s security, which is how the state of Israel tries to present it to the world. I wanted to show how those Israeli soldiers who guard these stations, the gates to the formidable wall, are themselves victims of the lies their leaders are perpetuating.

Tania: My piece is about a dictator’s wife busy shopping for shoes while the people are revolting in the streets. The idea came to me after I saw the pair of shoes that Asma El Assad purchased online from Louboutin during the first few months of the Syrian uprising. More on this can be found on this blog post. 

Poppy: At the outset of the play the performers create a convention whereby King Shahrayar is 'played' by the audience – as the King they have the choice after each tale to hear another or execute Shahrazad. If they choose to remain silent they acquiesce in her death and I hope this theme of choice, and the implications of choosing to remain silent, will strike a chord with an audience. We have huge freedoms in Britain – and I'm interested in provoking an audience to exercise those freedoms, to choose to speak up and speak out. Watching in silence as atrocities are committed makes the spectator in some way complicit in the act – at an individual level and at the level of government to government, and country to country. I'd like to provoke those people who have a voice into really using it.    

Arab Nights runs at Soho Theatre from 21st November until 1st December (then touring)

More on Spoonfed

Argo by Ben Affleck
Red Velvet at Tricycle Theatre
The River at Royal Court Theatre

Spoonfed Theatre Team