A Crisis and a Blessing
Artists under attack in Bangladesh find protection and a new theatrical voice by returning to their roots
By Mofidul Hoque
To be a theatre artist in Bangladesh means also to be an activist. Almost everywhere in the world, economic reality dictates that theatre must struggle to create its own space in society. But in Bangladesh, theatre also faces threats and attack from dogmatic, obscurantist forces. Some of these attacks are physically violent, and lives have been lost.
How has Bengal theatre responded to such threats? The challenge to artists’ right to make theatre has been met with more theatre—meaningful theatre that incorporates and interprets the country’s traditional theatrical forms, and that is vibrant, living and creative. In this context, the crisis has become something of a blessing.
Bangladesh is a predominantly Muslim society, and Islam in Bengal has a strong liberal Sufi influence. Thanks to the syncretistic nature of Bengal culture, Buddhist, Hindu and Islamic rituals have all blended to shape the country’s performance tradition, which dates back a thousand years. The tradition begins with Charyapad, a cycle of mystic Buddhist songs; in the 16th century, the Hindu Vaishnava sect rendered song and dance in praise of Radha and Krishna; the Sufi Islam brought to Bengal by various saints took root in the medieval period, and the shrines they established became centers for music and performance. Researchers have identified more than 70 genres of folk performance in Bangladesh, but in the principal form, a lone narrator or his team presents popular stories such as the Ramayana and Mahabharata, the Islamic story of Karbala, or narratives of indigenous deities.
Eventually, this narrative form was overshadowed by the advent of colonialism. Western proscenium theatre gradually came to be recognized as mainstream theatre in Bangladesh, while old forms were marginalized. Modern theatre was no longer linked with tradition.In eastern Bengal, the part of the subcontinent which became part of Pakistan in 1947, theatre practice was threatened with the growing Islamization of the state. But the emergence of Bangladesh in 1971 as a secular nation-state brought a new upsurge in theatre within an atmosphere of freedom. Bangladesh now has a vibrant theatre scene, with about 300 groups performing regularly. Although the infrastructural support is weak—artists face an extreme lack of performing space and facilities—nevertheless, the urge to express oneself through the art of theatre is very strong.
These days, however, the free nation of Bangladesh is unable to ensure a free space for theatre. Attacks from militant religious fundamentalist groups have become a global phenomenon, and in Bangladesh, over the past decade, there have been numerous assaults on the performance of theatre and music. The makeshift arenas of Jatra—a folk form of traveling theatre popular in rural areas—have been easy targets for brutal attacks by fundamentalist groups. The government has also, from time to time, imposed restrictions on Jatra performances on “moral” grounds. Violence has broken out at the annual religious festival of the shrines, where devotees engage in musical performance, and in April 2001 a large open-air concert held to celebrate Bengali New Year in the capital city of Dhaka was bombed, killing innocent spectators. Blasphemy charges have been filed against theatre directors and playwrights for vilifying Islam. All these actions—undertaken in the name of protecting the sanctity of religion—have led to a kind of self-censorship in Bengal theatre.
To resist such onslaughts, theatre practitioners have drawn inspiration from the history of Bengal theatre, returning again to traditional traits and forms and using them to depict contemporary themes. In doing so, theatre artists are reconstructing a national theatre form distinct from the Western model. This has opened up a lively debate and discussion on the history of Bengali theatre—and, most importantly, it has led to experimentation and the development of a new language of theatre. Young playwrights, directors and actors have given birth to a new narrative genre that is ritualistic in form and contemporary in content. Bishad Sindhu—a new rendering of the Karbala story by talented director Syed Jamil Ahmed—is a landmark production of this genre.
The practitioners of theatre have stood at the forefront of the struggle to protect the freedom of the artist. Bangladesh Group Theatre Federation and the National Alliance for Culture have become platforms uniting the community and inspiring the struggle for democratic rights and cultural freedom. The search for the roots of theatre in Bangladesh provides theatre artists with strong ground to stand on in thwarting attacks against their art. That theatre has been practiced in Bengal for a thousand years—blending religious rituals and appealing to all, promoting harmony and tolerance—has great contemporary significance and even greater relevance for the future.
Mofidul Hoque is a writer and editor from Bangladesh.
Women Making Waves
Surrounded (but mostly untouched) by the upheaval of the Arab Spring, Algerian theatre is poised to enjoy its own quiet revolution
By Eliza Bent
Last year’s Arab Spring seemed to spread like wildfire, hopping from country to country in North Africa and the Middle East. Its afterglow ignited protests in Europe, the U.S. and China—far from the birthplace of Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution. Algeria, next door to Tunisia and Libya, sustained major protests but didn’t quite hop on the political upheaval bandwagon. That is, in part, because Algeria experienced tumult of its own in the late 1980s. The “Couscous Revolt,” as it is sometimes called, was precipitated by slow political change, as well as a price drop in oil, resulting in riots and a series of liberalizing economic reforms.
“I think Algerians in general are very inspired by what happened in Tunisia and Egypt,” says theatre artist Taous Claire Khazem, who runs Daraja Theatre with her husband, Mohamed Yabdri, and creates work in both Algeria and at several theatres in Minnesota. “However, I hear people on the ground here saying they want peaceful change that might have to happen a bit more slowly. In 1988 Algeria lived what Tunisia and Egypt saw in 2011, and therefore we have a different point of view” about the costs and benefits of upheaval. Moreover, Khazem points out that Algeria, unlike its neighbors to the east, has not been under the rule of the same dictator for decades at a time. “A variety of presidents have come and gone since Algeria’s independence in 1962,” she observes.
Nevertheless, as a fairly new transplant to the Algerian theatre scene, Khazem, who is American-born and of Algerian heritage, has borne witness to a dearth of female theatrical representation and also has taken part in some artistic revolutions of her own. A year after Khazem arrived in Algeria, she was cast in a play in her new city, Oran. “At the time, the theatre had only four professional actresses who were regularly appearing in productions,” she says. Algeria has 14 regional theatres, all funded by the state-run Ministry of Culture. At the Oran audition, however, Khazem was surprised to see many women, mostly college students, turn up to vie for a role. “Beside the fact that there is a lack of women working professionally in the theatre,” Khazem recalls, “there simultaneously seemed to be a lot of interest and untapped talent.”
Khazem, who is Lecoq-trained, has worked as a teaching artist in St. Paul, Minn., and has performed with the Twin Cities’ Pangea World Theater, Frank Theatre and Interact Center for the Performing Arts. She approached Oran’s Ministry of Culture with a proposal to create a six-month theatre training course for women. The ministry not only agreed to Khazem’s pitch, but also provided her with a rehearsal space and technical support, with a salary provided by the Regional Theatre of Oran.
Sixty-three women showed up for Khazem’s audition, and 37 were accepted into the program. For the next five months the group studied theatrical styles appropriate to physical theatre, Greek tragedy, realism, Shakespeare, Molière and Brecht, among others. Khazem also enlisted the help of local experts. Algerian-born playwright Fatima Gallaire, who now resides in France, conducted a six-day writing workshop during the course, and Nawel Louerrad, Algeria’s lone female scenic designer, led a workshop intensive. After Gallaire’s writing workshop, a participant told Khazem that she had never in her life “put pen to paper to write something personal,” and that sharing her story was a cathartic experience.
In the final month, Khazem divided the group into four companies, each with its own actors, writer, designer and director, and set them to work creating their own plays. In one, a woman who suffers a personal tragedy becomes a journalist and writes about other people’s suffering; in another piece, two young women are put into a psychiatric hospital because, according to Khazem, “One is too smart for her community to handle, and the other is so much in love that she’s deemed crazy.” A farce treating the materialistic side of Algerian society and a solo piece about a rejected orphan who becomes a professional clown rounded out the offerings.
“I think all the participants were empowered by creating and performing their own work,” says Khazem. “Three have now been cast in mainstage productions at the Regional Theatre of Oran as well as other regional theatres. Another is applying to scenic design programs in France.”
Algeria is not devoid of female arts administrators—2 out of the 14 regional artistic directors are women: Fouzia Ait El Hadj, of the El Eulma Theatre, and Sonia, of the Regional Theatre of Annaba. (“She’s like Madonna, just one name,” jokes Khazem.) Algeria’s cultural minister, Khalida Toumi, is also a woman. For Khazem, the problem isn’t so much a lack of female participation but a scarcity of scripts dramatizing the experiences of modern Algerian women. “Many theatres work with translations and adaptations,” she says. “In 2010 every single entry in the annual professional theatre festival was a translation or adaptation—including two different versions of Tartuffe. In 2011 there was more original work, albeit still heavy on translation.”
Among the original work that does get made, some plays take on social topics such as corruption, sex outside of marriage, homosexuality and abuse of power—mostly without censorship. (Khazem recalls, however, that a scene with a suggestively eaten banana caused walk-outs at a play she attended.) “Oftentimes,” she notes, “artists limit their own creativity” and create “fluffy, entertaining work” to get funding and stage time at major festivals. Meanwhile, a festival devoted to female Algerian theatre artists has been cancelled three times.
Khazem remains hopeful in light of recent political rumblings. “For me, the real revolution is here with these young artists,” she says. “They are expressing what they have to say in new ways, right here inside this state-run theatre, which has never before seen so many new female performers show up to work this hard.”
After the War
Iraqi theatre artists forge ahead—and reach for global connections—in a cautious, still-fragile country
By Rob Weinert-Kendt
“Theatre is in our blood,” says Waleed Shamil, assistant professor of theatre at Baghdad University. “We can’t do anything else.”
That kind of determination has proven essential in a country where, after nearly nine years of war and occupation by a U.S.-led coalition, public cultural life remains something of a casualty. “We can say we have theatre, but we don’t have theatre,” laments Shamil, who adds, “No cinema, either. Can you imagine—the second-largest capital of the Arab world after Cairo, and no movie theatre?” Only the Hunting Club, a place for VIPs, screens films; otherwise, Shamil says, most Iraqis are content to stay home and watch DVDs, not least because of the security situation.
This understandable tendency for Iraqis to keep their heads down has taken its toll on the nation’s live theatre scene. But there have been exceptions and small glimmers of hope: An experimental theatre festival, the first of its kind in a decade, was organized last November by the Ministry of Culture, aiming “to show that Baghdad is okay for returning back to normal life,” as Shamil puts it. The festival featured performances by companies from the Ukraine, Tunisia and France, alongside work by Iraqi troupes.
And at a presentation during the TCG National Conference in Los Angeles last June, Shamil highlighted other encouraging, even heroic theatrical events of recent years: plays staged under a bombed-out Baghdad bridge by the Al Mada street theatre troupe in 2007; a piece of “theatre reportage” by Ali Kareem, staged in a decimated church as a way to reconcile Christians and Muslims; a university production of a heavily adapted Hamlet. Shamil quoted a speech from the title character of the latter production: “I am proud I am Iraqi; I live between two rivers but I have no water to drink. I live on an ocean of oil, but I don’t have a gallon of gas for my car. I am the best extra in the world.”
Indeed, university productions seem to fill the void left in the near-absence of locally grown professional theatre. (Shamil recalls that in the 1980s, during his country’s war with Iran, “Comedies played to full houses. The idea was that such things keep people busy and take their minds off the war.” Commercial theatre as such hasn’t existed since the 1990s.) Every May, Baghdad University hosts a theatre festival, and for the past few years, it has had the benefit of a beautifully rebuilt theatre—though its provenance is decidedly bittersweet. “The American army came and rebuilt our theatre in 2009 at a cost of $250,000, which is a fraction of what the bombs cost that destroyed it,” Shamil notes drily.
Also in attendance at the TCG conference were monologist Amir Al-Azraki and Iraqi-American writer/performer Heather Raffo, whose 2003 solo play 9 Parts of Desire unveils the multifaceted lives of Iraqi women for Western audiences. When asked whether she’d like to take the widely seen show to Iraq, Raffo replied, “I would rather see it done by Iraqi women in their own dialects. I know that Iraqis would feel so represented if they knew this had been a hit play in the U.S.” Raffo couldn’t resist adding, “They would say, ‘The Jews supported that?’”
Shamil is making Raffo’s wish come true: He is “nearly 60-percent done” with an Arabic-language adaptation of Raffo’s 9 Parts, which he hopes to premiere in Baghdad this year with a famous Iraqi actress, Laila Muhammad. “There’s been a lot of changing, but the basic structure is there—the characters and the stories,” Shamil reports. “I want it to be an Iraqi play, in one way or another.”
Al-Azraki, who recently completed his Ph.D. in theatre at York University in Toronto, is also partnering with a U.S. playwright, Michele Lowe, to bring her play Inana to Basra, where Al-Azraki has returned to teach. For his part, Al-Azraki would like to see “an exchange of shows that introduce the culture of the other into both countries, to counteract Arab stereotypes of Americans and to counteract American stereotypes of Arabs.” To that end, he advocates “artistic programs that could immerse artists in each others’ culture.”
The web-based volunteer organization Theatre Without Borders was instrumental in helping to bring Shamil, Al-Azraki and Pakistani theatre artist Shahid Nadeem to the U.S. last June and introducing them to U.S. artists and organizations. The fruits of that bicoastal trip include, for instance, a plan for a dozen theatre students and three teachers, including Shamil, to come from Baghdad University to Georgetown University’s Theatre Department in Washington, D.C., for its May/June pre-summer school session. Al-Azraki is also credited with inspiring the U.S. State Department to sponsor U.S. visits for female playwrights from Iraq.
These are hopeful signs. But even (or especially) since the departure of U.S. troops from Iraq in December, civil society and the rule of law remain fragile constructs there. Last September, Shamil’s friend and colleague Hadi al-Mahdi—a radio journalist and theatre director who had been critical of the Iraqi government—was killed on the eve of a demonstration he helped organize.
“It is difficult to open your mouth and say what you want to say,” Shamil says. “Too many militias are watching you. Politics, sex, religion—these are the red-light danger areas.” What sustains Shamil’s hopes despite the odds are his students: “They are always very enthusiastic to make theatre no matter what. Even though there is not that much opportunity for them, the theatre instinct is working in them very strongly.”
