Democratic Palestine : 37 (ص 29)
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- عنوان
- Democratic Palestine : 37 (ص 29)
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The following is a paper presented by George Ibrahim Habash, Secretary of the League of Palestinian Thea-
ter Activists in the Occupied Territories, to the conference held in Athens in December 1989, by the Interna-
tional Committee of Artists and Intellectuals for the Support of the Uprising and the Struggle of the Palesti-
nian People in the Occupied Territories.
First of all, allow me to present a
brief historical overview of the real
beginnings of the Palestinian theater
and its active role in the process of
struggle. The very dialectics of occupa-
tion and resistance constitute the basic
framework of the local Palestinian the-
ater. No theater, unless it is involved
in resisting the occupation, is worthy
of the name.
The genuine experience of the thea-
ter began in the early seventies against
a backdrop of no actual theatrical
experience. The period of Jordanian
rule of the West Bank witnessed no
real experience in this field. In fact,
this period was characterized by
paralysis of the cultural movement in
general. The emergence of the local
theater in the seventies was not a
unique or isolated event, but was part
of a broad upsurge among the various
sectors of the Palestinian people at
that time. The June 1967 defeat had
provided a rare opportunity. The mas-
ses, at that time, surpassed the limited
potentials of the ruling Arab
bourgeoisie. They discovered the real
path of history through action which
relied on their own potentials, instead
of merely making use of the narrow
margin of freedom to act and innovate
which was grudgingly allowed by the
regimes.
The Palestinian resistance, which
paved the way for all strata of the
Palestinian people to put their hidden
potentials to use, was the main man-
ifestation of the upsurge of the masses.
Theater in the occupied territories
started under the influence of a mar-
kedly rising revolutionary climate.
From the very beginning, it was a pat-
riotic theater. Without the new climate
created by the revolution, it would
Democratic Palestine, February 1990
have been impossible for the society in
the occupied territories to foster the
initial experiments in theater. All the
popular masses - the intellectuals,
workers, peasants, petit bourgeoisie,
Scene from Al Hakawati production:
«The story of the eye and the tooth»
etc., both men and women, were
caught up in the revolutionary tide of
the resistance movement which had
broken all chains. They became an
attentive audience for the new theater,
despite the fact that there had never
been any local theater before.
In this sense, the emergence of the
theater was in itself an act of resistance
to occupation. As a matter of course,
the masses’ readiness to sacrifice
increases under occupation, as long as
there is a revolutionary leadership,
with leaders who remain among the
masses, not on their shoulders.
From the beginning, the theater in
the occupied territories benefited from
the artistic experience of other
peoples... Our local Palestinian theater
has been identified with an extremely
simple set, complete elimination of the
fourth wall and audience participation.
The theater groups were supported by
the intellectuals, and theater critics
emerged. Women began to act in the
local theater. The scarcity of resources
encouraged self-reliance. The local
theater was able to present the works
of Sophocles, Shakespeare, Moliere,
Brecht, Lorca, Nazim Hikmet,
Mahmoud Darwish, Samih Al Qasem,
Ahmed Fuad Nejm, etc. It was able to
apply different methods of perfor-
mance and production. It benefited
from the methods of Stanislavski,
Mairhold, Grutovski, etc. The gains
made by the local theater were due to
the revolutionary atmosphere to which
I referred earlier, as well as to the
open social relations prevailing among
the people in the occupied territories,
and their desire to resist the occupa-
tion.
Yet the spontaneous emergence of
the theater was not free of errors and
weaknesses. Most of those who took
part in the local theater movement
lacked both practical and academic
experience in this particular field.
Their artistic and theatrical culture was
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