The Saudi Drama Society has announced the results of a playwriting competition. One of the members of the society told Asharq Al-Awsat that the winning plays would participate in both local and international drama festivals. Having read this in the paper, I had to stop and think about it: What drama festivals are these people talking about? Are they talking about the almost invisible plays that are performed in men-only theaters and unheard of by the general population? I know we have had some attempts at creating theater in Saudi Arabia and I have seen articles about our drama groups participating in festivals in other Arab countries. But we have to ask: What audience is this theater aiming at? The plays that are performed abroad are almost always surrealistic. Back here, they are performed for private societies and sometimes at universities; the audience in such cases is limited to students or a few people who happen to hear of the performance.
Some men in this country have spent most of their lives working in this field without receiving recognition. At this point, I wonder how many of us acknowledge that theater and drama are part of an artistic atmosphere and that they serve a real social function. Apparently someone realizes this since we go to the trouble of sending performing groups abroad to represent Saudi Arabia. Why then are we so little aware of them here at home?
There are many points to ponder here. First our plays are male only, both the actors and the audience. Their themes and stories are limited to “safe” subjects that will please the censors. Or if the author feels really daring, he or she may go into “abstract mode” which the audience usually fails to understand. The second point and, I admit, the most irritating one is that drama here is male only. Why is that? I understand that in our society men and women cannot mingle and of course their appearance together in a play is impossible. But why then restrict the audience to males only? If there is going to be a male only cast, why can’t women have their own plays as well, actors and audiences? If we really want to start from scratch, we’ll have to be like the Elizabethans, and have an all male cast, with boys acting women’s roles. No doubt we would go one step beyond and have girls acting men’s roles! As one of the many contradictions we live with, I could not help but notice that our TV shows have both men and women and to my knowledge, those shows attract a far bigger audience than our “imaginary theater” could ever dream of.
It is not so much a question of mingling of sexes. It is rather a question of whether we want theater in this country and if we do, shouldn’t we think more clearly about exactly what we want and how we can achieve it?
In another newspaper yesterday, there was a brief news item about Saudi Arabia participating in an international cultural festival with books, literary evenings and plays. So here it comes again — one face for the outside world and another for us at home. Why do we never get to see these performances that represent Saudi Arabia abroad?
At schools, there are some attempts to support acting by having plays acted by students. In boys’ schools the actors are all boys, and in girls’ schools, as a friend told me, the male roles are played by girls but the girls playing male characters are not allowed to wear men’s clothes! So a girl walks onstage, wearing a dress and plays the part of a man. What sort of confusion is this? Actually it is worth mentioning here that in so called “plays” that are performed outside schools, and go abroad, there are no women’s roles at all. Our theater is by men and for men.
On hearing that Dar-Al-Hekma College was presenting a dramatic version of Jane Austen’s “Sense and Sensibility,” I couldn’t wait to go. I went along, anticipating a show. The play was not as good as I had hoped but the effort made by the girls indicated that, maybe with professional help, this could be a start. I even dared to go further and imagine that maybe every few months we would hear about a new production in town, flock to see it and enjoy a night out.
In an interview, the director of Tash Ma Tash, the Kingdom’s popular Ramadan sitcom, explained that the reason why we do not have proper theaters is that we have no institution that teaches drama, and so naturally, our experience in this field is limited. He added that since the few plays we do have are restricted and censored, this is one more reason why dramatic talent goes into film making.
The director seems to be optimistic about cinema as an alternative to theater. The reasons that obstruct the development of theater are the same that obstruct the development of cinema. Until we get over the mentality that sees art as a useless waste of time, we’ll have to live with depending on Arabic theater and cinema for our mini-doses of art.
At this point I remember what a girl said after a group from her school visited Briman prison in Jeddah. She said that what they saw was completely different from what they had seen in cinema.
The girl, like all of us here, could not be talking about OUR cinema; her impression was borrowed from another country’s cinema. If we are going to take our impression of reality from outside, then this means we lack an impression of our own reality.
One Rainy Day
The storms of rain and hail that hit the Western region last week flooded the roads as usual and caused the usual damage to cars. This we have learned to expect every time it rains and it seems we’ll have to continue to expect it for some time.
Things never change; every time the papers are filled with complaints from people about standing water, the municipalities are not moving to get rid of the water or making sure that next time we won’t have to deal with the same problems again.
But this year, the storm left fatalities, casualties, drowned families, collapsed bridges and damaged roads. At this point we should really ask: What does it take to make officials react responsibly?
Some people got fed up and went to the National Human Rights Commission. In Al-Baha and Asir, citizens are suing the Transportation Ministry because of the horrible road conditions and the fact that roads and bridges collapsed after the rains and caused a number of casualties.
Maybe things will change now; we certainly hope so.
