Abdullah Al-Jaffal, supervisor of the theater committee at the Culture and Arts Society in Dammam, said children’s theaters have existed since the 1960s based on the initiative of individuals, who appreciate and value the role the arts plays in education. 

Yet Saudi schools have long ignored the benefits of the theaters arts because school administrators do not see it as as an educational tool. Al-Jaffal argues that theater provides a rich cultural backdrop in Arab culture, whether plays originate in the Middle East or elsewhere.

Al-Jaffal said: “Many creative talents [in this field] have been marginalized because they were not given the necessary support.

“Had they been nurtured and developed they would have become some of the best artists in the region.”

Al-Jaffal lamented the absence of theater education in the Kingdom’s schools, stressing the importance of the arts and creativity in school curriculums.

“The lack of arts in schools caused our children to be deprived of cultural education,” he said. 

Schools in the Kingdom organized theatrical activities since 1964 under the supervision of educators who taught children during primary stages of school to act out scripts that relayed Islamic stories as well as international plays like Shakespeare’s “Merchant of Venice.”

The expert said: “Theater doesn’t exist in our modern schools because it is no longer seen as an educational tool.

“It is only practiced within individual initiatives that have no methodology or basis for development in curriculums. This support is withdrawn according to individual wishes since no budgets are allocated to them.”

Al-Jaffal attributed the absence of theater at the society’s other chapters due to the fact that “theatrical work lacks media support. Creative work in this domain is seldom reported in the media and does not receive the support their counterparts do in the rest of the Arab world. Support should not be limited to periods of cultural festivals.”

He said: “Visual media doesn’t care much about the theater and this is quite evident in satellite channels’ disregard for this cultural aspect.

“Local channels should allocate some airtime for theatrical activities, just like the other Arab satellite channels.”