Veteran Lebanese theatre director Roger Assaf talks to Rania Khallaf in Cairo about his most recent experimental play Palestine is politically and culturally the hottest issue addressed by significant and sensitive artists and authors in the region. This time the Palestinian issue is discussed from a slightly different angle: a dramatist's view of the tormented Palestinian people mixed with a portrayal of the life and career of the painter Paul Giragosian, a Lebanese Armenian artist who died in 1993. Through this theme are woven documents on the city of Jerusalem before 1948. Giragosian's work is unique in that his paintings show concern for humanity in various situations. A City of Mirrors addresses the plight of the Palestinian people and their suffering under the Israeli occupation going back more than 60 years to the period that preceded the Belford promise of 1948. The one-hour play, which is directed and presented by Roger Assaf, was presented last week at the Geneina Theatre, in Al-Azhar Park as part of the Spring Festival of events organised by Al-Mawred Al-Thaqafi. The performance attracted a considerable audience, mostly from the Cairene cultural circle. In 2008, Assaf, who is often called the father of modern Lebanese theatre, was awarded the Venice Theatre Biennial's Golden Lion award in recognition of his lifetime achievements. The Biennial's administration wanted to honour a man who is "tightly linked to theatrical creativity in the countries of the Mediterranean". Assaf is one of the greatest theatrical directors and actors in the Arab world and has an unprecedented expertise in experimental theatre. It was actually some time ago that Assaf acquired recognition from the Arab cultural elite, who view him as an icon of the modern Arab theatre movement. I will never forget my own thrilled enjoyment back in the early 1990s of The Ayoub Memoirs, an experimental play Assaf produced at the National Theatre in Cairo for the Arab Theatre Festival. Since then, I must admit, I have been in love with the great director and his theatre company, as his plays do not just address your soul and mind but fill you with pride and enhance the human element in you. A City of Mirrors opened with a simple scene. Assaf appears alone on stage with a wooden stool and with three large screens in the background. He begins a thoughtful and sympathetic dialogue with a stone; he talks to it, tries to unveil its history, throws it on the ground and finally fights with it. "To be or not to be, this is the issue!" is the way the performance starts. "My heart has become a stone, and my mind is becoming fossilised," Assaf weeps, while we watch photographs of the Palestinian child Mohamed Al-Dorra who was killed in cold blood by Israeli soldiers during the 2000 uprising. In the next scene the stone is a baby, pampered by Assaf in a kind of human harmonisation between the stone and a man. During this one-man show drama, the screens play the role of a mirror reflecting portraits by Giragosian and excerpts from a documentary film on his life and career, as well as documentary films and statements about the city of Jerusalem before 1948, as well as the British scheme to make the city a home for Jews. The screenings of the documentaries are artistic and even a little humorous. In one of the most fascinating scenes Assaf plays the role of an artist who spent his teenage years in Jerusalem; he is talking to his mother, who appears on the screen as a traditional elderly Palestinian: her image is transferred to an amusing talkative face, scolding her spoiled child who was happily spending his evening in artists' houses carelessly frittering his time away in the world of art. A young assistant actor appears on stage every now and then. He is silent most of the time, but engages in a weird relationship with the narrator. In one of these scenes he passes in front of the screens and then appears simultaneously on them as he walks slowly as a witness or a shadow, while the scenes of death and destruction are taking place in the old city. The play also discusses music and plastic art and their impact on people; and the history of Jerusalem as a meeting point of religions and civilisations. "The idea for the play was a direct inspiration by the announcement of Jerusalem as the Arab cultural capital in 2009," Assaf told Al-Ahram Weekly. "It was a provocative announcement. The cultural celebrations of the event were very barely audible. Giragosian was a close friend whose artistic views corresponded with mine: the support of revolutions all over the world, and sympathy for the rule of peace and equality between human beings." It took Assaf only seven months to write and prepare this heavily thematic performance, which was presented in Beirut in March this year before it came to Cairo. For Assaf the mirrors correspond with certain symbols. "It could be a symbol in plastic art or theatre that is the real mirror of society, and even for the author himself. More than that, I consider Jerusalem as the cradle of religion, a meeting point of different eras and different religions; each religion is a mirror of another one, and each historical era is a mirror of the one that follows," he told the Weekly. The performance began with a rather contradictory scene: on the screens we watched the planets moving in the sky, while accompanying this was a sad but serene musical performance given on the lute. Assaf himself does not consider this as a contradiction. On the contrary, he says, it is a reference to transcending the usual logic of life today; especially as it is followed by the scene which revealed this strange relationship between the man and the stone, or in other words with the memory of history. The play also deals with the forced immigration and massacres of the Armenians by Turkish forces in 1915, as well as the gassing of Jews by the Nazis and the killings of Palestinians and their forced immigration from their land in 1948. "All these historical events were governed by one awfully racist logic which has controlled our modern history and still rules in the land of Palestine," he said. Born in 1941 in Beirut to a French mother and a Lebanese father, Roger Assaf runs the Beirut Theatre. He founded a mobile theatre company, Al Hakawati, which illustrates on stage the society of his country and the trauma of the civil war that ravaged the country. The civil war is a recurrent theme in all his plays. Do Lebanese audiences still need to be reminded of those dark days in their modern history? Have they not learnt the lesson yet? "Well, definitely not," Assaf said. "Religion is being misused these days more than ever before. Wars are being justified in the name of God, as if it is God who permits this hatred and wars between people." "Lebanese society, he added, was continually torn apart by inside and outside issues. The Israeli invasion of Lebanon and their settlements in Palestine were far more influential on Lebanese society than the civil war. After a long career in presenting experimental plays in many Arab cities, Assaf finds the modest turn out on the part of the Arab theatre-going public to his plays, and to experimental plays in general, is a puzzle that cannot be solved. "However, this has to do with the development of Arab societies more than the logic of the experimental theatre itself," he says with a hint of philosophical stoicism. While the audience is enjoying Assaf's stirring storytelling and his enthusiastic and humorous performance, the show abruptly ends. It seems that we expect to see more of him, or more of the story, or perhaps we feel thus because we understand that the Palestinian issue is still not over.
