Showing this week in Nazareth, the theatre adaptation of Mahmoud Darwish's Jidariyya (Mural) reconfirms the connection between drama and poetry in the context of occupation and resistance. Stuart Reigeluth discusses the performance in relation to the poem, sounding out its artistic director is of Christian Palestinian origin. He was born in Jerusalem under the British Mandate in 1945, and in 1948 fled with his family to Lebanon, only to return, almost immediately, and find refuge in Akka, Galilee. In 1963 he began studies at the Hebrew University, but dropped out and became involved in the Arab theatre in Haifa. After pursuing drama studies in Britain, he returned to work at the Cameri Theatre in Tel Aviv and at the Haifa Municipal Theatre; he also taught acting in the occupied territories. He has performed in some 107 plays, directed 12, and acted in some 26 television series and movies, including Wedding in Galilee (1987), The Milky Way (1997), The Body (2001) and The Syrian Bride (2004). He was interviewed in Ramallah last week. Why choose a poem to make a play? Does this reflect a dearth of local playwrights? We like to experiment. I wanted to journey through the words of Mahmoud Darwish, to discover his struggle with death. His poem Jidariyya (Mural) was very appealing to me as an artistic director, because of its theatricality, the visual imagery and stage movements it could evoke. I then chose a director, Nizar Amir Zuabi, who is young and very talented. We decided that Khalifa Natour was the suitable choice for co-writing as well as acting. We worked on the theatrical adaptation together. The final result came out of seven or eight meetings over the past two and a half years, discussing the style of the play, how we could adapt the poem to the theatre. I think we should do more experiments with poems. Though there are not many Palestinian playwrights, we have many stories that we should adapt to theatre. Once we have ideas, I encourage playwrights. I work with them as an artistic director, to develop the idea and the characters. We did this in Tar Al-Hamam (The Pigeons Flew), about the separation wall and the effects it has had on children going to school and on the daily life of their families, on the disturbances of daily life. It is important for people like me, with a lot of experience in original playwriting, to work with and encourage young writers to work for the theatre. After the second and third experience, they will have learned how to write plays. So, yes, we do suffer from a lack of good, established plays. Usually our groups will experiment with ideas, they'll take an idea and develop it with the actors, through visual scenes. This is what the first group [the Palestinian National Theatre (PTN)], the Hakawati (Story-Teller), did in the 1980s. And they produced beautiful work. I'm not saying that I am going to repeat their experience. Rather, I'll make use of their work in my own experience, see how I can develop it further. Did Mahmoud Darwish play an active part in the adaptation of his poem? We visited him every few months to show him how far we reached. He said, "Do what you want with it, but do not add a single word." In the end he revised the adaptation and allowed us to add one word. In the prologue, while I [one of the lead actors] am getting into pyjamas, I am afraid of being in the hospital and I say: sa aseer yawman ma ureedu... ureedu. (One day I will become what I want to be... I want to be), we wanted to add the second ureedu. He said, "No. Don't say ureedu ; say: inni ureedu (Indeed I want to be)." Of course, we made significant cuts, didn't use the whole poem. He liked our adaptation, he sinerely liked the show. Rarely will you find a writer who is satisfied with the transmission of his written work to the theatre. Usually, they do not like to see their work on stage or on screen. So the adaptation was a very rewarding achievement in this sense. What is the background and composition of the theatrical group for Jidariyya ? Since the Hakawati Theatre of the 1980s, we haven't had a group of actors as such. We deal with individuals on a free-lance basis. After selecting Nizar Amir Zuabi as the director, and Khalifa Natour as the writer, we held auditions to see which actors we wanted. Every director wants to work with actors he likes. Many good actors around Jerusalem, Ramallah, Haifa and Nazareth with a lot of experience presented themselves; and the actors we chose all have a rich background and are all graduates of drama school. Our aim at PNT is to combine efforts. We believe that all Arab Palestinians belong to the same nation. Some of us have Jordanian passports, some have Israeli passports, and some have Palestinian passports. But we are all the same people. I am an Israeli citizen, but a Palestinian Arab, so are five others in this group. Three have Palestinian citizenship from the Palestinian Authority, and maybe one has a Jordanian passport. This is a good mix; and that is the way it should be, with all the different mentalities represented. A person from Galilee and another from Jerusalem have different mentalities, and if you go down to Hebron, it's different again. All these differences come together in this one common cultural effort to understand each other. And the message is: we are the same people. In what way does the Jidariyya reflect the contemporary Palestinian situation? Why is it appealing to the Palestinian public? My conception of the play was not meant to be that broad. We did wonder whether we should do a political play in the first place. We wanted to avoid doing something political, because it's something of which we've had enough. We wanted, rather, to appreciate art for what it is. Darwish himself is against sloganeering. In the Jidariyya, we were dealing with the most basic human predicament, and something that came up frequently in everyday life: death. This is the story of a poet who has suffered a stroke and is hospitalized. He is confronted with death and struggling to survice. The theme is universal. Everyone experiences this situation. My parents did, I will, you will, we all will. This is why people can relate to it because it's common to all humanity. When Israelis or foreigners come to watch the play, they too find it appealing. And this is part of the reason we've been invited and will be going to many festivals next year. When was the play first performed? What is the general tour schedule? And how successful has it been in different places? We opened in Jerusalem on the weekend of April 29-30 and May 1, 2005. We wanted Darwish to be there for the premiere, we thought perhaps he could come with the Norwegian ambassador. But he did not like the idea of coming to Jerusalem in this way. He wanted to come as a free man. So we opened the following weekend at the Cultural Palace in Ramallah, where Darwish was present. We were all very excited and it was a special night for everyone. I have known Darwish since we went to school together. He was three years ahead of me. We also come from the same area in Galilee. For me he was half a god. And the show was extraordinary. We went back and did a few performances in Jerusalem. Then we moved to Haifa and did two shows there. In Haifa, people were quarrelling for tickets and crowding all over the floor. We have a very good reputation there. Even actors, directors and artists from Tel Aviv came to see our show. Now we have an agent who wants to promote us in festivals around the world in 2006. After this week in Ramallah (July 8-13, 2005), we are going to Nazareth next week, then back to Jerusalem. At the end of the month we will be in Bethlehem, and in August, the theatres will be closed and we'll be on vacation. In September, we will do a few performances in Jerusalem and Ramallah, then we will go to Cairo for the week-long Experimental Theatre Festival. In October, we are going to perform in Carthage, Tunisia. In November, we are going to another festival in Jordan. And before Christmas we will do five nights of performance in Geneva, Switzerland, where we are staying for a week. We also have tours lined up for 2006. We have good momentum going now. Our aim is not just festivals, but also to get into as many places in Galilee and the West Bank as we can. We nearly participated in a small festival in Gaza last month (June 2005), but the Israeli authorities wouldn't let us in. Only in Gaza were we stopped from performing, though. We're permitted to go to Bethlehem and Ramallah, but we also want to go to Hebron. We want to travel with the play and perform it as frequently as possible. This is a major success for Palestinian theatre. Why do you think it was so successful in Haifa? Back home, in Galilee, we adore our poets. We respect them very deeply. First of all the name, Mahmoud Darwish, is universally loved, and no more so than in Galilee. Secondly, we managed to do a good piece of theatre as well. In Haifa, I think there are more theatre-goers than elsewhere. There is a local theatre movement and they appreciate art and artists. Unfortunately, in Jerusalem and the West Bank, because of the political situation, everything has changed. Nobody goes out, or they do so only rarely. This also has to do with the economic situation. If you sell a ticket for 20 shekels, they say, "Oh, this is too much." In Galilee, we sell tickets for 50 shekels. The Israeli theatres sell tickets for 120 shekels. So it is next to nothing. When you sell your tickets for 20 shekels in the West Bank, you lose more than you gain, financially: we need to find a way to subsidise performances. Do you think the decline in the theatrical movement in the West Bank can be solely attributed to the economic and political situation? Obviously. First of all, there is no Palestinian Minister of Education. They need to give more to the arts. But of course, because of the situation, there have different priorities. They will say people are hungry. They prioritise hospitals. And anyway, you never know where the money goes. I think once there is peace, quiet for a year or two, the economic situation will improve. Then the arts will bloom, whether in the West Bank or Gaza. Are there fewer actresses on the Palestinian stage? There has been no decline in numbers at all. On the contrary, there are more female actors now than before. Especially in Galilee, where they go to drama school and specialise in acting. Here, in Jerusalem and the West Bank, I do not see any problem with actresses either. However, while many are talented and want to act, they've had no professional training. But there is growing interest in theatre among women. And I think these are heroic, women, with lots of courage and big hearts. Have you had trouble presenting the play in Israel? We have not presented the play to an Israeli audience yet. A well-known Israeli producer saw the play and he wants to invite us to perform in Jaffa. There our work will probably be seen by a who's who of the Israeli theatre scene, which is an important step. Could this open the door to Israeli-Palestinian cooperation in theatre? There is always cooperation, but lately we've decided we no longer want to work like that. We have many offers for co- productions, but we want to do things differently, indirectly perhaps. For instance, a British troupe offered we do a musical to be performed at both the National Theatre in Tel Aviv, and PNT in Jerusalem. Our board of directors agreed, given that this is done under the auspices of the British National Theatre. Otherwise, why engage in direct cooperation while the "separation wall" is in place? Ten years ago, this sort of thing was done far more often. There was a production of Romeo & Juliet, with a Jewish Juliet and an Arab Romeo. More attention was paid to the propaganda surrounding the show than to the performance itself. And we don't want to fall into that trap again. When the Qasaba Theatre in Ramallah did Romeo & Juliet with the Khan Theatre in Jerusalem, there was a lot of brouhaha. The play toured Europe and was performed at the time of the Oslo Accords. That was fine, but it was not real theatre, insofar as it was propaganda for the politicians. We prefer to do real theatre, under real and equal humanistic terms. We should not feel that because we are under occupation we have to present ourselves to the occupier smiling. No. They have to treat us as equals. Does life under occupation incite you to greater expressiveness as an actor? Of course. We have a cause. Other Arab countries have a cause too, but they do not have the same drive. They are not confronted by the challenge of occupation every day. Is there any connection between the Jidariyya and the jidar (wall)? No. The play has nothing to do with the jidar. Jidariyya has two meanings. It can be a picture or painting on the wall: a mural. But it can also be a plant that stretches up and climbs the wall: a vine. This is life, spreading upward and outward. I like this meaning of the word more. Because what we are transmitting and what Darwish has written is about the importance of life. In one scene he says, wa fi mawti hayyatun ma (and in my death I am living). This is life and it gives meaning to life. Darwish's Jidariyya : the poem and the play It was while recovering from his second heart attack and under the effect of anesthetic that the poet laureate of Palestinian resistance Mahmoud Darwish started composing the long poem Jidariyya (Mural, 1999), a personal response to his favorite book of the Bible, the Song of Solomon: "What I wrote was a kind of delirious commentary on Ecclesiastes, which begins, 'Vanity of vanities; all is vanity.' I thought I was writing a commentary on this ancient text, but as I gradually regained conscious awareness, I saw that what I had written was in the domain of metaphysics," he says. In this lyrical sequel to the Song of Solomon, Darwish includes references to such existentialist philosophers as Martin Heidegger and Soren Kierkegaard. He also refers to the myth of Gilgamesh, describing a vision of Anat, the Canaanite goddess, and quotes verses of the Bible. Indeed the work is so intense the reader, whether Arab or foreign, will lose track of the story. This is a complicated text in which time and space overlap, while images and metaphors intertwine, resulting in a confusion of characters and places. It is by reading and rereading that the poem's many movements and voices are eventually deciphered. It becomes evident that this, a rather obscure and difficult poem, is Darwish's conclusive ode to life. Now, in an unprecedented move sponsored by the Palestinian National Theater (PTN), also known as the Hakawati (Story-teller) Theater, the Jidariyya has been transformed into a theatrical production. The name of the troupe implies an ancient job: a person ambulating from village to village, earning their stay by telling stories. And Jidariyya too is a story, the story of a poet confronting the immediacy of death, and realising the importance of life. It opens to the sound of bass guitar and the frantic footsteps of doctors and nurses walking back and forth across the stage. An older gentleman arrives, bewildered, accompanied only by a worn suitcase. He is undressed, confined to bed and anesthetised. His double appears to taunt him with beautiful verses that conjure up the memory of his first love, dressed in purple satin. A group of voyageurs in beige trench-coats attempt to draw him away from life, but the double wards them off with more verses. The poet slumbers in a state of semi-wakefulness. Haunted by memory, his first love reappears on the bed and demands that he should kill her. And invigorated by her sudden presence and departure, the poet is galloping on a wild stallion across the deserts of existence until he collapses on the edge of language, as it were; death returns. Dressed in eerie white masks resembling the ominous faces of sheep, the presence of death is foreboding. The double pleads death to leave his body. Exhausted and renouncing life, the poet ascends the ramp towards the light, off stage. A goddess draws his back with a lullaby. And the play, like the cycle of life and death, comes full circle. While he faces the audience, the suitcase sits waiting; some vines grows. Like the hakawati, the ensemble of Jidariyya moves from city to city in Israel and the occupied territories to perform their play. This year they will take the play to Egypt, Jordan, and Tunisia; and by 2006, they will be performing in other parts of the world still. After the show in Jerusalem, one Palestinian audience member said the play was profound. In Ramallah, another Palestinian opined that it was only about a man entering old-age. Other comments see only Darwish's poem in the play (see review by Mary Geday in This Week in Palestine, Issue No. 87, July 2005), a rather erroneous interpretation. The point of the play is that Everyman, embodied by the poet, is impotent in the face of death: a communal experience that strikes a universal chord. The production reaffirms the use of poetry, a predominant oral tradition in the Arab world, as a transmitter of memory. The importance of Jidariyya is not that it is the adaptation of a poem by Mahmoud Darwish, rather that it renders an artistic interpretation of existence. It also renders the complexity of the poem comprehensible, bringing the metaphorical verse down from the metaphysical realm and presenting it as a communally accessible experience. Yet the play preserves the depth of the poem: undertaking the extremely difficult task of conveying the meaning of a difficult poem in a limited number of words, the Hakawati achieve an admirable level interpretation, the confluence of forms converging to create a new form. Opening and closing with music, scattered with singing and unified by the movement of words, the play forms a cohesive statement on life and death. Above all it is carried by Khalifa Natour, who adapted the play and interprets the role of the poet's double. His nervous energy reverberates through trembling feet and hands. Beads of sweat on his brow attest to the passion for life. As his body lies unconscious, his agonizing cries of reverence to death and pleads for life are powerful, pathetic and moving. They are the last effort, the final battle of resistance. And where the younger actors bring the necessary impetus for maintaining the intensity of the performance, contributes the prestige of his name and the wisdom of his experience.
