When the Palestinian National Theatre open their production of Jidariyya this week, there will be an added poignancy to an already emotional work. Because late on Saturday night, Mahmoud Darwish, whose epic poem of life and death Jadiriyya is adapted from, died following complications following open-heart surgery in Houston, Texas. He was 67. Given that Darwish penned Jadiriya in direct response to a similar round of surgery eight years ago, there is a particularly sad irony to the loss of a man long regarded as Palestine’s national poet, who moved from being a poet of resistance to a poet of conscience in the wake of the state of independence Palestine was granted in 1988.
Even as he remained critical of the in-fighting in Gaza between Hamas and Fatah factions, which he described at a reading in 2007 as ‘a public attempt at suicide in the streets,’ Darwish retained the soul of a poet to the last. On the surface, Jidariyya isn’t even about the Palestinian conflict, as its director Amir Nizar Zuabi explained several weeks prior to Darwish’s death.
“We have this thing we dreadfully call ‘the situation,” says Zuabi, “but one of the things that appealed to me about Jidariyya is that it is not about the situation. It’s about Palestinians per se. We’re not defined only by our conflict. The show is about a man on his death-bed trying to figure out the components of his life. It’s almost metaphysical in that way. There’s an interior dialogue going on between this man and his language.”
Of course, that man is Darwish, the most prominent exponent of an art-form a nation was founded on.
“The Koran is written as poetry,” Zuabi points out. “So for a believer, one of the first indications of the existence of God is through poetry. For the Arabic world as well, it is very hot, so what else ca you do but sit and write poetry while the sands move? Working with poetry is very immediate and very precise, because it’s such a big part of life. It’s not an intellectual exercise. It’s an oral tradition. Theatre is something really new to us. Any kind of tradition we have only started in the 70s. There was always a bit of theatre, but there is no infrastructure for it in Palestine. In a way this is a huge disadvantage, but in another it’s also a huge advantage. Having no tradition creates an artistic freedom.”
Such freedoms were the essence of Darwish’s work, which is clearly why it had such a profound effect on Zuabi.
“After I read it I wouldn’t let go,” he says. “It got stuck somewhere within me, and I knew it should be transferred onstage. But it’s an unbelievably touching, profound and intelligent text, and it was a very long process. We did it with Mahmoud’s blessing. He was very gallant, and we decided we weren’t going to add or change anything, but completely respect the text. In the end Mahmoud added one word”
The adaptation was made in collaboration with Khalifer Natour and is performed in Arabic, with two actors playing different aspects of Darwish’s character. Again, it’s individual human concerns that matter over anything resembling a polemic.
“It’s very complex,” Zuabi says. “Because of the situation, we have something to talk about. No-one becomes an actor because it’s trendy. It’s about people who have a voice. My angle on Palestinian theatre is that there’s a lot of freedom because there is no structure, and that’s a joy. But the situation changes the expectations that people come with, but it’s a play about a man dieing, and people die everywhere. So you can say that a fear of death is a political thing, but beyond that it has a lot of profound things to say about life and death. If there’s a message, it’s that life is so precious, complex and beautiful, that you must live your life as if it’s your last day, and live your last day as if it is the rest of your life.”
Mahmoud Darwish knew exactly what that meant.
Jidariyya, Edinburgh International Festival, Royal Lyceum Theatre, Thursday August 14-Sunday August 17, 8pm
www.eif.co.uk
The Herald - August 12th 2008
ends
Even as he remained critical of the in-fighting in Gaza between Hamas and Fatah factions, which he described at a reading in 2007 as ‘a public attempt at suicide in the streets,’ Darwish retained the soul of a poet to the last. On the surface, Jidariyya isn’t even about the Palestinian conflict, as its director Amir Nizar Zuabi explained several weeks prior to Darwish’s death.
“We have this thing we dreadfully call ‘the situation,” says Zuabi, “but one of the things that appealed to me about Jidariyya is that it is not about the situation. It’s about Palestinians per se. We’re not defined only by our conflict. The show is about a man on his death-bed trying to figure out the components of his life. It’s almost metaphysical in that way. There’s an interior dialogue going on between this man and his language.”
Of course, that man is Darwish, the most prominent exponent of an art-form a nation was founded on.
“The Koran is written as poetry,” Zuabi points out. “So for a believer, one of the first indications of the existence of God is through poetry. For the Arabic world as well, it is very hot, so what else ca you do but sit and write poetry while the sands move? Working with poetry is very immediate and very precise, because it’s such a big part of life. It’s not an intellectual exercise. It’s an oral tradition. Theatre is something really new to us. Any kind of tradition we have only started in the 70s. There was always a bit of theatre, but there is no infrastructure for it in Palestine. In a way this is a huge disadvantage, but in another it’s also a huge advantage. Having no tradition creates an artistic freedom.”
Such freedoms were the essence of Darwish’s work, which is clearly why it had such a profound effect on Zuabi.
“After I read it I wouldn’t let go,” he says. “It got stuck somewhere within me, and I knew it should be transferred onstage. But it’s an unbelievably touching, profound and intelligent text, and it was a very long process. We did it with Mahmoud’s blessing. He was very gallant, and we decided we weren’t going to add or change anything, but completely respect the text. In the end Mahmoud added one word”
The adaptation was made in collaboration with Khalifer Natour and is performed in Arabic, with two actors playing different aspects of Darwish’s character. Again, it’s individual human concerns that matter over anything resembling a polemic.
“It’s very complex,” Zuabi says. “Because of the situation, we have something to talk about. No-one becomes an actor because it’s trendy. It’s about people who have a voice. My angle on Palestinian theatre is that there’s a lot of freedom because there is no structure, and that’s a joy. But the situation changes the expectations that people come with, but it’s a play about a man dieing, and people die everywhere. So you can say that a fear of death is a political thing, but beyond that it has a lot of profound things to say about life and death. If there’s a message, it’s that life is so precious, complex and beautiful, that you must live your life as if it’s your last day, and live your last day as if it is the rest of your life.”
Mahmoud Darwish knew exactly what that meant.
Jidariyya, Edinburgh International Festival, Royal Lyceum Theatre, Thursday August 14-Sunday August 17, 8pm
www.eif.co.uk
The Herald - August 12th 2008
ends
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