Hope Springs Arabian @ Oràn Mór
Working in conjunction with two separate theatres (Dundee Rep and Perth Theatre) would be ambitious enough for any company, but then the people behind A Play, A Pie and A Pint at the Oràn Mór do not do things lightly. Not content to rest after the fruits of these collaborative projects, including 250th play The Jean Jacques Rousseau Show and tribute to the ill-fated Captain Scott Arctic expedition, Spirit Of Adventure, they have now turned their attention even further abroad.
Equally, the National Theatre of Scotland is constantly expanding its remit and international presence. Taking the slogan 'Think Globally, Act Locally' precisely, they have teamed up with both Oràn Mór and playwrights from across the Arab World. As part of a broader May programme – that includes work at the Tron – the NTS has developed a spring season in collaboration with PPP that takes in plays from Damascus, Rabat and Beirut, in association with the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh.
The mini programme not only occupies the Òran Mór, but then moves across to ther Traverse. David McLennan, the avuncular curator of PPP, is presenting playwrights from the Arab nations – starting with Could You Please Look Into The Camera. Written by Syrian playwright Mohammed Al Attar, who at the time of writing this is still in exile, it acts as a really powerful statement of intent, with five other plays to follow, culminating in the massive production One Day In Spring, a 50 minute play written by 24 writers across 24 different locations, taking place in 24 hours and curated and directed by one of Scotland's leading dramatists, David Greig. Greig, who has worked in and reported from war-torn locations over the past two decades, seems the obvious choice to undertake such a project of this scale. He regards the Arab Spring uprising as comparable to the events in Bosnia some twenty years ago.
“Fear is all-pervasive,” he stated. “The region is a powderkeg… the question is, how to undo forty years of dictatorship.” He was in conversation with David Pratt, the foreign correspondent for the Herald, for the first of Òran Mór’s themed events Arabian Nights, evenings of wonderful music, food and poetry celebrating middle Eastern culture in Òran Mór’s beautiful Brasserie restaurant, on every Tuesday during the season. Their graphic accounts of the kidnapping and subsequent silencing of journalists caught up in the conflict were harrowing and undoubtedly uncomfortable, but a timely, necessary reminder that voices of protest, even when gagged by the state, can find another way through – after all, as Mohammed Al Attar says, Twitter, e-mail and texting can be censored, but “all theatre is political." Our minds are powerful weapons.