Breaking Boundaries

Many theatre companies face the problem of a lack of funding. Few though suffer from a dearth of actors, let alone having to smuggle scenery across military checkpoints simply to perform. The Palestinian National Theatre, appearing at this year’s International Festival in August, are exceptional for both the subtly of their work, and for the remarkable obstacles they have had to overcome just to produce it.

“The main challenges are lack of funds and infrastructure,” says director Amir Nizar Zuabi over a crackling phone line from Israel. “There is a problem with audiences as well because of the situation here: we are divided between villages and cities that can’t really interact. But at the same time the challenges are advantages. It is not easy to create theatre here but this means there is a great commitment. We also have something to say which is a huge advantage.”

Indeed, the nature of the Israeli occupation of the Gaza Strip and West Bank looms large over Zuabi and his actors, with the company forced to struggle for things that the average theatre group takes for granted. Such struggles however, he is quick to stress, should not overshadow the group’s work. “Having to carry scenery on our backs to avoid check points, that didn’t happen with Jidariyya but it has happened before – it is part of life here. But these are not the main things for me and my company. Instead of getting frustrated and bitching about the situation, we might as well go on with it and try to create something artistically valid. All the rest is external. You can sit down and go ‘oh, life is so difficult and unfair’?and it is, there’s no ignoring the situation here?but at the same time the best thing is just to roll up your sleeves and do it. That is my take on things.”

While it is easy to concentrate on the practical experiences of Zuabi and his company, it is the artistic challenges they have confronted, and the often brilliant solutions they have devised, that mark them out for attention on the international stage. Jidariyya, adapted from a work by the eminent Palestinian poet Mahmoud Darwish, sees a poet waking from heart surgery to be haunted by memories and realities of his life. Stumbling around the stage, he is forced to confront the poems that he failed to write, along with the experiences that have moulded both his own personality and the culture around him.

“We faced the problem of how you use such a poetic language like Darwish’s language without ignoring the fact that it is poetry, and at the same time without simply reciting poetry on stage. I think the solutions that we found are interesting to say the least. That was the biggest challenge in the show – how do you translate that poetic language into something that can retain its own honesty and still not ignore the fact that it was originally intended to be presented in a different medium?”

The very status of Darwish within contemporary Arabic literature was another pressure on the company when they were in the process of adapting his work. Though not a household name in Europe, Mahmoud Darwish is arguably the most important Arab poet of his generation. “For Arabs everywhere, not only in Palestine, he is the equivalent of a rock star in any other place. He reads to stadiums of four thousand people. That is unheard of anywhere else, and rightly so as he is unique. He is like our Walt Whitman. If there is one real Arabic artistic tradition then it is poetry. No other volume of poetry like that exists in Arabic, and it is a key thing in our cultural life. Darwish is one of the most important, honest and innovative voices in this body of Arabic literature and poetry.”

With the company coming to Edinburgh, they have also had to consider the potential problems of subtitling the Arabic poetry, the risk being that Darwish’s rhythms and imagery might be lost in translation. Zuabi however is confident that its rich textures can still be communicated to non-Arabic speakers through the sounds of the poets’ language. “Of course any subtitled production loses something, but at the same time Arabic is such a musical language new audiences who come to see the work can take something from that. I think there is great value in opening peoples’ ears for them to hear the music in the language and the rhythms and the meaning that is behind the language.”

“That is part of the beauty of theatre for me,” he concludes. “It is both a literal and a visual medium, but one where you might not understand what people are talking about but still understand them completely.”