Why Lebanese would be making theater? And on World Theater Day?
Posted on: March 28, 2024
Chantal Mailhac is with مترو المدينة and 3 others.
Happy World Theater Day 2024
It is every day harder to take myself seriously. To have faith. To believe. I wake up in the morning and time has already started its relentless race. As if chased by an insatiable hungry monster threatening to swallow it.
It is almost as if time is running to keep … existing. Or pretend to exist.
What a strange thought. One of those paradoxes in which one is capable of getting bogged down.
As soon as I start thinking of it… if we think about it… Time an ally and an enemy, all together. I feel obsessed. Possessed.
So many things are converging my way, calling me, asking me to offer them vehicle. Songs. Stories. Voices. Sounds. Collaborations are silently calling me asking me to offer them vehicle. Farid. Fadi. Naïma. Makram. Chadi. Marilou. Eric. Khouloud. Rima. Pati…
Pati… Two past attempts, separated by almost 20 years, aborted … or rather, they simply curved and plunged and transformed into something else.
For reasons that have seemingly no importance; at least not in this dimension. They know themselves and they are doing their work. I am still talking about the reasons. (Of why we keep doing theater?)
I am devastated when I see an artist so powerful yet so tidy. Tied up. She stows away her power. She tames it. She polishes it. She knows she could dazzle those who occupy her daily life. And this thought disturbs her. Scares her even. And saddens her. And I understand. Aren’t we all like that?
Those are the distant consequences of an agonizing patriarchy.
Even agonizing, its effects are still here. Even agonizing, it has power and grip.
Even it agonizing, we still need to lead a firm and fierce fight to free ourselves from that grip so we can shine and dazzle.
That’s how it is. Because it’s not only about freeing ourselves from the grip. It is unlearning it. And detoxicate. Depollute. And learn to integrate the masculine as an integral and harmoniously balanced part of ourselves.
And integrate the healthy feminine. Not submissive. But brilliant. Dazzling. Powerful. Holding within it the secret of the origin of life.
I must not stop now… My strategy to respond to all these vehicle conveyance solicitations: relax; connect; meditate. Let it be; wait; respond; write; read; understand; learn… Various ways to open and enlarge my inner landscape.
Enlarge my vision and focalize it at the same time. One more paradox.
Paradox seems the word that would define the human condition. The human existence.
Understand that separation does not exist. And the opposites make one unit.
The symbol of theatre. The 2 masks. How to draw this parallel between theater and paradox?
I come to realize sometimes that the more I manage to unify the opposites and melt the paradox in an inseparable Whole, the more my practice on stage tends to make sense.
I feel privileged and honored to be working with these young performers at Mehaniya. They unveil an important truth. Through their fresh, curious, avid eyes, I am able to pierce the picture and have a glimpse at the path. An arduous path.
This path that seeks an answer to the question “Why do we make theatre? And music? And dance? And all those arts that ask us to offer ourselves as vehicles to something that seems escaping reality but that feels, everywhere and anywhere, so viscerally anchored in the reality of this Whole that is recognizable only if and when we unite the visions of the micro and the macro.
I will try to make sense while gathering all these calls that I hear like the calls of the lost souls calling for Odysseus to bring them back with him to the world of the living. In incarnation.
So, isn’t incarnation the ultimate test for the union of paradoxes?
Is incarnation a temptation to separate life from death?
I want to be able to live so intensely that my death becomes a continuity, filling, unifying, reassuring, without fear of loss, without tragedy, without exuberance…
A dive in the immense strength of love. The door of which is my daughter.
Note 1: I am reading a book on Nidal Ashkar, published by the Antonin University. A secular powerhouse that kept theater alive in Lebanon since 1965, and then toured the Arabic countries with a variety of Arabic actors, directors and script writers… She even toured Lebanon towns in open theater performance, on the basis that those who fund theater cannot swallow the critical positions of Nidal on the vast chasm between the common people and the rich elite classes.
I recently learned from her that she was in Saudi Kingdom giving 2 weeks sessions for Saudis wishing to get into theater. Then she will be off to Iraq for another 2 weeks sessions…
Note 2: Clown Me In posted: Even when we don’t perform in theaters and on conventional stages, street theater is a crucial part of theater.
Note 3: Mohammad Shaarani is with محمد اسماعيل الشعراني and Nabegha Al Shaarani posted on Fb
لسنا بخير كمسرحيين..وليس المسرح بخير ..
يعود يوم المسرح العالمي اليوم 27 ٱذار دون أن نتمكن من تقديم اي عمل هذا العام..فنحن مازلنا محكومين بالأمل ..محكومون بقيم الحق والخير والجمال
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