Tunes and theater
12th December
- Jordan | Adrenaline | directed by Asmaa Mustafa
- Baghdad, Iraq | Fulana | directed by Hatam Awda
The German play on Tuesday was such a success that people started congratulating me though I don’t belong to the theater group from Konstanz. One director from Baghdad told me dreamily that he thought that Peter Cieslinski, who played the slave Lucky in ‚Waiting for Godot‘, resembled in his way to express himself through very fine expressions Arabic actors. I’d say that was a huge compliment for the German actor.
I take my sentence about everything being calmer back. Before the Jordanian play started today the man, who would normally ask to turn the mobiles off, changed his text. Instead he said he didn’t see any point in telling people so because nobody would listen anyway. Then a discussion started, a high school teacher shouted something like: I’m not surprised, when you were my student you did talk all the time over the phone in my courses!
The play started, camera men who were late entered noisily and built up their equipment without taking care, telephones rang and people would use their flashlights to get a clearer picture. Amazingly unquiet!
The performance from Jordan was a monodrama again, dealing with the fear and the fate of a woman who’s husband has killed himself and others as a Jihad fighter and who’s sun drowned in the Mediterranean Sea on his way to Europe. Actress Asmaa Mustafa is as well the writer of the play which was a mix of pantomime and speech.
In the evening a theater production from Baghdad was shown. ‘Fulana’, written by Hoshang Waziri, won first price in the Arab Theatre Institute’s competition for 2015. The word Fulana means somebody or anybody. The father in the play calls all the women in his house that name and they are in fear when they hear him shouting for them. It‘s a story about despair and the inability to love even physically.
Hawler International Theater Festival Blog 