Academia
2024 Divided Europe in Damascus: The Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts in Damascus between Eastern European Dictatorship and Western European Intellectualism
A chapter in Developing Theatre in the Global South: Institutions, Networks, Experts.
(Published by University College London Press)
This chapter explores how the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts (HIDA) in Damascus acquired an exceptional and a prestigious position in Syrian cultural life. When education declined during the socialist dictatorship, HIDA enjoyed unusual margins of curricula autonomy and free expression in a country that repressed other cultural sectors. Like many socialist countries in the Cold War, Syrian intellectuals were challenged by several factors, chief of which was the ability to confront the dominant status quo without being accused of disloyalty. Yet, while the theatre institute became ‘the place of the intellectuals’ at the national level, the interpretation of intellectualism provoked controversies inside the institute between the acting and the theatre studies departments. It is argued that HIDA was given this freedom, mainly because theatre is an unfamiliar art in the country and intellectual thoughts cannot interact with the outer conservative communities. In addition, and in a country, where the concept of defeating the inner enemy is present in everyday discourse and practice, the mission of the intellectuals was doomed to inner fights and disputes. Inside HIDA, the enmity between the two departments escalated to the extent that the Theatre Studies Department was threatened of elimination. Thus, encapsulating intellectualism inside HIDA enabled the process of destroying the image of the intellectual, and then reproduce it as a caricature or as an enemy.
The New out of Nothing: The Workshop between the Liminal and the Liminoid
This paper attempts to read the term ‘workshop’ and to explore the mechanisms that enable this form of gathering to function. Our contemporary utilization of the term associates it with education and developing skills, yet it is neither a class nor a rehearsal. What happens in this exceptional space? What makes a certain group of people interested in gathering and participating at a workshop, which does not promise work or profit? It is argued that the terms liminal and liminoid suggest an understanding of how workshops function. Both terms are removed from quotidian representations and they divide the time to pre and after. Victor Turner explains that liminal is where one works and liminoid is where one plays, thus the liminoid, which is a matter of choice, is free than the liminal. In the context of theatre, when theatre events become ritualized in terms of production and reception, and when attending a play becomes firmly coded to economic and social forces, workshops become a space to try new forms and techniques, and where one can choose without being judged academically or professionally.
2019 – Imaginary Theatre Professionalising Theatre in the Levant 1940-1990
This paper examines theatre education in the Levant, i.e. Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Jordan and Palestine, between late 1940s and early 1990s. As a relatively new phenomenon in the region, Western-style theatre has always sought, but not always found, political, religious, social and artistic recognition. In addition to institutional and ‘professional’ theatre initiatives, this era also witnessed the academic approaches to theatre in the region. Introducing theatre to the Levant was dependent on wealthy citizens who afforded trips to Europe and returned to spread theatre in their cities. Later in the 1970s, and influenced by Brechtian Epic Theatre, Social Realism and the Theatre of the Absurd, governmental and academic theatre practices and literature rebelled against the existing theatre models, including the theatre makers that were glorified as national symbols. It is argued that theatre makers and theatre institutions in the Levant adopted an ideal description of theatre that was hardly recognised locally. Associating theatre to noble issues in order to promote ‘serious theatre’, lessened the credibility of local experiences. The dependence on socialist and nationalist ideologies assisted in legitimising theatre in the region, but simultaneously, idealising theatre separated this new art from the existing practices, and consequently mystified it in the region.