For its third season, Perform Sharjah is taking cues from classical Arab theatre and addressing topics that range from the Beirut Port Explosion to the discovery of an ancient Roman city underneath a Palestinian refugee camp.
The performance programme of the Sharjah Art Foundation will kick off on October 27, running until January. Performances will be held across various locations in the emirate, from the historic venues of the Sharjah Art Foundation to a purpose-built barge. As such, Perform Sharjah is set to build upon the emirate’s theatrical legacy by challenging the norms of where performances can be held.
Tarek Abou El Fetouh, director of performance and senior curator at Sharjah Art Foundation, says he discovered a thread while devising this year’s programming.
“I looked at many performances and tried to find a thread between them,” he says. “This year, I found a tendency to go back to Arab classical theatre. But I also really wanted to get the most recent kind of creations that were artistically incredible and surprising.”
Abou El Fetouh says the programme begins with a series of experimental and contemporary pieces before “looking back to the history and legacy of Arab theatre”. Here are the performances comprising the third season of Perform Sharjah:
Mute
The production by Kuwaiti director and playwright Sulayman Al Bassam examines that brief moment of silence that followed the Beirut port explosion of 2020. Experimental in form and a wide departure from the norms of Arab theatre, Abou El Fetouh likens the play’s structure to that of a poem. Produced with actress Hala Omran and the band Two or The Dragon, the performance blends music and singing with prose and audiovisual elements. Mute won the best production prize at the Carthage Theatre Festival, as well as prizes at the Cairo International Experimental Theatre Festival.
Mute is being co-presented by the Sharjah Performing Arts Academy.
October 27, 8.30pm, Sharjah Performing Arts Academy
Reminiscencia
Malicho Vaca Valenzuela conceived of Reminiscencia in the thick of the pandemic. The Chilean artist was going through maps of Santiago using various softwares, exploring places around his house before branching out to areas with historical and communal significance. He then made an online post asking others to share their testimonies of Santiago, slowly devising a patchwork of collective memory, which he bolstered by recollections from his own grandparents. As such, Reminiscencia is a performance that seeks to bring fragmented memories and recollections of certain places, inviting audiences to ponder about the way they recall their own cities.
November 2 and 3, 8.30pm, Al Qasimiyah School, Sharjah
The Vertiginous Story of Orthosia
Lebanese filmmakers Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige use storytelling, video, photography and installations to highlight the discovery of an ancient Roman city and how that affects the descendants of the Palestinian families that fled the Nakba.
Orthosia was a subject of conundrum among historians for centuries. The ancient Roman city had vanished after being struck by a tsunami in the sixth century, and its whereabouts was the subject of debate. Its location was finally pinpointed in 2007, as the Lebanese army clashed with Islamist groups at the Nahr al Bared refugee camp, which housed Palestinian families that had escaped the 1948 Nakba. The destruction bared an archeological site, and as the ruins were discovered to be of Orthosia. Yet, an archeological excavation would mean that the families living at Nahr el Bared would be subject to another displacement, a prospect that was politically and humanly unacceptable.
The Vertiginous Story of Orthosia is co-presented by the Art Jameel Organisation.
November 9, 8.30pm, Bait Gholoum Ibrahm, Al Mureijah Square, Sharjah and November 10, 7pm, Jameel Arts Centre, Dubai
La Nuee
Algerian choreographer Nacera Belaza developed La Nuee after being inspired by the rituals of the First Nations Dakota tribes. Members from different communities come together in a circle, first dancing individually before collectively synchronising in a quickening rhythm. The performance will feature seven dancers from Belaza’s troupe as well as three from the Sharjah Performing Arts Academy.
December 8, 8.30pm, Sharjah Performing Arts Academy
Living with a Piece of Furniture
The debut performance for Lebanese artist Nicolas Fattouh, Living with a Piece of Furniture is a comedy set in a Christian village in Mount Lebanon. At its core, the story is informed by gossip and rivalry of the village’s elderly women as they vie to become the president of a local association.
Living with a Piece of Furniture is a unique portrait of village life and politics, which also profoundly touches upon the influence of religion.
December 14 and 15, 8.30pm, Dar Al Nadwa, Calligraphy Square, Sharjah
Solos on the barge
In a first, Perform Sharjah is collaborating with Sharjah Ports, Customs and Free Zones Authority in creating a new performance space. For one weekend in December, the Perform Sharjah Barge will be set up to host performances in the waters opposite the historic Bait Obaid Al Shamsi.
The barge will host a series of short performances. Though the list of performances is still under wraps, Abou El Fetouh promises that, when released, the line up will impress attendees and will feature monologues form classical Arab theatre.
Workshops, meetings and reading groups will also be conducted on the barge, all focusing on the history of Arab theatre.
December 20 to 22, 5pm to 9.30pm, Perform Sharjah Barge
A Writer on Honeymoon
A Writer on Honeymoon is a retelling of Ali Salem’s renowned play Madrasat Al-Moshaghbeen The School of Mischief. The play is reimagined by Egyptian theatre director Ahmed El Attar and stars Sayed Rajab.
It tells the story of a star writer who, while on a honeymoon with his wife, descends into paranoia, fearing that he is being surveilled by an intelligence agency. The play has been commissioned and produced by Perform Sharjah, Sharjah Art Foundation.
January 4 to 5, 8:30pm, Sharjah Institute of Theatrical Arts
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The story in numbers
18
This is how many recognised sects Lebanon is home to, along with about four million citizens
450,000
More than this many Palestinian refugees are registered with UNRWA in Lebanon, with about 45 per cent of them living in the country’s 12 refugee camps
1.5 million
There are just under 1 million Syrian refugees registered with the UN, although the government puts the figure upwards of 1.5m
73
The percentage of stateless people in Lebanon, who are not of Palestinian origin, born to a Lebanese mother, according to a 2012-2013 study by human rights organisation Frontiers Ruwad Association
18,000
The number of marriages recorded between Lebanese women and foreigners between the years 1995 and 2008, according to a 2009 study backed by the UN Development Programme
77,400
The number of people believed to be affected by the current nationality law, according to the 2009 UN study
4,926
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