LETTER FROM BEIRUT
The winter was mild for I Medea, the latest play by Sulayman Al-Bassam: the reinterpretation of the myth of Medea by the Kuwaiti-British author was awarded prizes in Carthage (Tunisia) and Cairo, and applauded in Beirut. But the show is unlucky in Kuwait: canceled in the spring of 2020, in the hurricane of the coronavirus, it did not have the right to stage at the gigantic Sheikh-Jaber-Al-Ahmad Cultural Center (JACC) – inaugurated in 2016, it notably includes a theater-opera hall with 2,000 seats – for the three evenings scheduled for the end of March.
On its site, the institution nevertheless praises the child of the country, “internationally renowned playwright and director”. At the end of the line, the latter denounces an implicit ban: “Complications piled up. When the act is made impossible, it is censorship without saying so. What is the use of such a structure, which has, moreover, cost a staggering sum, if national artists are not produced there? » In the small emirate, where speech is freer than among its Gulf neighbours, the press has taken hold of the debate on creative freedom and the role of state cultural platforms.
Abundant show, where it is a question of the intimate and the collective, of divorce, of racism, of devouring ambition and of rebellion, I Medea is a powerful salvo against conformism and authoritarianism. The latter takes on the finery of a perverted power, where infinite cynicism mixes corruption and the use of religion for sociopolitical ends. Franco-Syrian actress Hala Omran embodies an indomitable Medea; Sulayman Al-Bassam alternately plays Jason, Creon, and himself as an author.
The man of the theater revisits works from the classical repertoire – like, earlier in his career, those of Shakespeare – adapting them to the contemporary situation. “Sulayman carries out a very critical work politically, analyzes Kuwaiti liberal scholar and activist Ibtihal Al-Khatib. It represents Medea, a woman condemned as a criminal since ancient Greece, as a refugee, who loses her identity and her femininity in the face of politics. It’s a strong, resonant story. »
A derisive judicial verdict
Sulayman Al-Bassam did not give up. The play was hosted on Sunday, March 27, by Dar Al-Athar Al-Islamiyyah, a private cultural organization headed by Sheikha Hussah Al-Sabah, patron of the arts and member of the ruling family.
But before playing with this protector, she had to be visited the day before by a committee of censors sent by an official body. Pressed not to make waves by the moralizers, the playwright instead pushed the slider of insolence during this evening, deriding a recent verdict which cleared the defendants (including a former Prime Minister) in a resounding case embezzlement of public funds. An applauded improvisation.
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