19 February 2007

INTERVIEW

LONDON: When British-Kuwaiti director Sulayman al-Bassam's rendition of William Shakespeare's tragedy "Richard III" premiered last week at the Royal Shakespeare's Swan Theatre, it was snowing in the quaint town of Stratford-upon-Avon, the Bard's birthplace.

Tall, chain-smoking and recovering from a bad cold, Bassam was surrounded by his cast of actors from five Middle Eastern countries. They were busy making final changes to the Arabic script of Bassam's play, which was commissioned by the Royal Shakespeare Company and marks the institution's first Arab production.

Bassam's company, the Sulayman al-Bassam Theatre, is based in Kuwait. He directs work in both Arabic and English. But his "Richard III: An Arab Tragedy" takes place in the modern-day Arabian Peninsula and is resolutely in Arabic - most of it classical Arabic but tinted with colloquial idioms from the Gulf. For non-Arabic speakers, there are English subtitles throughout.

"With a project like this, Shakespeare is the premise to present our concerns in the Arab world," says Bassam, 34, who has dealt with political issues in his work for the past few years. The play explores subjects familiar to Shakespeare's creations: tyranny, politics, assassination and crises of succession.

"It's inevitable. You're engaged in a reality that's turbulent and confusing. You're looking for a way to critique real situations. This is food for theater," says the director, who has a cameo as an American ambassador in the play.

Bassam studied in Britain but returned to Kuwait four years ago. "I felt it was important to repatriate the work I was interested in doing," he says. "I wanted to make it function within the context of my own people."

He says his dual nationality is fundamental to his artistic process, allowing him to interpret texts from two different perspectives. The bi-cultural approach undoubtedly frees him of some of the self-censorship with which artists in the Middle East often deal.

"Wherever you are in the Arab world, there are conventions that outline the limits of expressions," says Bassam.

"There are so few voices ... in theater to be heard that you feel a sense of responsibility. But you have to conciliate between freedom of expression and avoiding being misunderstood by either party."

In a sense, part of Bassam's "mission" is to help the West better understand the Gulf and the Arab world in general. At the same time he wants to bring to light the inadequacy of democracy, the abuse of power and the various examples of "how not to rule" in the Middle East. Bassam doesn't hesitate to poke fun at the unnamed Gulf state in which "Richard III" is set. A narrator in the play announces that "several leading cabinet members met today to finalize arrangements for the coronation of the crown prince. In an amusing aside, the Emir Gloucester commented on the improved quality of dates in the Royal Palace, saying such a sign boded well for the future of the state."

The Emir Richard of Gloucester's palace adviser, Buckingham, takes on a role that is an amalgamation of many political figures on the international scene today. He tells the future Richard III: "I can redraw the map of the globe with my finger; invade foreign lands with a flick of the wrist ... I can make a mockery of the judiciary; thread an axis of evil through the eye of the press; I can turn a democracy into a tyranny and keep it all as clean and transparent as a Security Council resolution."

"I love you," the Emir Gloucester tells him.

Ideally, says Bassam, the play will upset certain prejudices people have about the Gulf.

Besides the audience, a few of the cast members who come from Syria and Lebanon have also found the play a regional learning experience. Carole Abboud, who plays Queen Elizabeth, is one of four Lebanese actors in "Richard III." 

"We plunged into this play with so much enthusiasm," she says. "It's the atmosphere of the Gulf, which is new for me. Especially the music."

Bassam uses live musicians during the production, who play a mixture of traditional music from the Arabian Peninsula.

The cast also rehearsed in Kuwait for a month, giving Abboud time to work on adapting her Levantine Arabic to the Gulf dialect. There, they had the luxury of rehearsing in a space that was a reproduction of the Stratford-upon-Avon Swan Theatre, itself based on the design of the playhouses of Elizabethan England.

"When we got here," says Abboud, "we were already used to the theater."

When it comes to using theater to explore ongoing politics, Abboud is in absolute agreement.  "Theater is a living thing. Sometimes it's hard to keep up, life is faster than what we can create, but we must talk about politics. We must take a position. I'm interested in roles that have something to say."

Bassam is hoping to set in motion a certain evolution in terms of support for theater in his region. Although the Royal Shakespeare Company funded "Richard III," a substantial donation came from the Kuwaiti National Projects Holding Company.

Says Bassam: "It's important to mention that in terms of production it's not easy to stage something like this in the Arab world. In the Gulf there's no encouragement to invest in culture.

"Culture and the state of the nation are very much interlinked," he argues. "It's not possible to make great art without public funds, so I'm very happy that private companies are starting to invest, but it shouldn't relieve the state from its responsibilities."

Bassam is currently working on a more personal project called "The Petrol Station," which deals with issues of national identity and belonging.  "It's set in a petrol station on a border somewhere in the Arab world," he says with a wry smile.

"Richard III" will be presented in Abu Dhabi this spring. For more information, please see www.rsc.org.uk or www.zaoum.com