04 March 2011

Preview


BEIRUT: For Anglophones innocent of the form, particularly the ones resident in Beirut, there is something about monodrama that seems uniquely Francophone. This is largely due to the fact that for over a decade Theater Monnot has organized the Festival International du Conte et du Monodrame (the International Festival of Tales and Monodramas).

Now in its 12th edition, the event gathers a select group of Lebanese and foreign writer-performers for a week-long celebration of French- and Arabic-language storytelling.

Monodrama, basically an artistic variation on a theme of monologue, is not particularly Francophone. Anyone with a casual knowledge of the pop culture history of this region may recall the institution of the hakawati, the traditional storyteller, who regaled – and occasionally can still be heard to entertain – the denizens of popular urban cafes.

This year, the festival runs from March 8 to 13, and features the talents of Lebanese storytellers Sara Kasir and Ahmed Tay, Algeria’s Said Ramdane, Kientega Pingdéwindé Gérard (also known as KPG) from Burkina Faso and France’s Catherine Caillaud and Laurent Daycard.

The goal of this festival is to provide an opportunity for children and adults to step away from things digital, wired and wireless and plunge back to a pre-technological world where fantastic tales, legends and myths were passed on in person, by word of mouth.

In an interview – conducted online, ironically enough – the festival’s artistic director Jihad Darwiche wrote to The Daily Star that the festival’s objective is to “show the wealth and diversity of oral literature” featuring storytellers from all over the world, each with “their own style and imagination.”

Darwiche and his team have assembled tales and monodramas with an eye to pleasing the expectations of both children and adults. The storytellers address subjects like family, love, princes, princesses and animals.

This may seem the stuff of children’s entertainment but the adults in the audience will find that – like the best feature length animated films being made nowadays – there are elements in these tales whose trajectories take them well over the heads of the youngsters and straight into the heads of the oldsters.

Sara Kasir’s tale “L’Histoire de la Gousse d’Ail” (“The story of the garlic clove”) deals with the adventures of a child who, at birth, is the size of a clove of garlic. This story is a lesson about someone’s determination despite his/her physical disability.

True to the classical storytelling practices of his native Burkina Faso, KPG mixes narrative, proverbs and music while addressing such themes as environmental degradation and children, mortality and respect.

As is evident from the stories “Le Cheval” (The Horse) and “L’Histoire du Pere de Catherine” (The story of Catherine’s father), the work of “Al Hakawati,” as Ahmed Tay calls himself, is more focused on the struggles of daily life and the power of language to assuage its mundane injuries.

For each of the six evenings of the International Festival of Tales and Monodramas, the headliners will be introduced by the narratives of gifted amateur storytellers – all of them youngsters and teenagers from schools around Lebanon.

The main acts call upon two professional storytellers to share the stage, working together to deliver a unique narrative based on a previously chosen subject.

This festival differs from others in that it explicitly sets out to appeal to an audience comprised of a diverse range of cultures, ages and genders. The festival affords an occasion to exchange different ideas and thoughts, As Darwiche writes, “diversity renders [the festival] richer in materials.”

The thing that makes the International Festival of Tales and Monodramas one of a kind is its “Concours des Menteurs” (Liars’ championship), the grand finale of the event.

The championship calls on the storytellers to improvise a collective tale among themselves, each entertainer picking up the tale as it is left by the one before and continuing taking it in new directions.

The challenge should be particularly interesting this year, since the Lebanese story-tellers apparently don’t speak French.

According to Nasri Sayegh, Monnot Theater’s communications manager, when the liars take to the stage, that’s “the moment where there’s the largest audience.”

Not content to contain itself within the theater, the festival of tales and monodramas reaches out to Lebanon’s schools, with storytellers going into classrooms in the north and south of Lebanon, giving children unable to come to the theater an opportunity to plunge into this fantasy world.

If all works according to plan, adults and children alike will be captivated by these storytellers, rocked like babies by lullabies.


The International Festival of Tales and Monodramas will be on from March 8-13 at the Monnot Theater. For more information and program call 01-202-422.

Copyright The Daily Star 2011.