Jalila Baccar and Tunisian Theatre: ‘We Will Not Be Silent’

Abstract

March 2009 witnessed a major development in the awareness and acknowledgement of Arabic arts and culture by the United States. The Kennedy Center in Washington, well known for its international arts festivals, had never before featured the arts of the Arab world, but almost a decade after 9/11 — with that world still primarily associated in the American public mind with terrorism, religious extremism and political turmoil — the Center decided to mount a three-week, multi-million dollar festival exploring the rich artistic heritage of the Arab world. The election of Barack Obama gave an extra impetus to this series of events. The festival included a wide variety of artistic demonstrations — music, dance, literature and film — as well as two important productions of contemporary Arabic plays: Sulayman Al-Bassam’s Richard III: An Arab Tragedy and Jalila Baccar’s Khamsoun. The selection of Al-Bassam’s play reflected more faithfully the biases of the festival organizers than the realities of contemporary Arab drama. Although written in Arabic, Richard III: An Arab Tragedy has little in common with plays currently produced in any part of the Arab world. It is essentially a Western enterprise and was commissioned as part of a Global Shakespeare project by the Royal Shakespeare Company, who were interested in the perspective of Al-Bassam, a dramatist born in Kuwait, raised in England and with close connections to the Royal Shakespeare Company.