Scripting Memory and Emotions: Female Characters in Iraqi Theatre about War (original) (raw)
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International journal of Arabic-English studies, 2020
Various literary studies have investigated the psychological, social and cultural effects of traumatic events. They give voice to traumatised victims and enable them to convey and confront their traumas. However, these studies present a one-sided view, concentrating largely on the presentation of trauma in the industrial societies of the Western world. Recently, increasing attention has been devoted to identifying and depicting the forms and types of trauma that have been experienced in marginalised and neglected societies, such as the Iraqi society. Iraq has witnessed the unexpected fall of a brutal dictatorship, Western invasion and an unprecedented rise of sectarian discourses. This extreme violence has deeply affected many aspects of cultural production, particularly the rise of trauma in dramatic works of art. The present paper aims to examine two plays, namely, Jawad Al-Assadi's Baghdadi Bath and Mithal Ghazi's A Feminine Solo, using trauma theory in analysing the notions of the traumatic effect of war on survivors and Antonin Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty in explaining the issue of staging violence. This paper concludes that these plays bear witness to and expose the devastating effect of war on the identities of traumatised Iraqi characters, while at the same time, endowing them with a sense of hope to overcome their traumatised state.
Iraq in contemporary drama : a study of selected plays of and about Iraq, 1990-2013
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This Thesis focuses on contemporary plays written of and about Iraq between 1990 and 2013 and covers significant political and social changes that affected Iraq and the region of the Middle East. The subject of the study has four main objectives: the first is to present examples of contemporary Iraqi theatre practice during this period; the second, is to reveal what may be seen as a concealed reality about contemporary Iraqi life during this critical time that will add to the portrayal of the country and its people conveyed through the media; the third, is to juxtapose the Iraqi and the Western artistic reactions to contemporary conditions in the country, and finally, is to find the possible connection and means of communication between contemporary Iraqi and the Western theatrical and dramatic presentations. A further aim is to open doors between contemporary theatre practice inside and outside Iraq. The study comprises an Introduction, six chapters, and a conclusion. The chapters of the study will carefully examine twelve plays in total: six Iraqi plays and six Western plays. In addition, there are two Appendices which include the four unpublished translations of Iraqi plays discussed in the study and an email with a review which relates to the one of the Iraqi plays that was read at a rehearsed reading in the
Women Voices from War-Infected Iraq: Daisy Al-Amir & Najde Sadig Al-Ali
Wars and its aftermath has motivated and inspired writers, throughout history to shape its consequences in the form of dramas, novels, prose & poetry. It is so because writing being the best medium of expression, hence not only men but women also took the help of writing to reflect their experience, to voice their narratives and to safeguard others from sufferings. Although both men and women are able to pen down emotions but the way of expressions is entirely different. It is so because the women are the worst sufferers and their pains and miseries colours their works giving it a very realistic touch. This paper focuses on women voices from war-infected Iraq.
World Journal of English Language , 2022
The present study aims to critically review the aspects of war in selected Iraqi war novels-Sinan Antoon, The Baghdad Eucharist (2017), Corpse Washer (2013) Zauhair Jabouri, The Corpse Hunter (2014)-that focus on depicting vividly the traumatic experiences of Iraqi, particularly after the US-led invasion of Iraq 2003 and how these novels could recur constantly to humanist themes and traumatized figures, the psychological suffering of minorities and the oppressed. In other words, it aims to make visible specific historical instances of trauma in Iraqi war fiction. The present study undertakes an in-depth investigation of the socio-political and historical dimensions of Cathy Caruth's literary trauma simply because trauma experiences in Iraq were emanated from several causes such as social injustice, the oppression of minorities, political despotism, and the persecution of religious minorities, the displacement of Iraqis from the homeland, and the genocidal policies of jihadist. The study has found that Iraqi war fiction depends on the stylistic technique of repeating certain expressions, phrases, and lexical items to intensify the extraordinary events. It is a narrative of traumatic haunting known for its non-linear and circular style that often leads to ambiguity where readers are often unable to decode the authorial intentions, deriving its ambiguity from the traits of dreams and nightmares, the interpretations of which are continually and unredeemably haunted by the memory of loss.
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This paper focuses on different theatrical experiences that, through re-enactments of memories of a near past, intend to give a response to the current events in Syria. These experiences replay, on the one hand, the memories of Syrian women refugees living in Amman and in the Sabra, Shatila, and Bourj el-Barajneh refugee camps in Lebanon and, on the other hand, the personal stories of arbitrarily detained and sometimes tortured victims of the Syrian security forces. The paper will mainly draw attention to four theatrical experiences: the “Syria Trojan Women Project” (http://www.syriatrojanwomen.org) that began by creating drama workshops in Amman, Jordan in autumn 2013, with a group of Syrian women, all of whom were refugees living in Amman under the direction of Omar Abusaada (the process became a documentary film, Queens of Syria by Yasmin Fedda); “Antigone of Syria” (http://www.apertaproductions.org/current-project/), an eight-week drama workshop with 35 Syrian women that culminated in three performances at al-Madina Theatre in Beirut in December 2014; “66 Minutes in Damascus”, devised by Lebanese director Lucien Bourjeily on 2012, where the audience is plunged into a recreation of what it might be like to be detained in Syria; and “Can You Please Look Into the Camera” by Syrian playwright Mohammad al-Attar. The central issue of the paper is to examine how real-life testimonials and subjective experiences become art practices and theatrical performances in a particular style of Arab theatre that is becoming very common these days.
Haytham Bahoora (HB): The article came out of a conference at Haverford College, organized by Professor Zainab Saleh, commemorating the tenth anniversary of the US invasion of Iraq, titled "Shades of Occupation: Iraq After Ten Years." I was interested in how Iraqi fiction and art have represented the 2003 US invasion of Iraq and its residual effects on the Iraqi population. Since 2003, Iraqi writers and artists have undertaken a wide-ranging cultural project of narrating their nation's violent and traumatic recent history, historicizing experiences of dictatorship, embargo, war, and occupation from a range of perspectives and critical positions. I was particularly interested in the artistic and literary strategies Iraqi writers and artists have used to represent and narrate experiences of extreme violencebombings, kidnappings, torture, decapitation-and how the ubiquity and continuity of this violence make its