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Six Plays-en Short

Exploring lives inside- and after - the Middle East
review by Brad Rosenstein in SF Bay Guardian August 11, 1999

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'Six Plays – en short'

As its program notes suggest, a Middle Eastern theater festival
almost sounds like a contradiction in terms. Given the limits on
expression in many Middle Eastern countries, producing a vital
contemporary theater has become a near impossibility. So it's not
surprising that Golden Thread Productions' Six Plays – en short
are all the work of Middle Eastern artists who had to go elsewhere
to tell their stories. Their subsequent dislocations of culture and
identity are as much these plays' subject as the region itself.

Presented in two alternating evenings of three plays each, the
offerings range from noted writers such as Fatima Gallaire to
fledgling local playwrights, and feature styles as divergent as fable
and comedy. The program I saw began with The Gangrene, a text
developed by Laura Chakravarty Box from testimonies of
Algerians living in Paris in 1958. Believed to have links to the
Algerian war for independence, the North Africans were rounded
up and brutally tortured by the French territorial police,
who--ironically--utilized the same building in which members of the
French Resistance had been tortured by the Nazis less than two
decades earlier.

Box strains to demonstrate a pattern of oppressed becoming
oppressor, but the schematic recitation of atrocities never
coalesces into effective theater. The ensemble is weak, and that,
combined with Carl Eye's limp abstract staging, means The
Gangrene does little service to a shattering historical event. Tina
Ehsanipour's The Revolution Never Ended is a heartfelt
monologue describing the inner displacement of an Iranian
refugee, however Amahl Khouri's tender but hazy delivery keeps
the protagonist's struggles at a distance.

The selections from Emily Shihadeh's Grapes and Figs are in
Season: A Palestinian Woman's Story are a different case.
Written (with Victoria Rue) and performed by Shihadeh, a San
Francisco resident, these tales from her life are rich and
immediate. Her stories of growing up in a Palestinian
Arab-Quaker home just north of Jerusalem merge humor, song,
and narrative, and staunchly defy stereotype. Shihadeh's firsthand
experiences are relayed with an enchanting rapport and candor,
accomplishing everything the previous pieces don't. Her stories
illuminate from within the region's riches, shortcomings, its latent
but genuine potential for peace, and the essential resonance
these homelands continue to have for those who live beyond their
borders.

'Six Plays – en short.' Through Aug. 28. Wed.-Sat., 8 p.m. Exit
Theatre, 156 Eddy, S.F. $15, (510) 986-9194.
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