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A
Cultural Phenomenon
Annual
Hakaya Festival: the centrality of the
story, individual growth and
social
renaissance
Dr. Faiha Abdulhadi
"There is an end to
everything, unless it had a story, then it
never ends."
Hakawati Theatre group/Syria
In Amman, as part of the
annual regional Hakaya festival organised by
the Arab Education Forum and Al Balad
Theatre, in cooperation and partnership with
The Arab Theatre Training Centre/Lebanon,
MD/Denmark, L'Echangeur/France, and the
support of local and international
institutions, this year's festival ran from
the 12th until the 16th
of December 2008. The project vision was
evident through "the stories presented by
Arab and European artists in various art
forms, alongside workshops and meetings
towards the deepening and expansion of the
dialogue relating to various concepts
relating to storytelling."
Hakaya project is the result
of many years of cooperation and dialogue
between individuals and various groups from
the Arab World and across the Mediterranean.
In particular, it is focused on the
centrality of the story necessary for the
growth of the individual and the society at
large. The story or the tale is the main
component for thought and communication. As
for us Arabs, the story/tale is one of the
main tools to free our imagination,
intellect, perception and feeling. This
project creates a network by bringing
together artists, oral historians,
storytellers and educators in apprenticeship
programs, workshops and an itinerant
festival which will approach the story in
many of its forms, highlighting the role it
plays in enriching the theatre, the arts,
illiteracy programs, as well as in identity
forming and dialogue between cultures.
This project also introduced
three Arabic books: A Training Manual for
the Art of Storytelling, The Use of Stories
in Theatre, and Linking the Story to the
Writing of History. These presentations were
made at the Darat al Funun in Jabal al-Weibdeh.
Furthermore, the festival included a
performance for children inspired from the
Palestinian folk tale "Noss
Nseiss."
The workshop "Women and Stories" took place
at Ruwwad Centre in Jabal Al Nadheef. The
artistic performances filled the 5 evenings
with the participation of artists and
storytellers from nine Arab and European
countries. Some of these performances were
in classical Arabic with touches of the
local dialects as in the Tunisian and the
Syrian, others used the local dialects such
as the Egyptian with Amazighi interjections,
as well as the Palestinian and the Lebanese;
the Danish performance was in English with
simultaneous interpretation into Arabic. The
performance media varied, some were
exclusive to the performance itself without
the aid of any artistic techniques, others
used theatre techniques and some borrowed
practices from the cinema making industry.
The performances, which
mainly took the form of narrator/storyteller
alone on stage, proved the endless potential
of the story when used by skilful artists or
amateurs who are passionate about
storytelling. These performances included
the enjoyable show by the Lebanese/French
storyteller
Praline Gay-Para:
"Hikayat
min al aktar at-tis3a
(tales from the nine corners of the world),"
travelling between the past and the present
in colloquial Lebanese. She grabbed the
audience's attention transfixing them into
their seats with tales that "poked reality
in the eye" dealing with daily troubles, to
the imaginary and the fantasy through her
tales of travel that took the audience to
the nine corners of the world. They also
included the spectacular show "Uncle Saleh
said" by the Tunisian storyteller
Saleh Souai Marzougui,
in his head scarf and wooden cane, speaking
classical Arabic mixed with the spoken
Tunisian offering his tales from the South
of Tunis.
The Palestinian performances
by Denise Asaad, Sonia Nimr and Fadi el-Ghul
offered a mixture of storytelling with
artistic techniques. Some of these stories
focused on Palestinian popular tales such as
in the act by Fadi el-Ghul with "Noss
Nseiss"
for children, using sound effects and
dramatic elements. Denise Asaad used
projected images on screen to exhibit
pictures from Qisariya, the village that her
family were forced to leave in 1948, that
inspired the tales in her show "Stories from
Qisariya." Others, like Sonia Nimr, chose
international Arab Palestinian traditional
tales modified to her own style in the show
"Folk Tales from Palestine."
As for the Egyptian
performances, they were remarkable for
presenting individual and collaborative
stories all linked by an experimental style.
Ramadan Khater presented a show from the
group Haki Masateb which stemmed from the
Egyptian El Warsha group. He narrated
Egyptian and international stories based on
"al-Hilaliyyeh Epic" and Bayram el-Tunisi
maqamat.
The experimental feature was
apparent in the performance
"Siwa
Stories" by the group Dayer ma Ydour
presenting stories of cultures facing
extinction due to the brutal globalization
such as the Amazighi culture. This urged the
collection of stories and the presentation
of tales in the Amazighi language alongside
the Egyptian dialect.
Both talent and skill were manifested in
the act by Egyptian artist
Arfa AbdulRasoul
as she participated in the performance "Siwa
Stories" as well as in her amazing solo
performance
"Stories of the Grocer's Daughter"
inspired from her personal life. This
performance documents the period from the
late fifties and the early sixties of the
last century in Egypt by highlighting the
social life and relating to the cultural,
economic and political life.
The Syrian performances
ranged from the solo performance by
storyteller Nimr Salmoun in classical Arabic
entitled "Fear
Nothing, Death is by Your Side," and the
group performance by Hakawati Theatre group
in spoken Syrian entitled "Hakaya al
Mawaweel."
The Lebanese artist Rafik
Ali Ahmad concluded the Hakaya annual
meeting events with the monodrama "Jarsa"
which he presented on the main theatre at
the Hussein Cultural Centre.
The Lebanese artist amazed
us with his stories where the title and the
content intertwine with painful sarcasm, as
the human being is indicted since his birth
with his three part name as evidence.
Rafik Ali Ahmad narrates
entangled stories which do not only speak of
his helplessness but of his dreams and hopes
as well. Revengeful against the Arab
systems, eating their own children after
crushing them, he screams in the face of
each and everyone living in these miserable
conditions apathetically, particularly to
the young he says: "if you were not the ones
to rise up, who will?"
This article was
published in Arabic in Al Ayyam newspaper,
Palestine
faihaab@gmail.com
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