Category Archives: Hamlet

Hamlet Without Hamlet planned in Iraq

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Monadhil Daood, who plays Catesby in Al-Bassam’s Richard III, confirmed to me that he plans to direct an adaptation of the play Hamlit bila hamlit (“Hamlet without Hamlet”) at the Iraqi National Theatre in the coming months.

The 1992 absurdist Hamlet spin-off, by Kirkuk-born poet-playwright Khaz’al al-Majidi (b. 1951), opens with news of Hamlet’s death by shipwreck on his way from Wittenberg to his father’s funeral. (Full text here: http://www.masraheon.com/294.htm) Directed at the Iraqi National Theatre in 1997 by Naji ‘abd al-Amir, Hamlit bila hamlit continues to be produced throughout the Arab world. Michel Cerda and Haytham Abderrazak directed it in Paris in 2007. Monadhil Daood says his version, which will be the inaugural play for his Baghdad Theatre Company, will adapt al-Majidi’s script quite a lot and will incorporate aspects of ta’ziya (Shi’a passion plays for the death of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Husayn). Incidentally, Daood’s doctoral dissertation on ta’ziya theatre, written in Arabic and defended in Moscow in the late 1990s, is available through interlibrary loan.

Updates on the Iraqi National Theatre available here.

Article on Arab Hamlets in Iraqi National Congress paper

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This survey from Al-Mu’tamar newspaper, a daily (formerly) published by the Iraqi National Congress.

هاملت في المختبر التجريبي العربي
عواد علي
حظيت مسرحية “هاملت” لشكسبير، باهتمام الكثير من المخرجين، سواء في الغرب، أو في الشرق، فأقبلوا على تجريب رؤاهم الإخراجية المختلفة عليها، وتقديم مقاربات وتأويلات جديدة لأحداثها وشخصياتها وفضاءاتها. وكثيراً ما أثير تساؤل مفاده: ما الذي يدفع هؤلاء المخرجين إلى تكرار إخراج هذه المسرحية، أهي الرغبة المحضة في التجديد فحسب، أم العبقرية التي تنطوي عليها النص ذاته، بحيث يسمح بقراءات ومقاربات معاصرة ليس لها حدود، وتنفتح على شتى النزعات والرؤى التجريبية، والتطبيقات المختبرية الحداثية، وما بعد الحداثية؟ وقد ركزت أجابات بعض المشتغلين في المسرح، والباحثين على الشق الأول من التساؤل، في حين ركزت إجابات أخرى على الشق الثاني منه، وهو ما أميل شخصياً إليه، فلو كانت الرغبة المحضة في التجديد فحسب هي الدافع لوجد هؤلاء المخرجون أمامهم عشرات النصوص المسرحية الحديثة التي تلبي تلك الرغبة. ولكنهم ماداموا يسعون إلى الخوض في تساؤلات إنسانية وسياسية كبرى تفرضها تعقيدات العصر، وأيديولوجياته، وصراعاته، ومصالحه المتشابكة

Read more here: http://www.inciraq.com/pages/view_paper.php?id=200817948

New Hamlet-alluding Adonis collection

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Adonis has a new poetry collection, just out this year, with a Hamlet-themed long poem in it. (Cover art is by Adonis as well.)

The poem is titled (slightly less decorously than the collection as a whole) “Calm down Hamlet, inhale Ophelia’s smell.” It was written in January 2006 (before the most recent Lebanon war, which he also writes about). On a very cursory first reading, not quite sure what it has to do with Hamlet (and it does not seem to be Adonis’ best work, not that I am any kind of expert).
More soon.

Holderness on Al-Bassam

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Graham Holderness has an article on Sulayman Al-Bassam’s Shakespeare adaptations in the current European Journal of English Studies (Vol 12, No. 1, April 2008 , 59 – 77). Abstract:

This article addresses the writing and performance work of Anglo-Kuwaiti director Sulayman Al-Bassam, tracing the development of his various adaptations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet into English and Arabic ‘cross-cultural’ versions between 2001 and 2007. Al-Bassam’s work presents English as a ‘language in translation’. His works move from early modern to modern English, from Arabized English to Arabic, from one linguistic and geographical location to another, their forms moulded and remoulded by complex cultural pressures. The study focuses on specific examples from three adaptations to show in practice how in these works English is ‘constantly crossed, challenged and contested’.

Villain Steals the Show (Claudius article)

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The current Journal of Arabic Literature has my piece on versions of Claudius in post-1975 Arab appropriations of Hamlet. Basically I argue that he turns into an invincible monster, a political Leviathan and sexual Minotaur who takes up the whole space of the play, leaving no space for real politics. I’m grateful to the anon. reviewer who made me figure out what I mean by “politics”… this pushed me to realize that you can in fact have power without politics, i.e., without members of a society having an opportunity to exercise their political natures in the Aristotelian sense. But what would political theatre or political agency mean in a context like that?
Anyway, here’s the link:
When the Villain Steals the Show: The Character of Claudius in Post-1975 Arab(ic) Hamlet Adaptations JAL 38:2, 196-219.

Syrian ambassador to Pakistan Riad Ismat on directing Shakespeare

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Syrian playwright, cultural bureaucrat, and diplomat Riad Ismat is now Syrian ambassador to Pakistan.  In this capacity he addressed a local Shakespeare society at Greenwich University.  His (not very well covered) remarks there seem to have been quite general, as befits a diplomat; for more details see his essay هاملت كما اخرجته in his collection شيطان المسرح.

Hamlet’s "Something is Rotten" used in controversy over Danish cartoons

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The photo is missing for some reason, but there is a striking entry about the use of Shakespeare in the Danish cartoon controversy  on Kristine Steenbergh’s blog, Serendipities.  Here it is:

The Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad this week featured this photo :

The photo captures a moment in a demonstration in the Syrian capital Damascus, one of the many demonstrations protesting against the cartoons placed in the Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten. We see a large group of male demonstrators carrying signs in Arabic, signs that I cannot read. The male protestors are captured either with their eyes closed, or looking at each other and each others’ signs. In the foreground of the picture is a woman who looks straight into the camera of Dirk-Jan Visser, press photographer at Reuters. She carries a sign that I can read, with a quotation that is immediately familiar.
What is Shakespeare doing in Damascus? What do Marcellus’ words, spoken in the depth of night on the watchtower of Elsinore, mean in this woman’s hands? She is looking us into the eye, addressing us in English, and she speaks in the words of one of Europe’s most canonical authors. The authority – the cultural capital – of Hamlet’s canonical status is strategically entered into the demonstration, to make a point about the decadence of European culture. The Tragedy of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark is thrown back at the Western world. Shakespeare’s revenge tragedy, as a symbol of European culture, is here appropriated with a vengeance.