Women Making Waves
Surrounded (but mostly untouched) by the upheaval of the Arab Spring, Algerian theatre is poised to enjoy its own quiet revolution
By Eliza Bent
Last year’s Arab Spring seemed to spread like wildfire, hopping from country to country in North Africa and the Middle East. Its afterglow ignited protests in Europe, the U.S. and China—far from the birthplace of Tunisia’s Jasmine Revolution. Algeria, next door to Tunisia and Libya, sustained major protests but didn’t quite hop on the political upheaval bandwagon. That is, in part, because Algeria experienced tumult of its own in the late 1980s. The “Couscous Revolt,” as it is sometimes called, was precipitated by slow political change, as well as a price drop in oil, resulting in riots and a series of liberalizing economic reforms.
“I think Algerians in general are very inspired by what happened in Tunisia and Egypt,” says theatre artist Taous Claire Khazem, who runs Daraja Theatre with her husband, Mohamed Yabdri, and creates work in both Algeria and at several theatres in Minnesota. “However, I hear people on the ground here saying they want peaceful change that might have to happen a bit more slowly. In 1988 Algeria lived what Tunisia and Egypt saw in 2011, and therefore we have a different point of view” about the costs and benefits of upheaval. Moreover, Khazem points out that Algeria, unlike its neighbors to the east, has not been under the rule of the same dictator for decades at a time. “A variety of presidents have come and gone since Algeria’s independence in 1962,” she observes.
Nevertheless, as a fairly new transplant to the Algerian theatre scene, Khazem, who is American-born and of Algerian heritage, has borne witness to a dearth of female theatrical representation and also has taken part in some artistic revolutions of her own. A year after Khazem arrived in Algeria, she was cast in a play in her new city, Oran.
“At the time, the theatre had only four professional actresses who were regularly appearing in productions,” she says. Algeria has 14 regional theatres, all funded by the state-run Ministry of Culture. At the Oran audition, however, Khazem was surprised to see many women, mostly college students, turn up to vie for a role. “Beside the fact that there is a lack of women working professionally in the theatre,” Khazem recalls, “there simultaneously seemed to be a lot of interest and untapped talent.”
Khazem, who is Lecoq-trained, has worked as a teaching artist in St. Paul, Minn., and has performed with the Twin Cities’ Pangea World Theater, Frank Theatre and Interact Center for the Performing Arts. She approached Oran’s Ministry of Culture with a proposal to create a six-month theatre training course for women. The ministry not only agreed to Khazem’s pitch, but also provided her with a rehearsal space and technical support, with a salary provided by the Regional Theatre of Oran.
Sixty-three women showed up for Khazem’s audition, and 37 were accepted into the program. For the next five months the group studied theatrical styles appropriate to physical theatre, Greek tragedy, realism, Shakespeare, Molière and Brecht, among others.
Khazem also enlisted the help of local experts. Algerian-born playwright Fatima Gallaire, who now resides in France, conducted a six-day writing workshop during the course, and Nawel Louerrad, Algeria’s lone female scenic designer, led a workshop intensive. After Gallaire’s writing workshop, a participant told Khazem that she had never in her life “put pen to paper to write something personal,” and that sharing her story was a cathartic experience.
In the final month, Khazem divided the group into four companies, each with its own actors, writer, designer and director, and set them to work creating their own plays. In one, a woman who suffers a personal tragedy becomes a journalist and writes about other people’s suffering; in another piece, two young women are put into a psychiatric hospital because, according to Khazem, “One is too smart for her community to handle, and the other is so much in love that she’s deemed crazy.” A farce treating the materialistic side of Algerian society and a solo piece about a rejected orphan who becomes a professional clown rounded out the offerings.
“I think all the participants were empowered by creating and performing their own work,” says Khazem. “Three have now been cast in mainstage productions at the Regional Theatre of Oran as well as other regional theatres. Another is applying to scenic design programs in France.”
Algeria is not devoid of female arts administrators—2 out of the 14 regional artistic directors are women: Fouzia Ait El Hadj, of the El Eulma Theatre, and Sonia, of the Regional Theatre of Annaba. (“She’s like Madonna, just one name,” jokes Khazem.) Algeria’s cultural minister, Khalida Toumi, is also a woman. For Khazem, the problem isn’t so much a lack of female participation but a scarcity of scripts dramatizing the experiences of modern Algerian women. “Many theatres work with translations and adaptations,” she says. “In 2010 every single entry in the annual professional theatre festival was a translation or adaptation—including two different versions of Tartuffe. In 2011 there was more original work, albeit still heavy on translation.”
Among the original work that does get made, some plays take on social topics such as corruption, sex outside of marriage, homosexuality and abuse of power—mostly without censorship. (Khazem recalls, however, that a scene with a suggestively eaten banana caused walk-outs at a play she attended.) “Oftentimes,” she notes, “artists limit their own creativity” and create “fluffy, entertaining work” to get funding and stage time at major festivals. Meanwhile, a festival devoted to female Algerian theatre artists has been cancelled three times.
Khazem remains hopeful in light of recent political rumblings. “For me, the real revolution is here with these young artists,” she says. “They are expressing what they have to say in new ways, right here inside this state-run theatre, which has never before seen so many new female performers show up to work this hard.”