Drama" by Damascus Theater Lab | Stream with Post Show Talk

"Drama"
A free adaptation of Sam Shepard's "True West".
Directed by Oussama Ghanam
Arabic with English subtitles
Digital guest performance at the Sisterhood Damascus Festival of the Münchner Kammerspiele
Followed by a post-show discussion with the director and the Damascus Theater Lab Team

"Drama" is a free adaptation of "True West", a play by Sam Shepard. It is the third and final part of the family trilogy directed by Oussama Ghanam. The series includes three plays featuring Syrian families in Damascus over the past decade, through a rewrite of three classic plays dealing with family issues in the 20th century.

The first play was "Homecoming" by Harold Pinter in 2013, in which we saw a motherless family, followed by "Glass Menagerie" in 2015 by Tennessee Williams, a play about a fatherless family. In Sam Shepard's 2018 "Drama," based on "True West," both the father and mother are absent, metaphorically as well as physically. Only in the final scene does the mother return to her home to find her two sons arguing before she leaves again to meet Picasso at a museum, for she alone is convinced he is still alive.

This contemporary story of Cain and Abel takes on a modern meaning in our free adaptation: the industry of TV dramas in Syria is the equivalent of Hollywood's entertainment machine. With the destruction of Syria, the drama has paradoxically survived and continues to produce. The two brothers struggle to secure a certain commitment for a series contract. They spend a night swapping roles, moving between the incidental and the substantial. The series contract becomes a chance to escape useless time. But if Sam Shepard's story is about a "Western" film (in the sense of the actual West) that we fake to sell, the Syrian series is a more problematic discourse. The Syrian context shows that this time and utopian space became a battleground between representations, visions, hopes and disappointments, where the historical and the individual, the public and the private are intertwined.

In a way, "True West" concludes Shepard's trilogy of family plays with a very somber final tune. Our version, set in contemporary Damascus, ends the story of the dying family, its structure, and its time on a different note: the city remains, but the struggle continues. As a story that destroys a history and generates from its fragments a new story about the dream of a backward modernity that confronts its long midnight with all its devils and bells.

DRAMA دراما
Directed by Oussama Ghanam, dramaturged by Ibrahim Joumaa, music by Ary Jan Sarhan, technical production manager by Reem Mohamad, assistant director by Dima Abaza.
With: Ehab Shaaban, Jan Dahdouh, May Alsalim.

About Damascus Theater Lab
Damascus Theater Lab (DTL) is an independent artistic institution founded in 2010. Its aim is to create a theater based on the creative and artistic exploration of modern tendencies in theater production, the relationship between dramaturgy and acting, and the current relationship between theater and social reality. The Lab is a space for artistic and theatrical works. It insists on making continuous theatrical productions, encouraging artists to empower themselves and creating a space of encounter and learning through theatrical performances and theatrical workshops. It also aims to contribute to a theater structure that develops activities on two levels: first, organizing workshops with theater and cinema professionals in Syria, following the modern trends of international theater: this aims to motivate young people to produce their own shows. So far, the following workshops have been completed in Damascus, such as: Actors Alone on Stage: Self-Performance and Other Forms (2020), Issues in Contemporary Actor Training and the Aesthetic Challenges of Theater in the 21st Century (2017), The Brechtian Legacy in the 21st Century (2016), Georg Büchner's Woyzeck: a Theatrical Research on Performing and Applied Dramaturgy on Büchner's Theater and the Aesthetics of Expressionism (2013). Second, the following plays have been produced to date as part of professional theater productions: Drama: free adaptation of Sam Shepard's True West (Damascus, 2018) - premiered during the week of the International Theatre Day in Tunisia, organized by the National Theatre in Tunisia 2018. Glass: free adaptation of Tennessee Williams' Glass Menagerie (2016). The Homecoming: free adaptation of Harold Pinter's Homecoming (2013). Worksite Heiner Müller (staged readings): Lebanon, Holland and Belgium during Meeting Points 6 in 2011. It Happened Tomorrow: based on texts by Kroetz, Dario Fo, Franca Rame and Ravenhill, performed at Mahmaset al Shatta Offspace (2010) - Ruhr Theater in Germany (2012) - Sunflower Theatre in Lebanon (2014). The Last Tape by Samuel Beckett: performed at Damascus Opera House (2009) and Sunflower Theatre in Lebanon (2009).

Oussama Ghanam is a theater director, playwright, dramaturge and translator. Since founding the Damascus Theatre Lab (DTL) in 2010, he has been its artistic director. He has also been a professor at the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts in Damascus since 2005.

As a director, he has staged the following plays: "The Last Tape" - Samuel Beckett (2009), "It Happened Tomorrow" - Kroetz, Dario Fo, Mark Ravenhill (2010), "Homecoming" - Harold Pinter (2013), "Glass", a free adaptation of Tennessee Williams' "Glass Menagerie" (2015) and "Drama", a free adaptation of Sam Shepard's "True West" (2018). In 2019, he was invited by the Tunisian National Theater for an artistic residency and staged Georg Büchner's "Woyzeck" with the TNT troupe.

Since 2011, Oussama has led 16 professional artistic research workshops on dramaturgy, acting and performance in modern and contemporary theater. He translated numerous plays from English and French into Arabic (by Shepard, Bond, Ravenhill, Sarah Kane, Krimp, Joe Penhal, Heiner Müller, Kroetz, Dario Fo, Büchner, among others). Recently, he translated Patrice Pavis' "Dictionary of Performance and Contemporary Theatre." In addition, Oussama holds a PhD in Theatre Studies from the University of Paris VIII (Saint-Denis).

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December 5th, 2021, 1 p.m. | The International Stream

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