A snapshot from the play “The Crazy One” by Tawfiq Al-Jabali (Al-Jazeera)
Paris -
In establishing theater as the father of the arts as it combines many of them, Tunisian theater director Tawfiq Jebali set out to mix theological hymns, Greek mythology, and the poems of the “Divine Comedy” by Dante Allegri, along with Shakespearean tragedy, in his play “The Madman,” which he presented over the weekend in A series of performances at Dar Tunis in Paris, making it a title for unique creative and theatrical works that draw from major philosophical and poetic texts based on rebellion, emancipation, and difference.
The play, adapted from the immortal text “The Crazy One” by the Lebanese poet Gibran Khalil Gibran - which was written in English at the beginning of the last century (1918) and translated into Arabic by Antonius Bashir - combines and unites Al-Jabali with Gibran’s immortal text, certain of his certainty that there is nothing more eloquent than this creative icon and this spiritual and poetic voice. The philosophical and mystical coming from the world of the “ascendant essence”, in order to bring it to mind as a real-time expression of the alienation, loneliness, violence and wandering of today’s world.
Therefore, Al-Jabali justified the return of this work - which was presented for the first time in 2001 - in his presentation of the play, by saying: “Why do we re-present this work more than 20 years after its production, because we need a voice that calls for humanity, calls for mercy, a voice that dominates... Voices of domination, exclusion, and tyranny...a spiritual voice.”
The philosophy of rebellion and emancipation
Quietly, the rhythm begins in a theatrical space that oscillates between black and white, and soon we hear a voice from behind the curtain repeating the puzzle of life, “I came to say a word and I will say it... and if death brings me back before I say it, tomorrow will say it,” before the dawn of the story and birth breaks with readings by 3 actresses (Amal Al-Awaini) , Amina Al-Badiri, Yasmine Al-Dimasi) immersed in darkness, searching for light and truth, asking philosophical questions infused with contemplation and wisdom, and perfumed with their laughter and thoughtful movements on the run.
The plot and movement quickly develop and the rhythm intensifies as actor Marwan Al-Ruwayn enters, dancing to the music, ecstatic in the glow of the beginnings, swimming between a sea of darkness and the game of contradictory lighting, but he is haunted by ambiguity and shifting from one panel to another, devoid of personality and will in the mask that director Tawfiq Al-Jabali wears for him in every appearance on the screen. The wood.
Part of the play “The Madman” at Dar Tunis in Paris (Al Jazeera)
It is life with its many masks and contradictions, between light and darkness, good and evil, joy and sadness, hope and despair, faith and disbelief, beauty and ugliness.
The beauty that turned into ugliness and the ugliness that turned into beauty in a masked, contradictory, upside-down world that walks on its head, is discovered by the viewer through the play of the voice from behind the curtain that returns to tell them this strange transformation: “Beauty and ugliness met one day on the seashore, and each of them said to the other, ‘Can you To swim? Then they took off their clothes and went into the waters. After a while, Ugliness returned to the shore and put on the clothes of Beauty, and went on its way. Beauty also came from the sea, and could not find her clothes, and was extremely ashamed to be naked, so she put on the robe of Ugliness and went on her way. Since that day, men and women have made mistakes whenever they meet in knowing each other. However, there is a group of people who look at the face of beauty and recognize it despite its clothes, and there are some people who recognize the face of ugliness, and the clothing they wear does not hide it from their eyes.
Reflections, stories, philosophical aphorisms, and poetic interludes, adapted from Gibran’s original text, flow smoothly, sometimes through the actors’ mouths, other times in the background of the wall screen, and sometimes with restored voices coming from afar, all of which give the show another depth between the lines and push the viewer to the farthest reaches of the dream to discover his fragmented, tense, frightened, sad, happy, and dreaming self. And the dancer, the singer, and the crazy person, no doubt.
Let the viewer know from the beginning that he is facing a work that heralds the philosophy of difference, and a text that digs into herd consciousness and attempts to depart from the norm by asking major questions without fear or arrogance, but these questions and this digging are only done in an artistic, philosophical, sarcastic and profound spirit at the same time, promising hope and inciting rebellion. Despite all the contradictions of reality, in addition to the successful scenography of director Tawfiq Al-Jabali and Hatem Al-Ferchishi, and the design and embroidery of the scenes with various dramatic effects such as the shadow imagination technique.
In parallel with all of this, the viewer reads on the screen in the background this amulet that will incite him and accompany him throughout the entire halls of the play: “The soul of the philosopher is in his mind... the soul of the poet is in his heart... the soul of the artist is in his voice... and the soul of the dancer is in his body.”
Text within text
Perhaps the spiritual, philosophical atmosphere in this distinguished, creative theatrical work was embodied through paintings, dances, lighting, decoration, and words, but it became apparent to the eye most clearly and reached its climax with the sweet, magical music of the Iranian artists Zakir Hussein and the Tunisian Najeeb Al-Sharadi, which ranged between dream and tension and a marriage between poems and wise reflections.
Music and compositions that numbed the audience, penetrated his body, and took his ecstasy to the world of the supernatural and the heavens of dreams. Music that expressed the overflowing rivers of the soul and its rumbling when it embraced the world of the eternal, so it became images, light, and unspoken text within the text. They are the great human philosophical values of Gibran’s writings, sung and poured into strings, paintings, and the creations of the unique director Tawfiq. Al-Jabali.
Theater director Tawfiq Al-Jabali in Jerusalem (Al-Jazeera)
The marriage of the arts and the intertwining of theater, literature, poetry, philosophy, painting, singing, music and dance in this creative, unclassified work begins to confuse viewers and ask them: Are we facing real décor, real animated characters, a professional script writer, and a specific director, or are we facing visual, sensory, and emotional chaos and waves of crazy, crashing ideas? It breaks with our intuitive assumptions and tries to pull us out of the caves of deceptive intuition, demolishing to build and filling up to dig, deep into our subconscious?
In establishing the essential role of theatre, the arts, creativity, genius, and madness, as ways of human salvation from the final answer, the complete truth, the port of arrival, the closed identity, and the normal human being, so the voice shouts again from behind the curtain with Gibran’s words:
“I wrote a line on the islands in the sand,
but I found nothing on the beaches except my ignorance
I wrote a line on the sand on the islands
and deposited it with all my soul and mind.
I returned at the tide to read and find out,
but I found nothing on the shores but my ignorance.”
Digging deep into oneself
It is an artistic synthesis of human philosophical theatrics based on shaking up certainties and trusts and digging deeply into the depths of the volatile human soul. The self, struggling with its seduction, overcoming its desires, breaking its chain, and revolting against its subservience and dogmatism, preaching the philosophy of difference.
The voice of the choir rises and falls from behind the curtain with the succession of paintings and the generation of ideas, and with a simple technological trick on the part of the director, the sound swells, twists, moves away, approaches, suffocates, becomes clear, sad, happy, laughs, and cries, screaming, “You taught me to myself, and taught me that the tangible is half of the intelligible, and that what we grasp upon is part of what we desire. You taught me to myself, and taught me to love.” What people detest and the companionship of those who hate it, and you made clear to me that love is not a quality in the lover, but in the beloved. You taught me to myself and taught me not to be happy with praise and not to be dismayed by blame.”
The voices get mixed up and the viewers get lost, wondering if it is their stifled voice that they cannot shout in front of everyone, and the imaginations dancing in front of them amplified by light? They are confused by the question again: Are these our pictures drawn at the bottom? Is it the voice of reason or the voice of madness? Is it the voice of the subconscious mind or the apparent mind? Is it the voice of the deported poet-intellectual-philosopher whom the tribe no longer recognizes as its voice and official spokesman? Is it the voice of Joseph screaming from the bottom of the well? Is it the voice of our absent humanity? Is it the voice of our animality and brutality emerging into nature?
Many burning questions are raised by this enchanting creative combination, from which the audience does not wake up unless it finds itself distracted, naked, screaming, singing, dancing, crazy, in front of the mirror of its deep, hidden self, and in front of the pits of its unconsciousness, which lies in the oblivion.
The crazy play at Dar Tunis in Paris (Al Jazeera)
Thinner than a spider's web
The play closes with a meditative interlude that was repeated more than once throughout the work halls, with a strangled voice and a muffled cry from behind the curtains: “I am a stranger in this world, my friend. I am a stranger, my friend.. my friend.. my friend...”, so that the sound continues to writhe and echo on the horizon. The vast space echoes with it the creator’s cry for eternity and his constant feeling of his alienation and “prophecy,” recalling the cry of Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi centuries ago: “The strangest of strangers is he who has become a stranger in his own homeland.”
If Gibran carved his “crazy” literary text with language picks, poetic images, contemplations, introspection, philosophical delusions, and winged imagination, then Al-Jabali tried with all his theatrical experience and artistic skills to bridge the gap between the two texts: the established literary text and the obsessive theatrical text - and every true creative work is based on doubt, obsession, and lack of understanding. Certainty - and for all of this, we are not exaggerating when we say that Tawfiq Al-Jabali succeeded to a great extent in creating a new, unique creative synthesis called “Al-Majnoun” in which all genres and artistic and creative forms dissolve. He was able to achieve this smooth transition through smart, poetic writing based on abbreviation, condensation, and painful deletion.
Therefore, we do an injustice to this distinguished creative work and this example and synthesis when we restrict it to the narrow term “play” - even though theater is the father of all arts - because it simply disavows every attempt at definition and simple superficial description, and deviates from every well-known classical dramatic structure, artistic plot, and volatile and moving characters. The décor is consistent with the events, and a story that ranges between the knot and the solution, and a knowledgeable narrator and a capable director who moves the events and characters from behind the curtain.
It is a road without access, seas without harbours, rain without clouds, love without salvation, or it is simply the cry of a crazy genius trying to build a shack of wisdom from the spider’s webs in an attempt to internalize Gibran’s immortal saying, “Between madness and genius there is a thread thinner than the spider’s web.” ".
Source: Al Jazeera