Kuwait's "Silence" director joins Carthage Theater Festival

KUWAIT, Dec 8 (KUNA) -- Kuwaiti theater director Sulayman Al-Bassam partook in the 24th edition of the Carthage Theater Festival in Tunisia with his play "Samt" or (Silence), which handles the 2020 Beirut Port explosion with a text that combined music styles and Arabic sounds and reflected the violent incident.
Speaking to KUNA by phone, Al-Bassam said his play is taking part in the performances of the official competition of the theatrical event held between December 2 and 10, adding that he is nominated to win awards.
He elaborated that French-Syrian actress Hala Omran would perform the play, written and directed by him, with live musical accompaniment of "the Dragon Duo" Ali Hout and Abd Qubaisi.
He pointed out that "Silence" is part of search for Arabic-Arabic combinations to create a contemporary theatrical language, and reflects a metaphor for the personality of the thinker, the artist and the human being who uses utter silence as an absolute form of expression.
The Kuwaiti director chose the Beirut Port explosion, which hit the Lebanese capital on August 4, 2020, to be a background for his work to handle the catastrophic impacts of the incident, along with the outcomes of marginalizing humans, society and the environment. He added that the text raises questions about the significance of the political theatrical project that commits to addressing all this considered destruction of tools and systematic dismantling of meanings and attack on the language as a tool to describe today's reality.
Al-Bassam went on to say that it also represents a new stage of research in intensification at the level of language and economics with theatrical tools that lead to the concentration of poetical dimension in theatrical performance components.
On the future stations of the play, he said since there were positive and honorable reactions, it would be performed during the forthcoming edition of the Arabic Theater Festival due in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad in January.
It could also be shown in the State of Kuwait in February, and then Beirut and Cairo, he pointed out.
The one-hour-long play, whose first workshop was organized in Switzerland in October 2022, is performed in Arabic with simultaneous translation into English. (end) msa.mt