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Performing TransformationsAn International Conference

TANGIER/TETOUAN, MOROCCO, JUNE 1 to 4, 2012

TWO CONCURRENT CONFERENCESARTISTIC PERFORMANCESEXHIBITIONSBOOK LAUNCHMUSICTHEATREDOCUMENTARY...Simultaneous Interpreting in all Panel Sessions

Contents

Welcome.............................................................................................. 02 Theme & Topics …... 03 Conference I: The Transformative Power of Performance 04 Conference II: Performing Transformations …... 05 Abstracts: Conference I & II ……………………………………... 06 Abstracts: Emerging Scholars …………………………………….. 19 Public Agenda Notes ………………………………………………………….... 21 The Kasbah: A historical glimpse................................ 22 The City of Tangier (Tingis/Tanja/Tanger) ……... 26 Team & Acknowledgements ………………………………………….... 28

Book ofAbstracts

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WelcomeDear participants,Along with our partners, we extend a warm welcome in advance to all guest participants at the Tangier InternationalConference 2012: “Performing Transformations”. Hosted by the International Centre for Performance Studies (ICPS);it’s our 8th annual conference of performance, dialogue and debate – hosted by the famous crossroads city of Tangier,Morocco.

Conference program and agenda. Against the backdrop of the still unfolding so-called “Arab Spring”, the theme oftransformations and the performative is especially timely and has generated immense interest. Indeed, participants arecoming this year from more than twenty countries (Morocco, USA, Egypt, United Kingdom, France, Ireland, Australia, Spain,Libya, Germany, Portugal, South Africa, Italy, Mexico, Chile, Finland, Iran, India, Tunisia, Austria, Algeria, and Russia). Thisyear’s program is rich and diverse featuring panel sessions, workshops, performances, and artistic exhibitions andinterventions. Receptions and gala dinners provide space for further interactions. And our fascinating and expanded publicagenda, with distinguished artists from around the world, extends our reach out into the streets and the larger community.See the attached schedule of events for full details.Honored Guests. Among our many distinguished participants, we will especially honor Prof. Dr Dr Fischer-Lichte, (Headof DFG Collaborative Research Centre "Performing Cultures" and Director of BMBF International Research Centre"Interweaving Cultures in Performance", and the Moroccan playwright, Mohammed Kaouti. And will present, for thefirst time The Arabic Translation of The Transformative Power of Performance by Erika Fischer-Lichte with the presenceof the translator, Marwa Mahdi from Egypt, and in the English language, a new book of Kaouti’s seminal work, “NoMan’s Land.” Details at: http://collaborativemedia.blogspot.com/2011/12/no-mans-land.htmlConference culture and venues. We kindly request all participants to respect time-slots for presentations and try theirbest to attend ALL the activities, especially that we will have simultaneous translation for the first time in our conference,thanks to the generous support of our privileged partner the International Research Centre "Interweaving Cultures inPerformance". Full participation and respect for the schedule is extremely important for the success of the event. Pleasebe especially attentive in order to facilitate our movement between the wonderful venues this year: Rif Hotel and Spa,Kasbah Museum, Tangier American Legation, and the Delegation of Culture.Papers and paper sessions. All paper presentations, other than keynote addresses, are limited to fifteen to twenty (15-20)minutes. The time limit will be strictly enforced to ensure that every speaker and every paper receives equal opportunityfor presentation and discussion. All participants are kindly requested to submit their presentations to Dr Khalid Aminebefore or right after the closure of their panels in hard copy and in digital formal (RTF). A selection of papers will bepublished immediately after the conference.Accommodation. Those among you wishing to extend their stays or traveling with partners can book directly via email tothe Rif Hotel and Spa at the same conference rates. Please contact the Sales Manager Sanae Hmami at:COMMERCIAL ATLAS RIF & SPA commercial_rif@hotelsatlas.com (152, Avenue Mohammed VI, Tanger/ fax:+21253994569)Conference Team. There is a team of helpful ICPS staff and volunteers with badges, familiar with the program, conferencevenues and surrounding area, to whom you can turn when in need of assistance. Team members can be identified by theirconference badges. If you cannot see a team member, then please ask for help at the conference information desk at the Rifor the Kasbah Museum.Financial. Kindly handle your financial obligations and arrangements (i.e. registration, etc) upon arrival with theconference organizers at ICPS Information Desk in the RIF SPA.Emerging Scholars. This group of new scholars is defined by The International Federation for Theatre Research (IFTR) aseither graduate students or post-doctoral researchers whose PhDs have been completed less than three years prior toabstract submission. Researchers without PhDs who have been in an academic post for less than three years also qualify asEmerging Scholars.Conference Partners. This annual international conference is organized by the International Centre for PerformanceStudies, The Research Group of Performance Studies at Abdelmalek Essaadi University, The International ResearchCenter "Interweaving Performance Cultures" Freie Universität Berlin; in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture ofMorocco, La Wilaya de Tanger, Goethe Institute Rabat-Casablanca, Rawafid Production, La Commune Urbaine de laVille de Tanger, La Région de Tanger-Tétouan, Goethe Institute Rabat-Casablanca, TALIM Tangier American LegationInstitute for Moroccan Studies, Collaborative Media International (CMI) - Denver, Amherst, Tangier …

About the conferences and ICPS. Here in Tangier, the conference has gained considerably from the efforts of manypeople. We would like to thank all co-conveners, organizers and guests for providing sparkling intellectual leadership.The International Centre for Performance Studies (ICPS) was founded in Tangier, Morocco in 2007. It brings togethernumerous initiatives that were developing over recent years with the common goal of fostering collaboration anddialogue in research, performance, publishing, conferences, exchange, and education.

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Our guiding principles and agenda. To build a variety of lasting collaborations based on the principle of reciprocity; toengage and empower a broad range of stakeholders, especially by nurturing on the margins; to develop and employ awide range of media, especially the visual and performative since their vocabularies are more universal and thus providebroader reach; and, to formulate and promote alternative messages and methods –challenging current rhetoric–featuring dialogue, peace, and understanding, using constructive and research informed strategies.Publications. Beside our annual conferences, our publishing is the backbone of getting our work out into the marketplaceof ideas. The publication program has made many books available, particularly in the English language. We’re sellingthem here at the conference at very low prices, in bookstores all around Morocco, on Amazon.com, and copies have alsobeen donated to the Legation library. If you want to help on this score, one way to help is to buy some books here andthen donate them to your library at home with the stipulation that they be made available via interlibrary loan. We’realso working to develop and deploy new supporting curriculum, including repatriating documents and making sourcedocuments more available. We hope many more people will use these books in their courses.

Welcome. Once again, thanks ever so much for your kindness, and generosity of spirit, and we look forward tocollaborating with you and welcoming you again in Tangier!

Khalid Amine, Conference Convener

Theme & TopicsThe conference will focus on two major strands:

I. The Transformative Power of PerformanceIn Homage to Prof. Dr Dr Fischer-Lichte (Germany)

The transformation from a work of art into an event, according to Erika Fischer-Lichte, has become afundamental aspect of the performative turn since the 1960s along with the bodily co-presence of actorsand audiences in a performance space. That is the core element of Fischer-Lichte’s concept ofperformativity. Interactivity between equal subjects is fundamental to the emergence of performance as anephemeral yet contingent event. This assumption changes our ways of perception and scholarlymethodological approaches. As a follow up to the debates raised in our previous international encounters –specifically “Interweaving Performance Cultures Between The Two Mediterranean Shores” (2009), “Site-Specific Performance in Arabo-Islamic Contexts” (2010), and “Intermediality and Theatre” (2011),Performing Transformations (2012) moves transversally across artistic and ideological boundaries tointerrogate the multifold transformative powers of performance with a particular focus on the post avant-garde theatres that seem to break all the rules of drama. Thus, our primary objective is to further exploretheoretical perspectives on the European performative changes of the 1960s up until now.

Departing from reflections on Erika Fischer-Lichte’s Transformative Power of Performance, we invitescholarly contributions on the following topics:

The Emergence of New Theatrical ApproachesTransformation and TheoryTransformation as a ProcessTransformation of Bodies in Movement/Moving Bodies

II. Performing TransformationsIn Homage to Playwright Mohammed Kaouti (Morocco)

Is it not time to investigate the paradigm shift in contemporary Arabic theatres? The tendency toprivilege the turbulent reflection of liminal experience, where we are invited to become co-artists ratherthan passive consumers becomes so apparent in contemporary Arab theatre scene. While the legitimatingof non-European performance cultures in relation to the European canon has been a major concern for theinternational theatre research community in the last decades, Arabo-Islamic artists and scholars are facedwith a different task, namely that of negotiating the passage of modernity, as well as postmodernity, while

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paying particular attention to the complexities of the current postcolonial situation. We wish to look at theworks of several theatre makers across the Arab world who have been actively and innovatively depicting,questioning and challenging the status quo over the last years. Our second objective is to investigate theperformative aspects of transformations as manifested in the protests for democracy that are sweepingacross the Arab world today. The conference also seeks new discourses to explore the complexinterrelationship within and across the boundaries of contemporary Arabo-Islamic theatre forms, and invitesdialog and public contemplation on changing Arabo-Islamic identities. This is a call for more criticalattention to an observable theatre movement in the making that has become so visible in Arabo-Islamiccontexts. Concerning this theoretical discourse, we wish to invite scholars and artists from around the worldto join the debate and offer elements of reflection on the various problematics related to the followingproposed panels:

Arab Spring and Paradigm Shift in Artistic PerformancesProtests as public spectacles of community power, solidarity and resistance to social controlTheatre/ Performance as a means of StrugglePerformance and transformation/re-invention of public spacesOccupy Protests and the new Public SphereTransformation in relation to Tradition and InnovationSpectacles of Power between the Stage and the State

Sommaire des Conférences & Agenda Public (Français)Le Concept:

Performing Transformations 2012 interrogera la force transformative multiple de la performance en ceconcentrant plus particulièrement sur les théâtres post-avant-gardistes qui semblent briser toutes les règlesdu genre. Le colloque met en relief de nouveaux discours qui explorent et interrogent les relations entre lesdifférentes formes de théâtre arabo-musulman, les quêtes personnelles et l’interaction avec le public arabo-musulman aux identités mouvantes. Nous privilégions des études du théâtre en mouvement, en train de sefaire dans un contexte arabo-musulman. Nous invitons les chercheurs et les artistes à se joindre à ces débatsthéoriques et à participer aux séminaires suivants: «Le Printemps arabe et le changement paradigmatiquedans les théâtres arabes »; «La contestation comme mise en scène publique de la force de la société, de lasolidarité et de la résistance au contrôle social post-représentationnel»; «Le changement du paradigmedans le théâtre Arabo-musulman moderne et les questions du post-drama»; «Les interventionsperformatives créatives dans et de la ville de Tanger»…

SommaireVendredi 1er Juin

15: 00/ 17: 00 Musique spirituelle indienne Sing, Embody, Transform: the Man of the Heart Project par Sudipto Chatterjee & Proshot Kalami Site: Hôtel RIF SPA, Tanger

18: 30/ 19: 00 Hommage au Prof. Dr Dr Fischer-Lichte, Prof. Dr Dr Fischer-Lichte, Head of DFGCollaborative Research Centre "Performing Cultures" and Director of BMBF International ResearchCentre "Interweaving Cultures in Performance"

Présentation de la traduction arabe de “The Transformative Power of Performance” by Erika Fischer-Lichte (Avec la présence de la traductrice Egyptienne Marwa Abidou)

Site: Hôtel RIF SPA, Tanger20: 00 Spectacle Musique/Poésie : “Étranger comme le Fleuve”

Quartet des paroles passagères Site: Hôtel RIF SPA, Tanger

Du 1er Juin au 4: "Nomades"

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Exposition de Photos par Lalish Theaterlabor autour des spectacles et projets de recherches 2000-2012 Site: le musée d'Al Kasbah à Tanger

Samedi 2 Juin14: 00/15: 30 „SOMEONE IS SLEEPING IN MY PAIN“

DOCU-FILM par Michael Roes, et Andrea Smith, Germany / Yemen 2002, 1:29:12 DV Site: Hôtel RIF SPA, Tanger

17: 30/ 18: 30 Présentation de l’ouvrage : The Theatres of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia Par Khalid Amine & Marvin Carlson Site: TALIM-Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies 8 rue d'Amérique Tangier

18: 30/ 19: 30 Spectacle : “MISS WOLFE’S TANGIER STORIES Memories of a young American woman’ssojourn in Tangier 1944-1946” By Dorothy Weems

Site: TALIM-Tangier American Legation, Tangier21: 30 Représentation théâtrale : , par Bousselham Daif (texte d’Abdellatif Laabi)

Site: Musée d‘Al-kasbah, TangerDimanche 3 Juin

17: 00/19: 00 : Hommage à Mohammed Kaouti, Réception Site: Hôtel RIF SPA, Tanger

19: 00/ 20: 00 Présentation d’ouvrage: Christel Weiler, Hassan Mniai, Muhammed Sef & K. Amine Site: Hôtel RIF SPA, Tanger

20: 30 Spectacle: “Energetic Voice and Vocal Action” par Lalish Theater Labor of Vienna Site: Musée d‘Al-kasbah, Tanger

Lundi 4 Juin17: 00/ 19: 00 spectacle en plain air :”ça Soufi”

Par Atelier cuncheoN de l’Italie & artistes marocaines Site: Délégation de la Culture, Tanger

20: 00 « Exircises sur la revolution» spectacle de Daha Wasa Site: le musée d'Al Kasbah à Tanger

15: 00/ Spectacle spécial pour Etudiants Music/Poésie : “Étranger comme le Fleuve”, par Quartet des paroles passagères Site: Faculté des Lettres et Sciences humaines de Martil

Summary of Conferences & Public Agenda (English)Conference I: The Transformative Power of Performance

Friday June 1, 201209: 00/ 11: 15 Panel Session 1 (The Transformative Power of Performance)11: 15/ 13: 00 Panel Session 2 (Transformational Alchemy)15: 00/ 17: 00 Music lecture-demonstration17: 00/ 18: 00 Keynote Panel by Marvin Carlson (The Sidney E. Cohn Professor of Theater, City

University of New York, USA) & Erika Fischer-Lichte (Head of DFG Collaborative Research Centre"Performing Cultures" and Director of BMBF International Research Centre "Interweaving Cultures inPerformance", Berlin, Germany)

18: 30/ 19: 00 Book Launch& special Tribute to Erika Fischer-Lichte: The Arabic Translation of “TheTransformative Power of Performance”

20: 00 Music/Poetry Performance: “Etranger comme le Fleuve”

Saturday June 2, 2012

08: 30/ 09: 30 Keynote Address by Prof. Christopher Balme09: 45/ 11: 30 Panel Session 3 Transformation as a Process11: 45/ 13: 30 Panel Session 4 The Intermedial Turn and the new Public Sphere

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15: 30/ 17: 00 Emerging Scholars Panel I14: 00/ 15: 30 Film Projection „Someone is Sleeping in my Pain“by Michael Roes17: 30/ 18: 30 Book Launch: The Theatres of Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia

By Khalid Amine & Marvin Carlson18: 30/ 19: 30 Performance: “MISS WOLFE’S TANGIER STORIES Memories of a young American woman’s

sojourn in Tangier 1944-1946”, by Dorothy Weems21: 30 Theatre Performance Diaries from Exile: The Prison Letters, by Bousselham Daif from Morocco

Abstracts: Conference I

Prof. Dr. Marvin Carlson is the Sidney E. Cohn Professor of Theatre, Comparative Literature and Middle EasternStudies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Ph.D in Drama and Theatre, Cornell University.The Sidney E. Cohn Distinguished Professor of Theatre, Comparative Literature and Middle Eastern Studies. Hisresearch and teaching interests include dramatic theory and Western European theatre history and dramaticliterature, especially of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries. He has been awarded the ATHE Career AchievementAward, the George Jean Nathan Prize, the Bernard Hewitt prize, the George Freedley Award, and a GuggenheimFellowship. He has been a Walker-Ames Professor at the University of Washington, a Fellow of the Institute forAdvanced Studies at Indiana University, a Visiting Professor at the Freie Universitat of Berlin, and a Fellow of theAmerican Theatre. In 2005 he was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Athens. His best-knownbook, Theories of the Theatre (Cornell University Press, 1993), has been translated into seven languages. His book,The Haunted Stage (2001), won the Calloway Prize. His newest book, Speaking in Tongues, was published by theUniversity of Michigan Press in 2006.Title of Presentation: “Autopoesis, Affect Theory and Aesthetics”Abstract: Erika Fischer-Lichte, in her recent and important book, The Transformative Power of Performance,places particular emphasis on the process of autopoesis, a concept which emerged from the biological sciences inthe 1970s and subsequently proved extremely useful in theoretical writings in sociology, anthropology,psychotherapy, and many aspects of cultural studies. In their shifts from linear to systems thinking, and from seeingthe living organism and its environment not as separate and closed but as interlocking and mutually conditioningsystems, concepts like autopoesis offer a fresh and more complex way of thinking about the relationship between aperformance and its audience. The recent rise of affect studies, concerned with the perpetual becoming of the bodyin interaction with other bodies and with the elements of its environment, although so far more generally appliedto political, social, and psychological questions than to aesthetic ones, is clearly exploring concerns closely relatedto Fischer-Lichte’s dynamics of transformation and autopoesis in the domain of performance. All of thesetheoretical explorations begin with the assertion that, in the words of Bruno Latour, “to have a body is to learn tobe affected . . . put into motion by other entities, humans or nonhumans.” The body thus becomes an interfacewhose characteristics are continually affected by other elements, which it in turn affects. In the course of this essayI will explore the relationships between Fischer-Lichte’s use of this concept and the work of some of the leadingaffect theorists of England and the United States. My ultimate aim is to suggest how both autopoesis and affecttheory can give support to a fresh view of aesthetics, a part of philosophic discourse that has been surprisinglyneglected in recent decades, even within the arts themselves.\Prof. Dr Erika Fischer-Lichte, Professor of Theatre Studies, Freie Universitaet Berlin, Germany, Head of DFGCollaborative Research Centre "Performing Cultures" and Director of BMBF International Research Centre"Interweaving Cultures in Performance". From 1995 to 1999 she was President of the International Federation forTheatre Research. She is a member of the Academia Europaea, the Academy of Sciences at Göttingen, and theBerlin-Brandenburg Academy of Sciences, and also holds the chair of the Institute for Advanced Studies on"Interweaving Cultures in Performance". She has published widely in the fields of aesthetics, theory of literature,art, and theatre, in particular on semiotics and performativity, theatre history, and contemporary theatre. Amongher numerous publications are The Transformative Power of Performance: a New Aesthetics (2008, German 2004),Theatre, Sacrifice, Ritual. Exploring Forms of Political Theatre (2005), History of European Drama and Theatre (2002,German 1990), The Show and the Gaze of Theatre: A European Perspective (1997), The Semiotics of Theatre (1992,German 1983), and The Dramatic Touch of Difference: Theatre, Own and Foreign (1990).Title of Presentation: “The Transformative Power of Performance”\Prof. Dr. Christel Weiler, Professor at the Institute for Theatre Science of the Freie Universität Berlin since1996, with focus on research and teaching in: Theory, aesthetics and analysis of contemporary theatre, theoreticaland practical investigations for the work of the actor, in cooperation within the research platform "Cultures of thePerformative" (working group "Aesthetics of the Performative"). Recent publications on Contemporary Theatreinclude: „Theater als öffentlicher Raum. Die Berliner Ermittlung von Jochen Gerz und Esther Shalev-Gerz“, Berlin

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2005, „Etwas ist dran. Vorurteile zum Lehrstück“ in: Erika Fischer-Lichte, Clemens Risi, Jens Roselt, (Hg.) Kunst derAufführung – Aufführung der Kunst, Berlin 2004, „Glaubensfragen – postdramatisch“, in: Patrick Primavesi, Olaf A.Schmid, (Hg.) AufBrüche. Theaterarbeit zwischen Text und Situation, Berlin 2004. Since August 2008 she has alsobeen the programme director of the International Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities on"Interweaving Cultures in Performance". She produced works as a dramaturg, e.g. at the Theater am Turm inFrankfurt, at the Residenztheater in Munich, at the Staatsschauspiel in Stuttgart and at Theater Heidelberg.Title of Presentation: “Acting as/and transforming"\ Prof. Dr. Christopher Balme: President of the International Federation for Theatre Research IFTR/FIRT. Hecurrently holds the chair in theatre studies at the University of Munich and is Dean of the Faculty of History andArts. He was born and educated in New Zealand where he graduated from the University of Otago. He has lived andworked in Germany since 1985 with positions at the universities of Würzburg, Munich and Mainz. From 2004 to2006 he held the chair in theatre studies at the University of Amsterdam. He has published widely on Germantheatre, intercultural theatre and theatre and other media. Prof. Balme is past-president of the German Society forTheatre Research, and was Senior Editor of Theatre Research International from 2004-2006. He currently edits thejournal Forum Modernes Theater.Title of Presentation: The Affective Public Sphere: Romeo Castellucci’s On the Concept of the Face.Abstract: In this paper I want to look at the theatrical public sphere as a realm of extreme affective arousal. Thetheatre today is largely an autonomous sphere of aesthetic experience, which only on special occasions finds topicsof interest to the larger public sphere. The relationship between the public sphere and the theatre is, in myunderstanding of the term, a relationship between inside and outside, between the internal dynamics of exchangebetween stage and auditorium, performer and spectator, and the more difficult interconnections between thegenerally closed realm of performance and the wider dynamics of political and social debate. A theatricalperformance is something that normally takes place between consenting adults and is therefore outside andbeyond state control and moral censure. It is my contention that in the theatre these realms very seldom interact. Ishall look at recent example where this functioning contract was exploded. The production On the concept of theface, regarding the Son of God, created by Italian director Romeo Castellucci and his theatre Socìetas RaffaelloSanzio has led to violent protests in France and Italy coordinated by Catholic groups who have been joined onoccasions by right-wing and Islamist groups as well. I shall examine the production and the public protestssurrounding in an effort to understand how the theatrical public sphere functions in a mediatised society.\ Prof. Elaine Aston is Professor of Contemporary Performance at Lancaster University, UK. Her monographs

include Caryl Churchill (1997/ 2001); Feminist Theatre Practice (1999) and Feminist Views on the English Stage(2003). She is the co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Modern British Women Playwrights (2000, with JanelleReinelt); Feminist Futures: Theatre, Performance, Theory (2006, with Geraldine Harris), Staging InternationalFeminisms (2007, with Sue-Ellen Case), and The Cambridge Companion to Caryl Churchill (2009, with Elin Diamond).She currently serves as Senior Editor of Theatre Research International.Prof. Mark O’Thomas is Head of the Lincoln School of Performing Arts at the University of Lincoln UK, and hasworked at the Royal Court Theatre as a translator and dramaturg for the past eight years. He recently translated aplay for the Royal National Theatre’s Connections season 2012 and continues to work at the interface betweenplaywriting and translation, dramaturgy and ethics. He has published a range of articles around the issue ofadaptation for the stage and is currently working on a book about the Royal Court’s international work withProfessor Elaine Aston.Title of Presentation: Imagining with Others: the Transformative Process of the Royal Court Theatre’sInternational DepartmentAbstract: This joint paper draws on the work of the international wing of the UK’s Royal Court Theatre, explores thetheatre’s process of working across national borders, in order to think critically and theoretically about that processas potentially transformative in respect to possibilities of politicising. We begin with a brief contextualisation of theCourt’s international vision, its aspirations to find and form partnerships in different parts of the world, in turnidentifying a commitment to an idea of a theatre culture that eschews an ‘island mentality’ in favour of imaginingworlds with, rather than without, ‘others’. Thereafter, we move to elaborate on the creative processes thatunderpin this vision, attending in particular to the democratic aspirations (and difficulties) encountered through adevelopmental writing process that requires different kinds of experts or expertise. We consolidate theseobservations with reflections on a current project of the Court that attempts to bring together playwrights fromthree different nations in the making process. This is with a view to, on the one hand, underline the need forcreative encounters that allow for an exploration of what participants might have in common (rather than apresumption of what is held in common), and, on the other, to reflect on how the practicalities of this process alsomake visible the inequalities (whether social, cultural, economic, etc.) at large that need to be negotiated. Inconcluding, we draw together our reflections to argue for the potentially transformative power of this creativeprocess ‘in making’ connections across artistic and national boundaries; to lay claim to process as crucial in respecthow theatre, as practiced in this international framework, might be thought about as ‘acting’ politically.

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\ Joaquim Luís Coimbra has a PhD and a Habilitation in Psychology from the University of Porto, where he is anassociate professor. The areas object of his scientific activity are, mainly, although not exclusively, Social andInterpersonal Development Career as well as Psychological Development, Education, Training and Work, Psychologyand Arts; and his specialization domains are Psychological Development, Methods of Psychological Intervention,Career Guidance and Counselling, Education, Training, Employment and Work, Arts and Psychology. He has beencoordinating research projects in the areas mentioned above since 1995.Isabel Menezes has a PhD in Psychology and a Habilitation in Education Sciences from the University of Porto,where she is an Associate Professor in the areas of Educational Research Methodologies, Citizenship Education,Political Psychology and Educational and Community Intervention. She has been coordinating research projects onyouth and adult civic and political participation, with a special focus on the experience of groups in risks ofexclusion on the basis of gender, sexual orientation, ethnicity, disability, and migrant status.José Eduardo Silva has a Habilitation in Theatre from the Polytechnic Institute of Porto and is a PhD student inthe Faculty of Psychology and Science Education at the University of Porto. His research project - in the field of thePsychology of arts – focuses on the existing relations between theatre, psychological change and humandevelopment. He has been a professional actor since 1999, currently working in the TNSJ (National Theatre ofPorto) and Teatro Oficina (extraordinarily, in the context of the European Capital of Culture - Guimarães 2012).Title of joined Presentation: The changing theatre: A psychological approach to the experience of actingAbstract: The investigation aims to study the transformational processes in art, more precisely in the art oftheatre. A number of particular features have made us choose theatre, in its relation with change, as the main focusof our study; namely that to talk about theatre and not talk about change would certainly seem to be a moredifficult task than the opposite. In fact, in the theatrical practice everything is connected with change processes,whether we are talking about transforming emotions into aesthetical forms, written texts into multi-dimensionalplays (props, sets, costumes, lights, sounds, living characters), actors transforming themselves into characters, andthe characters themselves constantly transforming and changing, as well as the developing relationships amongsteach other.Depending on the lens through which we choose to look at this phenomenon, we can observe different scales ofrelated processes of change, but on the basis of each, we constantly find a dialectical process and a dynamicaldevelopmental logic of constant transformation. In our case, we have chosen to focus on the experience of acting,from the voice of its practitioners: the actors. We are envisaging the actors (and theatre makers) as “experts” in theart of change, and hope to find in the voice of their experience, knowledge and information that helps us tobroaden our understanding of the phenomenon of change, namely from a psychological perspective.For that purpose, the developed research design mixes both quantitative and qualitative methods: The qualitativecomponent consists of collecting implicit theories of change from actors and theatre directors, and is its maincontribution; the quantitative component consists in the development of an instrument to measure cognitivecomplexity for the theatrical context which we have called “Escala de Complexidade Sociocognitiva no Domínio doTeatro” (Sociocognitive Complexity Scale in the Domain of Theater) [ Silva, Ferreira, Coimbra & Menezes (2011)],adapted from the “Escala da Política” (Politics Scale) by Ferreira and Menezes (2001) and from the Portugueseversion of the IDCP (Parker, 1984) developed by Ferreira and Bastos (1995). Preliminary results of this study will bepresented and discussed as well as further developments and implications.\ Sandra J. Schumm received her PhD in Spanish from the University of Kansas and is currently Professor ofSpanish at Baker University in Baldwin City, Kansas, where she also gives classes in Yoga. She has published twobooks, in 1999, Reflection in Sequence: Novels by Spanish Women, 1944-1988 and Mother & Myth in SpanishNovels: Rewriting the Maternal Archetype, in 2011; she has also written numerous articles about contemporarySpanish narrative.Title of Presentation: Transformational Alchemy in Contra el viento and El tiempo entre costurasAbstract: Although current political discourse often focuses on the problematic aspects of immigration andmarginalizes third-world cultures, some recent Spanish fiction by women demonstrates that there is positivetransformation that results from the blending of Spanish society and foreign influences. Interaction betweenSpanish women protagonists and people from less prosperous nations changes the identity of the characters so thatthey are stronger and more productive individuals; the marginalized persons act as a catalyst in an elementalchange of self. For example, in Ángeles Caso’s novel, Contra el viento, the life and attitude of a young, black,immigrant woman, São, are contrasted with those of the protagonist/narrator and of her mother, who lived atraditional married life during Franco’s dictatorship.The narrator describes her mother as “un pobre pájaro desplumado” and herself as weak and sickly. Distinct fromthe disheartened aspect of the two Spanish women, the African immigrant mother São is “un rayo de sol” whoserves as a strengthening force for the narrator. Likewise, in María Dueña’s El tiempo entre costuras, although Siraseems doomed to repeat her mother’s fate as a single, nearly impoverished seamstress, her friendship with astrong, rebellious woman she meets while living in Morocco changes her life.

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In both cases, the protagonist undergoes a process of individuation that makes her more dynamic as a result of hercontact with the women from cultures often marginalized in Spain. In “The Idea of Redemption in Alchemy,” CarlJung writes of individuation as a psychic transformation that he compares to the process of alchemy. Jung explainsthat although the individual’s psychological condition usually begins in a state of darkness and ignorance, the unionof contradictory principles eventually leads to the alteration into gold, or into what Jung calls a “goldenunderstanding.” Likewise, in these Spanish novels, the medium for the positive transformation of the protagonist isa woman from another culture. Jung posits that the descriptions of the ancient alchemical process that changeslead into gold is not so much a chemical transformation as it is a mystical performance, a "mise en scène" thatillustrates the psychic process of individuation. In a similar fashion, these authors use their texts as performances toillustrate the positive transformation, the "gold," that is produced inter-psychically in the individual when twocultures are blended.\ Katherine Mezur is a dance theatre scholar most recently based at the International Research Center of theFreie University Berlin, "Interweaving Performance Cultures." She is investigating the work of Japanese womenbutoh and contemporary dance artists who create work in Europe, Asia, and the Americas, focusing on issues ofgender, migration, and new media. Her research focuses on transnational dance/theatre performance, genderstudies, and new media performance in the Asia Pacific region. She holds a PhD in Theatre and Dance, emphasis onAsian Performance, from the University of Hawai'i, Manoa. She is author of Beautiful Boys/Outlaw Bodies: DevisingFemale-likeness on the Kabuki Stage (Palgrave Macmillan). Her other manuscript is "Kawaii: Cute Girl Cultures inContemporary Japanese Performance and Media Art.” She has published in journals such as Women andPerformance, Discourses in Dance, and edited volumes including "Bad Girls of Japan." She has taught at theUniversity of Washington Seattle, Cal Arts, Georgetown University, UC Santa Barbara, and McGill University.Title of the Presentation: “Virtual Mourning: Pina in 3D, in Butoh, and "Out of Context”Abstract: In this essay I consider three "homage" works to Pina Bausch, which were made within the last fewyears since her death in 2009. It is the objective of this analysis to use mediation as a tool for reading across thesethree different works and consider their transformation across bodies and choreographies. This is also about theprocess of transformation in death: from “living” to “gone”. All three consider how gesture and media, from digitalfilm, projected photographs, and dance theatre alter and transform kinaesthetic and image memory. I propose toread these works with mediated analysis that deals with practices of homage, memorial, and death rites in danceand mediated environments. "Pina" is the 3-D film created, imagined, and directed by Wim Wenders, who spentyears filming the company and their processes. "Homage to Pina" is a butoh-based performance work created andperformed by Endo Tadashi, a 30 year Japanese resident of Germany. Endo trained in German Theater and TanzTheater and then butoh with Ohno Kazuo in Japan and Europe. Alain Patel's "Out of Context -- for Pina" was adance theatre "virtual-homage" to Pina Bausch. In all three cases, there is a calling out and mourning for herthrough mediated theatrical and performative strategies of transformation. I will draw on the material, machinic,and virtual properties of "animation" as an act of transformation, and the power of kinaesthetic affect to shape andtransform our memories of the living embodied artist. How do memories transform when forced into mediatedconditions, shifting from visual to corporeal to spectral touch? How does the fragmented and animated imagetransform our deep kinaesthetic memory?\ Amy Kaminsky is Professor of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Minnesota. Theauthor of numerous scholarly articles, she holds a Ph.D. in Spanish and Latin American literature from thePennsylvania State University. Her books include Water Lilies/Flores del agua, a bilingual anthology of pre-twentieth century Spanish women writers (1995), Reading the Body Politic, a feminist analysis of contemporaryLatin American women writers (1992), After Exile, a study of exile and its aftermath in the context of Latin Americandictatorships (1999), and Argentina: Stories for a Nation, a study of Argentina in the global imaginary (2008).Title of Presentation: Diana Raznovich and the Performance of PerformanceAbstract: Argentine playwright Diana Raznovich’s Casa matriz and De atrás para adelante are each in their ownway studies in the performance of gender. In Casa matriz, a young woman contracts with a company that providesmothers-for-rent. In a comment on the constructed nature of gender roles, the rental mother performs a series ofcaricatures of mother types, even as these roles are laid bare as the projection of the child’s desire. De atrás paraadelante is a family story that unmasks patriarchal demands as they are undermined by counter hegemonicperformance of sexuality and gender. Together these plays use humor to call into question the naturalization ofgendered and sexualized power relations. The transformative potential of performance itself is a central theme inthese plays.\ MOHAMMED ALBAKRY (Translator) A native of Egypt, Dr. Mohammed Albakry is Associate Professor ofApplied Linguistics at Middle Tennessee State University. Currently he is on a Fulbright fellowship to Morocco toresearch language policy in North Africa. His research and teaching interests are in the areas of corpus linguistics,discourse analysis, Anglophone Arab literature, the stylistics of literary translation, and language and identity inAfrica and the Middle East. He has published peer-reviewed articles in English World-Wide, The Journal of Language& Literature, Middle Eastern Literatures, The International Journal of Arabic-English Studies, and others. He

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received his B.A. and M.A. Certificate from Alexandria University, Egypt, his M.A. from the University ofMassachusetts, and his Ph.D. from Northern Arizona University.\ Rebekah Maggor: A playwright, translator, director, and actress, Rebekah Maggor received her MFA throughthe American Repertory Theater Institute at Harvard University, her BA from Columbia University, and studiedArabic at Alexandria University in Egypt. She teaches dramatic literature and playwriting at Vanderbilt University.Her work has had readings and productions at the American Repertory Theater, the New York Theater Workshop,the Old Vic in London, and the Huntington Theatre Company. She has received commissions and fellowships fromthe Huntington Playwriting Fellows, the Catalyst Collaborative @ M.I.T, the Middle Eastern Theater Project, and theRadcliffe Institute for Advanced Study...Title of Presentation: “From Insulation to Solidarity: Dramatizing Collective Awakening in Ibrahim El-Husseini’sComedy of Sorrows.Abstract: First performed in July 2011 at Cairo’s Al-Ghad Theatre, Ibrahim El-Husseini’s Comedy of Sorrows wasone of the first theatrical responses to the Egyptian Revolution of 2011. The play introduces a diverse handful ofcharacters—women and men, rich and poor, city dwellers and peasants—who band together in an unnamed Squareto overthrow an unnamed regime. This paper will investigate how the playwright dramatizes collective awakeningthrough representative characters, the creation of an egalitarian public space, the contrast between formal andcolloquial Arabic, and the creation of an ensemble-based dramatic structure that replaces the individual hero withthe unified people ( ). The action of the play focuses on the movement of the characters from insulation tosolidarity. At the start of the play each character is submerged in the minutiae of his or her daily life. Slowly orsuddenly each gains an awareness of the escalating protests and finds his or her way to the Square. By comingtogether within the democratic space of the Square, these individual characters find the courage, strength andimagination to demand sweeping change. El-Husseini weaves the narrative techniques of realism and symbolism,melodrama and satire, to present a collective and unsentimental account of a nation’s awakening. Through aunique combination of vivid poetry and colloquial dialogue, Comedy of Sorrows celebrates the coming together of apeople, while at the same time anticipating the tumult of a nation transitioning into democracy.\ Monica Ruocco: Associate Professor (Professore Associato), Department of Scienze Filologiche e Linguistiche(Philological and Linguistic Sciences), Facoltà di Lettere e Filosofia, Università degli Studi di Palermo (Italy). Memberof the Scientific Advisory Board in the PhD “Filologia e Cultura Greco-Latina e Storia del Mediterraneo Antico - XXVciclo” (Philology, Greek-Latin Culture and History of Ancient Mediterranean – XXV course). Associate Researcher(Chercheur associé) in the EA 1734 Research Group (Etudes Arabes et Orient Contemporain), Université Paris3 – LaSorbonne Nouvelle. She is a member of the Executive Committee (Bureau) of EURAMAL (European Association forthe study of Modern Arabic Literature), a member of the scientific advisory board of the journal “La rivista diArablit”, and translator from Arabic to Italian.Title of Presentation: La mise en scène en tant qu’événement historique: La Révolution Tunisienne Anticipée parle Théâtres de Jalila Bakkar et Fadhel JaïbiAbstract: Yahia Yaïch/Amnesia, la dernière oeuvre du duo Jaïbi-Bakkar, figures incontournables du théâtre arabecontemporain, peut aujourd’hui être considéré comme une pièce prémonitoire. Écrite en 2009 et montée auprintemps 2010 au Mondial de Tunis, une salle qui se trouve dans le centre de Tunis, là où quelques mois plus tardles manifestations ont été les plus importantes, elle raconte la chute d’un homme politique pris au piège de sonpropre système tyrannique, et met en scène la libération de la parole de la société civile. La pièce interroge lecomportement social, individuel et collectif face au pouvoir d’une dictature policière, à travers le personnage deYahia Yaïch, « homme fort » proche du pouvoir, soudainement tombé en disgrâce et mis en résidence surveillée.Dans une récente interview Jalila Bakkar a affirmé: «Fadhel voulait en faire le procès de [l’ancien président] Ben Ali,et je voulais essayer de le faire à toute la population pour leur amnésie et l’apathie. Au final, nous en a fait unmélange des deux, mais nous avons eu beaucoup de difficulté à trouver les bons mots pour ce que nous voulionsdire. Il nous a fallu beaucoup de temps pour ignorer l'autocensure, malgré avoir lutté contre elle du début».Amnesia représente la troisième part d’une trilogie: après avoir traité la question du pouvoir à travers Junun/Folie(2004), l’histoire de 50 ans de pouvoir à travers Khamsun/Corps Otages (2006), Jalila Bakkar et Fadhel Jaïbi traitentà travers Yahia Yaïch la mémoire collective vis-à-vis du pouvoir.\ Marjorie Kanter (Cincinnati, Ohio 1943) writes, installs her words in public spaces, facilitates word interventionsand performances, researches issues relating to the pragmatics of communication, bilingualism and the author PaulBowles, and gives creativity writing workshops. Her short literary pieces and poems are sparked from her journalentries and often focus on issues of in/communication within and across cultures.Title of Presentation: Transformations: A project - A Facebook EventAbstract: Inspired by the theme of this conference, several months ago I began a project on Facebook to gatherand collect information and data, questions and answers, etc to explore the theme of Transformations acrossdisciplines with the idea of looking for ideas and material, theory and experience, that can be used to provokediscussion in terms of their connections, overlaps, and differences and to work toward applying this data andactivity to the field of Performance in its transformations. For this project, I'm interested in the concept of

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transformations and this concept cross all disciplines. I am in the hunter-gatherer stage right now: discovering,collecting and posting categories and data that interests me. I am also looking for participation from others incomments and postings. Overview summary to date: Some of the topics covered so far: climate change;psychology: transpersonal with Ken Wilber and child development with Piaget; some of my creative texts; theposing of questions; issues related to politics; Brainwashing; film segments with character transformations such asMichael Jackson, Zelig, Soy Cuba, Pinocchio; cartoons, the bad witch in the Wizard of Oz; linguistics - NoamChomsky and Transformational Grammar; character switches in an image such as clark kent to superman; charactertransformations in literature - Paul Bowles, A Distant Episode; human development over the ages: Shakespeare,The 7 Ages of Man; Magic Tricks; Film of Artist painting - Picasso; Theatre - Rhinoceros; Mathematics; Earthtransformation, etc.\ Rita S. Nezami, born in Kolkata, Rita Nezami was educated in London, Moscow, Barcelona and Paris. She hasworked in academia, government, diplomacy, and international business on four continents. Speaking andtranslating from four languages, she has taught languages and literature for 20 years. Nezami earned herundergraduate and graduate degrees in Russian language and literature from Moscow State University. She workedas a translation officer at the Bangladesh Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She also taught courses in Russian languageand literature at the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh and taught French and ESL at the American InternationalSchool in Dhaka. For 15 years, Nezami lived, taught, and wrote in Paris, translating from French, Russian, andBengali into English. Nezami studied Spanish for a year in Barcelona and lived for three years in Tangier, Morocco,where she taught English. Nezami’s doctorate is in studies in literature and translation. Her dissertation is on TaharBen Jelloun, a major North African Francophone writer, whose novel L’écrivain public she has translated. In 2005,the American Literary Translators Association (ALTA) awarded Nezami a fellowship for her translation of the firstchapter of Ben Jelloun’s novel, which she presented in a public reading at ALTA’s annual conference in Montreal.Nezami was also a featured reader at ALTA’s 2004, 2006, and 2007 conferences. She presented a paper on thechallenges of translating Ben Jelloun’s descriptions of Tangier at the annual Performing/Picturing TangierConference in 2007, and on Masculinity in Ben Jelloun’s Works at the NeMLA Conference in 2009. Currently Nezamiis teaching Writing and Rhetoric at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.Title of Presentation: Arab Spring: Arab WritersAbstract: Focusing on the current revolution and public protests against corrupt regimes, injustice and suffering ofthe people as portrayed in Arab literature, I want to show that the inevitable revolutions were anticipated byrespected Arab writers in novels ranging from Yacoubain Building by Alaa Al Aswany to Laila Lalami's Secret Son,and several works by Tahar Ben Jelloun. The Tunisian's public self-immolation, the Tahrir square protest, thedramatic stand of Libyan rebels against the ruthless Quaddafi regime, and the Syrians and Yeminis so fed up withtheir countries' brutal regimes that they, even today, risk their lives to effect change -- all these actions fall withinthe notion of spectacle as understood by Baudrillard, Debord, and Benjamin. The revolts are political theatre in thestreets, spectacles intended not only for their domestic constituencies, but for global audiences the actors hope toenlist in their struggles. I will argue that Arab writers anticipated these developments well in advance of the firstcracks showing up first in Tunis, Cairo, and elsewhere. Literary works by Arab writers clearly show their support andcompassion toward the suffering protagonists who eventually take action: suicide, illegal immigration andrevolution. I would also argue that Tahar Ben Jelloun's creative nonfiction titled Par le feu that I am translating canvery well be turned into a play and performed on stage to offer the world audience a visual experience of wherethe Arab Spring started and also argue that Mohamed Bouazizi's character was portrayed in Arab, francophone andanglophone literatures years before the young Tunisian sets himself on fire.\ Delgado Guitart (born in Tangier, 1947) is a consultant in creativity and innovation for the publishing industry,artist and teacher-trainer in creativity, innovation and the concept in design. In the last years his clients have andinclude: Elsevier, Harcourt, McGraw Hill, Santillana, Thompson, Publidisa, Cambridge University Press, KaplanUniversity and BestDoctors. He is co-founder of several portal projects dedicated to the transmission of content.Title of Presentation: The ceremony of Transformation: Performance and the New MediaAbstract: Performance is a form of expression, communication and creation of emotional environments for a groupof spectators. In any performance we have two kinds of intervention: one guided by the conscious mind (author,director, actors and spectators); the other by the collective unconscious mind which blooms in different waysduring this process. The fast evolving new technologies allow for wide access to a huge amount of data and a newavenue for establishing and maintaining social relations. This adds and provokes new characteristics to the mise enscène such as the possibilities of influencing the knowledge and the relation between spectator, creators and actorsand also the possibilities of the creation of global performances with different kinds of interventions and results.The new creator will be involved in the use of the new media to enhance communication with all the possibilitiesthat the use of Social Networks and New technologies offer. In this presentation I will explore the possibility of thetransformation of a traditional concept of performance and the development of a new paradigm.\ Michael Roes, born 7 August 1960, is a novelist, poet, anthropologist and filmmaker with a focus on exchangeswith foreign cultures. He studied Philosophy, Anthropology and Psychology at the Freie Universität Berlin and holds

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a diploma in Psychology (1985) and a PhD in Philosophy (1991). He completed his PhD thesis, a study on thesacrifice of sons (Jizchak. Versuch über das Sohnesopfer, 1991), in Berlin and has conducted anthropological fieldresearch in Israel and the Palestinian territories (1987, 1991), Yemen (1993–1994), and the United States (NativeAmericans in New York State 1996-1997). He was a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Budapest (1994–1995) and has held a guest professorship at the Central European University, Budapest (2004; 2005/2006). He hasdrawn inspiration from a wide and diverse range of cultures in his work, including Native American culture,featured in the novel Der Coup der Berdache; contemporary China in Die Fünf Farben Schwarz; and the Islamicworld in Leeres Viertel, Weg nach Timimoun, Nah Inverness, and Geschichte der Freundschaft.Title of Presentation: Someone is Sleeping in my Pain: Reflections about a Yemeni adaptation of MacbethAbstract: Shakespeare’s drama accompanied me for several years. I was astonished not just at the strong politicaland psychological analysis of power (and its ways of absuse), I also found it one of the finest pieces about genderroles and gender construction, long time before the term gender studies was invented. When I came to Yemen firstI was struck by the rough, archaic landscape and the traditional way of life. My immediate thought was: ScottishMiddle Ages are not different from contamporary Yemen: The belief in witches, the holy law of hospitality, thequestion of honour and the power of the tribes and clans... But of course it was a very ethnocentric impressionwhich has had to be proofed. The realization of this film has been from the first idea an experiment. It was not clearhow much the Yemenis would participate in this experiment. All of us Westerners were aware that it could becomea pure documentary about the failing of realizing a Yemeni version of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. To make sure that allour efforts would not be in vain we started as a documentary. There was an almost smooth transition from thedocumentary to the directed scenes. Lady Macbeth, for example, is the directing force in the play as herimpersonator, the director of the film, is in the documentary part.The result is something very new and(post)modern, not just a kind of docu-fiction, but a new hybrid genre, where borders are blurred. Our film describeson many levels a way or development from a complete strangeness of conceptions and intentions to a certain kindof common understanding and goal. But neither the play nor the film has an happy end. Nevertheless, our commonwork is far from a failure. It shows how much collaboration and understanding is possible without ignoring essentialdifferences.

Abstracts: Conference II

Hassan Mni i: Senior Professor of Theatre Studies at the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences, Mohamed BenAbdellah University, Fez. He is a founding member of the International Centre for Performance Studies in Morocco;and he is also the most prolific Arab Critic. He has numerous publications in the field of Arab theatre andPerforming Arts.Title of the paper: “The Transformations of Arab Scenic Dramaturgy (A Reading in some Models)”Abstract: It is certain that Arab theatre has gone far at the level of production of performances. For, although thelatter is still subject to a classic theatrical tradition and does not invest new intellectual and artistic mediations thatliberate the recipient from the effects of illusion, entitling her/him to ask major questions that concern spectaclesand their components, the modern Arabic Dramaturgy has produced important models which reflect the desire ofthe directors to develop their kind of dramaturgy on the basis of either individual or collective efforts. Thesemodels have really led to a shift in performance, and to the emergence of a type of performance practice in whichaesthetic and intellectual dimensions are at play. Through some Arab and Maghrebine models (based on viewing),this presentation tries to monitor this kind of transition, with an attempt to locate it within the general context oftransition that the Arab Dramaturgy has gone through.\ Rustom Bharucha is an independent writer, director, dramaturg and cultural critic based in Kolkata,India. Combining intercultural theory and practice with social concerns, he is the author of several books oncultural exchange, globalization, secularism, oral history, and the question of faith. At an activist level, he hasconducted workshops on land and memory, the politics of touch, and migration in India, the Philippines, SouthAfrica and Brazil. A former advisor to the Prince Claus Fund for Culture and Development in the Netherlands, hehas worked as a consultant for Ford Foundation and the Arts Council in Dublin on policies relating to culturaldiversity and artistic practice. More recently, he has worked as Project Director of Arna-Jharna: the Desert Museumof Rajasthan on traditional knowledge and as Festival Director of the Inter-Asian Ramayana Festival in Adishakti,Pondicherry. Among his books: Theatre and the World: Performance and the Politics of Culture. London: Routledge,1993; Another Asia: Rabindranath Tagore and Okakura Tenshin'. Oxford University Press, 2009; The Politics ofCultural Practice: Thinking through Theatre in an Age of Globalization. Wesleyan University Press, 2000.Title of Presentation: Wrap Up Keynote Session\ Richard Gough is Senior Research Fellow and Artistic Director of the Centre for Performance Research,Department of Theatre, Film and Television Studies, Aberystwyth University, Aberystwyth, Wales. He has dedicatedthe last 28 years to developing and exploring interdisciplinary, experimental performance work. As Artistic Directorof CPR and its predecessor Cardiff Laboratory Theatre, Gough has curated and organized numerous international

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theatre projects including conferences, summer schools and workshop festivals, and he has produced nationwidetours of experimental theatre and traditional dance/theatre ensembles from around the world. He has directedover seventy productions, many of which have toured Europe, and he has lectured and led workshops throughoutEurope and in China, Japan, Colombia and Brazil. He edited The Secret Art of the Performer (Routledge, 1990), is thegeneral editor of the Routledge, Taylor and Francis quarterly publication Performance Research (Journal ofPerforming Arts) and publisher and series editor of Black Mountain Press.Title of the paper: “Transformation & Fire”\ Pierre Katuszewski: est Docteur en Études Théâtrales (Paris III) et enseignant à l’Université Bordeaux 3 – Michel deMontaigne. Il publie « Ceci n’est pas un fantôme. Essai sur les personnages de fantômes dans les théâtres antiqueet contemporain. Il est membre du Groupe de Recherche en Ethnopoétique (GREP), dirigé par Florence Dupont,Maria Manca et Bernard Lortat-Jacob. Ses recherches actuelles portent sur l’épistémologie du théâtrecontemporain et le théâtre yiddish (dans une perspective à la fois historique et anthropologique). Il est rédacteuren chef de la revue Horizons/Théâtre (Presses Universitaires de Bordeaux). Formé à l’École de théâtre TaniaBalachova-Véra Greg, il exerce depuis de nombreuses années le métier d’acteur. Il est également metteur en scènede plusieurs pièces et adaptations théâtrales, et notamment de la Correspondance de Nelly Sachs et Paul Celan.Title: Le Théâtre au Regard de la Performance.Abstract: Cette communication entend interroger les transformations que la performance et les théories de laperformance ont engendrés sur l’analyse des spectacles et des textes de théâtre. Depuis les travaux de DenisGuénoun sur le jeu (Le Théâtre est-il nécessaire ?), l’approche unilatéralement littéraire et sémantique du théâtre(spectacles et textes) a été remise en cause par différents chercheurs (Florence Dupont, Georges Forestier, PierreKatuszewski etc) et groupes de recherche (Groupe de Recherche en Ethnopoétique par exemple), ces derniersentendent ainsi redonner sa spécificité au théâtre. En prenant quelques exemples dans le répertoire théâtralcontemporain (Didier-Georges Gabily, Bernard-Marie Koltès etc) et dans le spectacle contemporain (Pippo Delbono,Romeo Castellucci, François Verret etc), nous montrerons comment les performances et ce qui les fonde (la co-présence, l’immédiateté, le rapport au corps, à la matière, bref, une matérialité physique transmettant del’émotion) constituent un vivier théorique permettant d’analyser le théâtre autrement, en sortant du paradigmearistotélicien.Si la performance a radicalement transformé la pratique théâtrale au sein même des théâtres, les metteurs enscène cités en étant des exemples signifiants, elle a également permis un recentrage de l’approche analytique duthéâtre et transforme aujourd’hui profondément les outils théoriques et méthodologiques d’analyse. Les notionsde métathéâtralité, de co-énonciation, de cérémonie, d’insignifiance ou encore d’intermédialité sont pertinentespour penser le théâtre différemment et le sortir du paradigme de la représentation.Nous remarquerons également que ces notions s’appliquent parfaitement à des formes de théâtre éloignées dansle temps ou dans l’espace (théâtre romain, théâtre nô, etc). En combinant un regard analytique sur ces formesthéâtrales anciennes et sur la performance de notre siècle, il est possible d’élaborer une méthodologie inédited’approche théorique du théâtre contemporain dont nous présenterons quelques résultats ici.\ Omar Fertat est docteur en littérature française, francophones et comparées. Il est chargé de cours audépartement des Études orientales et extrême orientales à l'Université Michel de Montaigne-Bordeaux 3 où ilenseigne le théâtre arabe. Il est également directeur de la revue Horizons/théâtre et est chercheur associé aucentre de Recherches CELFA (Centre d'Études Linguistiques et Littéraires Francophones et Africaines) ainsi qu'àl'équipe TELEM (Textes, littératures: écritures et modèles). Ses recherches portent sur le théâtre arabe en général etsur la traduction et l'adaptation et le théâtre francophone plus particulièrement. Il publia plusieurs articles dont« Le théâtre marocain de la traduction à l’écriture », in L’entredire francophone, Pessac, Presses universitaires deBordeaux, 2004, « Théâtre, monde associatif et francophonie au Maroc », in Les associations dans la francophonie,Maison des Sciences de l’Homme Aquitaine, Pessac, 2006. Son livre Le théâtre marocain à l'épreuve du texteétranger : traduction, adaptation, nouvelle dramaturgie, paraîtra en 2012 aux Presses universitaires de Bordeaux.Title : Le Théâtre Marocain d’Expression Française: Une Histoire à Ecrire.Abstract: Chaque fois qu’on évoque la littérature marocaine d’expression française, ce sont toujours les mêmesnoms, Driss Charaïbi, Tahar Ben Jelloun, Mohamed Khaïr Din, Abdelkebir Khatibi, Ahmed Taï, Fouad Larou…, quisont systématiquement convoqués pour illustrer cette forme (genre) littéraire. Le point commun entre toutes cesfigures : elles sont soit des romanciers soit des poètes ou les deux à la fois. A l’exception de Abdellatif Laâbi, quidoit sa renommée plus à son talent de poète et de fondateur de la revue Souffle qu’à son talent d’auteurdramatique, il est très rare, de voir le nom d’un dramaturge figurer dans la liste des acteurs de cette littérature. Etpourtant le théâtre marocain d’expression française a toujours existé et dispose à l’instar des autres genreslittéraires de ses figures de proue tels Tayeb Saddiki, Nabyl Lahlou ou Driss Ksikes et surtout d’une histoiresingulière. Car, au Maroc, le quatrième art, a longtemps servi comme moyen de lutte contre l’occupant français. Unart qui se pratiquait en arabe, langue du Coran, ferment identitaire et symbole de l’unité de la ouma musulmane.C’est pour cette raison qu’il fallait attendre les années 70 pour voir quelques dramaturges marocains écrire enlangue française.

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Quelle est donc l’histoire de cette expression francophone singulière? Comment, dans un environnement hostile àtoute création en langue étrangère, le théâtre marocain d’expression a-t-il émergé? Et enfin qui sont les acteurs etles promoteurs de cet art importé de l’Occident?\ Hanaa Abdel-Fattah: Distinguished Egyptian artist and Professor with a focus on theatre (acting and directing) andtheatrical criticism. He is a Professor at the Academy of Arts in Cairo.Title of the paper: Performative Elements in the Experience of the Theatre of ‘Donshway’ Village Peasants in 1969,and the Performativity of Tahrir Square Theatre with January 25, 2011 Revolution.Abstract: This study brings together two different theatrical experiences that belong to two different eras. The firstone goes to “The Group of Donshway Peasants” which was produced by the end of the seventies (1969). The secondone is “Tahrir Square Theatre, 2011.” It mainly deals with the new trend in theatre that is characterised byspontaneity in expression, artistic improvisation, and the transformations through which the theatricalperformance suddenly undergoes during the course of performing a play. Through citing and analysing suchexamples and the new items that dominate new emerging modes of dramaturgy, this paper also seeks to drawattention to the major shift that happened at the level of pre-fabrication of the text, which is subdued and nullifiedby unexpected ‘un-pre-composed,’ ‘random’ and ‘free’ textualities that open a new theatrical space, feeding ondaily lived realities rather than on pre-planned and pre-packed subjects and stories.\ Mohamed Samir Al-Khatib: is an Egyptian holder of a doctorate in philosophy of contemporary art, and an MA incritical discourse, and a diploma from the Higher Institute of Art Criticism. He works as a theatre critic and lecturerat Academy of Arts in Cairo, and other Departments of Theatre in different Egyptian Universities.Title of the paper: Tahrir Square’s Spectacle: Place, Body, Power.Abstract: This study aims to deal with the January 25th revolution in Egypt as a struggle on the production of signs inEgyptian culture. We can read what happened on the space of Tahrir Square - which embraced the Egyptianrevolution - as a creative text that consists of a set of signs and is restructured by human practices that constantlyreorganize marks of place and culture. This format requires the reading of signs of power and the Egyptianrevolution through the formation of ‘BODY’ and its relationship to the place and the methods of its transformationto a kind of socio-cultural mobility. Such consideration aims to reveal the creative dimensions of a ‘life-performance’ that is close to and not much different from ‘theatrical’ performance.\ Said Karimi: is a Moroccan Professor at the Multidisciplinary faculty in Errachidia. His field of speciality is Arts andModern Literature. He obtained a PhD degree in modern Arabic literature by working on: "The Theatre of Crueltyand its Implications on Experimental in Morocco and the West." He has many other interests and publications.Title of the paper: “Performing Protest in Arab Revolutions between the Comic and the Tragic”Abstract: One of the properties of theatricality is that it touches upon all human behaviour and attitudes. RecentArabic theatricality of political protests turned into performances that various media transferred in varying detailsand forms, ranging between the comic and the tragic. Certainly, the anthropological cultural differences betweenthe revolutionary Arab peoples reflected on different types of spectacularity that arises out of the event. Hence thequestion we may ask is: To what extent can we look at the Arab revolts and protests as performances? What arethe principles and elements of these performances/revolutions? How do they move away from the comicdimension to the tragic one, and in some cases becomes a combination of both as tragicomedy?\ Amer Kabil: Distinguished Egyptian Theatre director and actor.Title of the paper: “Shifts in Theatrical Performances of Tahrir Square”Abstract: The theatrical movement is usually affected by the socio-political changes that happen in societies.Therefore, the concept of performance changes, too, according to existing cultures, customs, and traditions thatcharacterise a certain society at a certain point in history. As some societies undergo change at the socio-politicallevel, theatrical culture goes with it. Hence, since our Arab societies have lately undergone a wave of change, theidea here is to trace and spot these Performative Transformations by studying artistic phenomena that TahrirSquare explored during the Egyptian revolution. In this paper, real models of transformations and changes of suchartistic experiences will be mentioned in detail, as well as some models of interaction between performances andthe audience.\ Azedin Bounit: Professor and researcher at Ibnou Zohr University in Agadir. He is also the Regional Director of theMinistry of Culture, Agadir region. Bounit is an active researcher with an important number of publications in manybooks, journals and magazines.Title of the paper: ‘Nayda’ Movement in Contemporary Moroccan Culture: A Transitional Performance.Abstract: This paper discusses the theme of ‘transformation of performance’ in two axes: (a) in the light of themajor variables taking place in the area (Arab region) to which we culturally and historically belong, I will mark thetransformations that performance witnessed from the public’s standpoint. I will discuss the depth of the shift in theconcept of the public by asking such questions as: to what extent can we talk about the equivalence of the functionof the public as founder and justifier of theatrical performance with the technical, theoretical, and artisticrequirements that the development of theatricality as a phenomenon necessitates? (b) The first axis paves the waytoward what I call the “flood of performance” (débordement de spectacle) outside the field of traditional theatre in

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contemporary Arab culture. Therefore, I suggest, in particular, the interaction with the phenomenon of “Nayda”movement, which the youth culture in Morocco knew during this past decade. I propose to address thisphenomenon as the heir to the amateur theatre movement that formed during the seventies and eighties of the20th century, young people’s protest platform, and pulpit politics.\ Muhammed Sef (Performer & Scholar, Iraq/France)Iraqi playwright, author, director and actor who has lived in Paris since 1994. He is a graduate of the Institute ofFine Arts in Baghdad and a Graduate of the School of Jacques Le Coq in France. He obtained an MA from theSorbonne and a PhD in Theatre Sociology from the same university. He was a Professor of acting in Voltaire’s FrenchSchool for five years and taught Theatrical Sociology at the University of April 9th in Tunisia for two years. He haspublished many plays and books on theatre, is also a theatre critic and researcher, and is the director of thetheatrical group “The Two Banks”.Title of Presentation: “Theatre/ Performance as a means of Struggle”Abstract: We cannot speak about the phenomenon of protest in theater without referring to political theatre,which is an art of the masses with a public function. In spite of my reservations on the label “Arab Spring”, I preferto call what is happening in the Arab World an uprising of the Arab peoples and their revolution on corrupt rulersand regimes. As a lesson deduced from past theatrical historical experiences, it seems that political theatre is notonly in need of new underlying ideologies, but also to a Transformation at the level of its essence as a performativeart and in the way it represents reality. The question this paper tries to answer is: how can directors andcontemporary authors re-shape the domain of politics? Is it possible to consider their theater as some kind ofemerging forms of civil society that constructs new political approaches? What would it be like the form of Arabtheater after the collapse of major ideologies (USA and EU)? In other words, could we as Arabs conceive of somekind of theatricality that is purely our own in both form and content and which the current situation might havegiven birth to?\ Hassan Youssfi: Born April 24, 1964 in Errachidia, Morocco. He holds a PhD and is a Senior Professor of HigherEducation at the High School of Teachers in Meknes, and was previously the head of the Arabic LanguageDepartment. He is formerly the head of the Assembly of Young Researchers in Arabic Language and Literature atFaculty of Humanities in Meknes, and an ex-member of the National Commission for the Support of Theatre inMoroccan Ministry of Culture. He is a scholar and theatre critic, and a member of the Moroccan Union of Writers,and Chair of the research group on the "pedagogy of theatre». He is also the former President of the regionalbranch of the National Union of Theatre Professionals in Meknes.Title of the paper: “Performance and Ridicule at the Time of the Arab Spring”Abstract: As a moment of major change in the history of some Arab countries, ‘Arab Spring’ has generated a varietyof attractive manifestations at the top of which comes satirical performances that have taken from the picturesquediscourse a tool for mainstreaming such kind of performance and gaining it more ground, especially because theinternet provided masses, through its open sites, with the ability to publish whatever recorded performance online.That kind of performance, made of toppled down Arab rulers [Ben Ali the fugitive, Mubarak the resigned, andGaddafi the killed] its major discussed theme by making of their speeches, attitudes, and physical as well asbehavioural appearances a basic ground for the formulation of an ironic discourse using words and images. Ironicperformance takes various forms, including satirical parody of the ruler’s speech, spelling him, or making fun of hisappearance. It is by standing on the models of sarcastic videos that are published on YouTube in the form ofremixes, movies, cartoons or reality-movies that are disposed of cynically, that we deal with creative performancesthat reflect what had been made possible by the space of freedom and revolution made available during the time ofthe Arab Spring, which in fact allowed an explosion at the level of satirising Arab rulers, and boosted the potentialemployment of this artistic, aggressive, and satirical tool and the equipments of transformation, conversion,distortion and change. The latter discourse allowed formulas in which rational and moral cynicism mix in order tosettle accounts with models of rule that the Arab Societies had been a victim of for many years and the Arab Springcame as a reaction to announce the end of.\ Antonio Prieto-Stambaugh: Professor at the Veracruzana University's Faculty of Theatre, Antonio Prieto's researchis focused on issues of performance, contemporary Mexican theatre, gender and queer studies. He has previouslybeen visiting lecturer at Stanford Univesity and director of the Center of Performing Arts Research of Yucatán(CINEY). He holds an MA in Performance Studies from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, and a Ph.D. inLatin American Studies from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of Mexico’s National University (UNAM). He ismember of Mexico’s National System of Researchers (SNI) and of the Hemispheric Institute of Performance andPolitics’s Executive Board. His most recent book is Jerzy Grotowski: miradas desde Latinoamérica (Grotowski asSeen from Latin America), an anthology he edited with Domingo Adame (Veracruzana University, 2011).Domingo Adame: Professor at the Veracruzana University's Faculty of Theatre, Domingo Adame holds a Ph.D. inModern Literature (with major in Theatre) from the Iberoamericana University. He has been director of the RodolfoUsigli National Centre for Theatre Research (CITRU) and also President and co-founder of the Mexican Associationof Theatre Research. He is author of several books and essays on theatrology and member of the National System

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of Researchers (SNI) as well as the International Centre for Transdisciplinary Research and Study (CIRET-Paris). Hismost recent book is Jerzy Grotowski: miradas desde Latinoamérica, an anthology he edited with Antonio Prieto(Veracruzana University, 2011).Title of Paper: “Performance, Represent-action and Trans-theatricality: In Search of Paths towards theReenchantment of the World”Abstract: Theatricality has been defined as that which pertains specifically to theatre, for centuries considered anart form through which human beings can see themselves and reality. However, during the last few decades theconcept of theatricality has demonstrated its limitations vis-à-vis the increasingly complex phenomena of humanexpressive actions, be they artistic or/and social. We believe the concepts of performance, trans-theatricality andrepresent-action enable alternative analytical perspectives better suited for this task. Performance, as an art formand theoretical paradigm, subverts the conventional understanding of representation. We propose the notion ofrepresent-action to speak of how the subject psycho-physically embodies a concept to address a witness from his orher own cultural and political subjectivity. As an example, we'll discuss an event of Social Gaming which we recentlyco-facilitated. The game, called BodyBook, involved simultaneously linking via Internet three groups of playersstationed in Mexico, India and the U.S.A., all of which were challenged to guess proverbs from each other's culturesusing images of their bodies in expressive action. On the other hand, we propose the trans-theatricality, as aprocess by which a subject simultaneously traverses different levels of reality, aspiring to establish contact with the"sacred". We'll exemplify this practice discussing an experience that took place in the indigenous Totonac region ofMexico. Within these events we can identify, paraphrasing Erika Fischer Lichte, a transformative power that maylead participants towards a reenchantment of the world.\ Sabri Ramadan Salem Abouchaâalah: Born in 1968 in the city of Mesrata, Libya. He is a member of the Associationof Libyan Artists, the Association of Libyan Journalists, and also a member of the Association of Writers and Authorsof Libya. He is actor, director, radio and television producer; he is also a scholar and theatre critic. He is director of atheatrical group of actors and member of the National Theatre Company of Libya. He began his career in 1976 atthe School of Theatre, and has ever since been active in different theatre projects with many groups in Libya. Hewill soon publish a book-length biography of one of the founders of the Libyan theatre.Title of the paper: “The Possibility of Transformation within and through Theatrical Performance in Avant-gardeTheatre Experiments (Models of Transitions)”Abstract: We know that avant-garde theatre writers and directors always have a dream: to break down all naturaland realist forms that have become obsolete formulas and replace them with new ones by producing new types ofperformances consistent with the public and able to be shared with it [the public]. Therefore, we can ask: how doesthis type of transformation take place in theatre? Is there a possibility that these changes may happen at all levelsof a given performance in theatre, from the literary to the dramaturgic texture? What is the impact of thesetransformations on theatre in general? And, also, has this remarkable change made it possible for any work of anyliterary genre to become a theatrical performance simply by transforming it into a sort of semiotic andperformative work?\ Azzedine El-Ouafi: A researcher in the field of image and film.Title of paper: Self-immolation as a Form of Protest.Abstract: As a form of protest, the phenomenon of self-immolation lately transformed into a kind of spectacularshow. As such, this phenomenon took the form of a sort of performance carrying performative traditions next topolitical and martyrdom implications. Hence, the question I ask here is: How does the theatrical show of self-immolation get entangled in and complicate the principles of modern drama; what comes in integrating an actstemming from the heart of reality only to pour it back and reflect that same reality? This phenomenon makes thegames of drama and performance, as pre-packed products, and the stage, as imaginary scenery, take second rank,lag back, and vanish in face of such random artistic production.\ Francisco Albornoz is an actor and director. He is currently an Assistant Professor at Escuela de Teatro of thePontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, and is attending the Doctoral Program on Culture and Education in LatinAmerica, at ARCIS University, Chile. As a director, he has staged several plays over the last ten years, touring inChile, the USA, Spain, Mexico and Colombia. As an academic and researcher, he has participated in projects andconferences with Red CITU (Latin American Network for Theatre University Creation and Research) and theIFTR/FIRT Theatre Research Int. He is also founder and editor of Frontera Sur Ediciones, a publishing houseexclusively dedicated to theater in Chile. His areas of research include: theatricality/performance studies, memoryand culture, staging practice and methodology, and education of actors.Title of Presentation: “Bodies in the Street: Performativity of the social and student movements in Chile, 2011”Abstract: The year 2011 has been marked by the emergence of social movements across the world. Part of theanalysis has tended to match the form as well as the meaning of the upheavals in Cairo, Madrid, New York, orSantiago, Chile- sacrificing a deeper comprehension of both their possible global links and their particularcommitment to the specific historic, social and cultural processes, inherent to the contexts in which they haveappeared. In the Chilean case the social mobilization has been lead by the demands of the students. This paper

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presents the results of a preliminary investigation that takes two events in particular of such process: the "March ofthe Umbrellas" and the "1800 Hours Running for Education", from the point of view of their performativity. Thepaper attempts to track, on the one hand, the way in which these events constitute the refreshing of certainmemories of struggle, understanding the particular ways that such memory is represented, recreated andtransformed in the daily acts of the citizens, and its articulation especially in recent history (the 17 year dictatorshipand the process of reestablishing democracy in Chile). This approach will consider these two events as scenes of abattle for the memory. On the other hand, it attempts to comprehend the particularities that are displayed in thenew mise-en-scène of the citizens’ demands, embodied in the co-presence of the bodies and their action performedin the street, space that seemed emptied of its political potential. The performative perspective of these bodies inaction allow us to understand their historicity, their particularities, their political present, and from there, theircoordination with other global movements.\ Helena Oikarinen-Jabai has conducted her PhD study Boundary Spaces and Dissonant Voices: PerformativeWriting in-between Gambia and Finland in Art Education in the University of Art and Design in 2008. The studyincluded different types of writings, for example a children’s book and an ethnographic novel. She has Master’sdegree in Psychology (in the interdisciplinary master’s program of intercultural communication and relations) and inCultural Anthropology. She has also done the licentiate dissertation in Drama Studies. She has worked as a dramateacher, educator, free lancer journalist and researcher, among other things.Title of the paper: Somali youth performing their belongingsAbstract: In my workshop I will discuss my present multidisciplinary research project: A Finn, a Foreigner or aTransnational Hip-hopper? In my study I give space for second generation Finnish immigrant youth to relate to theiridentifications and belongings by using video, photography and other narrative means. The study is conductedwithin the framework of participatory research. I apply ethnographic methods, particularly participatory andperformative design. The subject of the study consists of participants in the workshops organized in schools and inyouth and community houses.In the presentation I concentrate on the productions conducted with a group of youth of Somali background. Theyouth have participated in the research by creating productions, like photo exhibitions, video, a book and a radioprogram. In my analysis, I will focus on the topic of belongings, Finnishness and transnational identifications, asrepresented in the talks, writings and visual narratives of the participants. Ambivalence is a central idea that onecan come across when analysing the narratives of the participants. They seem to share the same reality as mostFinnish youngsters. On the other hand, the participants are concerned about their cultural and “racial” backgroundsand “difference”. They inhabit in-between spaces and tightrope walk on the horizon where locality and possibilitymerge. As specialists in matters connected with their own lives, with specific phenomena and images not openlydiscussed in Finnish society, these youngsters are able to recognize and transgress certain conceptual borders andnational images, and eventually transform such notions and attitudes into fresh ways of thinking.\ Shara K. Lange is Assistant Professor and Radio/TV/Film Program Head at East Tennessee State University. Shecompleted her MFA in film production at the University of Texas at Austin. Her thesis documentary about NorthAfrican immigrant women in southern France, "The Way North," premiered at the Arab Film Festval in SanFrancisco in 2008 and is distributed by Third World Newsreel in New York City. In 2007, she was awarded a FulbrightFellowship to shoot the documentary, "The Dressmakers," in Morocco. She has previously worked as AssociateProducer on a documentary series about declining marine fisheries, "Empty Oceans, Empty Nets," and on StevenOkazaki’s HBO documentary, "Rehab".Title of Presentation: “THE DRESSMAKERS (Documentary Film), Fashion Show Featuring Salima Abdel-Wahab”Abstract: The Dressmakers: Constructing and Deconstructing Moroccan clothes is a 65 minute documentaryfeaturing fashion designer and Tangier native, Salima Abdel-Wahab with whom I propose to present the film, afashion show, and a panel in conjunction with Performing Tangier 2012: Performing Transformations. Abdel-Wahab’s work is concerned with transformability: a central article of her unique clothing line may be reconfiguredfor each wear, and the clothing line she designed for Festimode 2008, Travel Chic, prepared women to travel and tobe both comfortable and fashionable at the same time. Although Abdel-Wahab resists others’ attempts toessentialize her as an Arab Woman or her artistic work as a response solely to this aspect of her identity, anoutsider cannot help seeing symbolism in her irreverent clothes that create metaphorical opportunities for women:they are flexible, transformable, mutable, personalized and specific. Salima’s fashion shows are stimulatingspectacles: I cannot imagine a better example of a live performance that better encapsulates the idea behind thisconference. Another character in the documentary is Touria Arab who works at a non-profit in Tangier to helpwomen transition from apparel factory jobs to small business owners. She too could talk on this panel and like thedocumentary, could address the ways that clothes mean more than what they show on the surface: the clothes aremetaphors for changes happening underneath the surface of Moroccan culture, politics, and identity. Set inMorocco against the backdrop of the Arab Spring, THE DRESSMAKERS transcends tired travel show clichés to reveala diverse eclectic country intent on refashioning itself: through its clothes and innovative design. In a global fashion

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industry dominated by men where a 90% female labor force toils on the apparel factory floors, Tangier-baseddesigner Salima Abdel-Wahab is a revolution unto herself.\ Marwa Mahdi Moustapha Abidou: is a Professor in the department of Theatre, College of Arts, Helwan University,Egypt. She received her BA degree from The Higher Institute of Theatrical Art, Department of Drama and TheatreCriticism, an MA in theatre criticism from Helwan University, and a PhD in theatre studies, also under a jointsupervision between the University of Helwan in Egypt and Cologne University in Germany. She has also publisheda number of articles and critical studies in several specialized journals. She has two published books and severalarticles and studies in criticism published in the German DW magazine. She is the translator of Erika Fisher’s bookThe Transformative Power of the Performance: A New Aesthetics.Title of the paper: A Reading in Erika Fisher’s Book The Transformative Power of the Performance: A NewAesthetics.Abstract: In this paper, Maroua Mehdi Moustapha Abidou is expected to provide the Arabic speaking audiencesattending the conference with a reading in this book. In an attempt to introduce it to the Arab scholars,researchers, journalists, students, theatre directors, playwrights, actors, etc, attending the conference and comingfrom different parts of the Arab/Muslim world (Morocco, Tunisia, Libya, Palestine, Egypt, Iraq), Maroua will brieflyreview Dr. Fischer’s concept of Transformation in theatre and her theory regarding the Aesthetics of Performance inan attempt to inform the Arab intelligencia concerned with theatre as an art and field of study of the latest updatesin the domain.\ Mohammed Amansour: Holds a PhD in modern Arabic literature and is a Senior Professor at the Faculty ofHumanities in Meknes. He is President of the Association of Young Researchers in Language and Literature; amember of the research group in Cultural Studies, Faculty of Humanities, Meknes; a member of the research groupin Narration and the Reception, Faculty of Humanities, Meknes; and, a member of the research team on Moroccanmodern literature, Faculty of Humanities, Rabat. He is a critic and author of novels and short stories; his worksinclude: Strategies for Experimentation in the Contemporary Moroccan Novel (a study); Stories Lust (studies); Mapsof Experimental Fiction (literary criticism); The Eagle and the Panels (stories); Apocalypse Now (stories); and,Bacchus Tears (novel).\ Muhamad Sef: Iraqi playwright, author, director and actor; he has been living in Paris since 1994. He is a graduateof the Institute of Fine Arts in Baghdad, and a Graduate of the School of Jacques Le Coq in France. He obtained anMA from the Sorbonne and a PhD in Theatre Sociology from the same university. He was a Professor of acting inVoltaire’s French School for five years and taught Theatrical Sociology at the University of April 9th in Tunisia for twoyears. He has published many plays and books on theatre. And he is also a theatre critic and researcher, anddirector of the theatrical group “The Two Banks”.\ Sayed Sebai: Scholar, translator, and theatre critic; he was born in Cairo in 1963 and has published articles in boththeatre journals and newspapers. He has translated several books into Arabic on the field of Semiotics of Theatreand Drama. He has participated in many festivals: the Cairo Festival of Experimental Theatre, the Festival of theGCC countries and in Sharjah Theatre Days. He is Founder and Director of the “dot com website specialised intheatre”, and is a member of the International Federation of Theatre Research (IFTR) and the Arab Society oftheatre critics.\ Ibrahim El-Husseini, Playwright: Born in Sharkeya, Egypt in 1970, El-Husseini studied theatre arts at the prestigiousArts Academy in Cairo. Today he is known not only for his plays, but also for his poetry and theater criticism. Hisplays have been produced in Cairo and the Egyptian provinces, as well as in Jordan, Tunisia, Algeria, the UnitedArab Emirates, and Iraq. In his dramatic writing, he experiments with the juxtaposition of heightened and colloquialtext, music and poetry to explore the themes of freedom and social justice. He has won numerous awards includingthe Egyptian Higher Council for Culture award for his plays The Final Days of Akhenaton , Tattoo Birds, and ThePiper, the Egypt’s Writers Union Award for Museum of Human Organs, the Gomhourya Newspaper Award forGarden of the High, and the Mohamed Taymour Award for Theatre Creativity for Seduction. He has also writtenseveral short films and was co-founder and General Editor of the weekly newspaper Our Theatre. He has writtenessays and criticism for newspapers in Egypt as well as the Awan newspaper in Kuwait, where he received the SaadAl Sabah Award for theatre criticism. Comedy of Sorrows marks Ibrahim El-Husseini’s eighteenth play.Title of Presentation: “The Post January 25th Revolution Theatre in Egypt (A Reading in Ideas, Techniques andVisions)”Abstract: This research paper seeks to focus on the formal as well as ideological variables, which happened at thepractical level of the art of theater in Egypt after the revolution of January 25, 2011. Generally speaking, afterrevolutions and violent social and political upheavals intellectuals, theater practitioners in particular, findthemselves in urgent need to answer questions like: what is the real function of the stage? What are its forms ofpractice? From where does it borrow its guiding ideologies? And what are the techniques used to get to the aspiredends? Etc. In an attempt to redefine the theater in the light of the new transitions, especially those which happenedin Egypt after the revolutions of 1952, 1967, 1977, which, in fact, explained that the theatre is the artistic medium

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the most affected by the variables in response to reality, this paper sets as its main objective to outline thetrasformative history of theatre in Egypt, with much focus on theatrical practice of the Post January 25th Revolution.\Khalid Amine (Professor of Performance Studies at Abdelmalek Essaadi, Tetouan)Title of Presentation: Arab Spring: Occupy Protests and the new Public SphereAbstract: My presentation will focus on the performative aspects of the protests for democracy sweeping acrossNorth Africa and the Middle East with a particular focus on interactive websites such as facebook and their roles ingiving voice to Arab Youth and changing fear to fury. I will particularly explore the remediation of revolution in newmedia and their impacts on the ground in the various forms of Occupy Movements (like 20 February Movement ofMorocco). Though very serious, these protests have been full of fun as public spectacles. Becoming is thus strictlycorrelative to the concept of “repetition”. Far from being opposed to the emergence of the New, the properDeleuzian paradox is that something truly new can only emerge through repetition. The remediation of revolutionin performance and new media and the implementation of web-based tools reveal the material conditions andgeographic locations of social unrest. Significantly enough, artistic re-enactment of the revolution started evenbefore day 18 of the occupation of Tahrir Square. Dalia Basiouni, founder of Sabeel Group, wrote and directed amulti-media performance entitled “Solitaire: The First Monologue” that highlights the impacts of two major eventsupon Arab people. “The performance documents dramatically and visually some of the experiences of Arabs andArab Americans post 9/11, and the impact of these events on the Arab World. It also records some of the events ofthe 25th of January Revolution in Tahrir Square through the eyes of an Egyptian woman who changes and createschange throughout her journey to shape her identity in search for peace, within herself and with the world.”

Emerging Scholars panel I

\ Viktoria Volkova studied German, Pedagogics and Common Psychology at Moscow State Linguistic University. Herearly interest for theatre refers to the school period when she participated in theatre performances which werepart of educational program of her maternal school. Outside her main studies, she also attended a theatre course inMichael Chekhov’s Acting Technique in Moscow. That was an impulse for her to investigate the concealed potentialof improvisation in her postgraduate phase. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate under supervision of Professor ErikaFischer-Lichte in the International Research Training Group InterArt Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. Her currentresearch interests include gendering of the role characters during the rehearsal processes in stage improvisation,and emerging of secondary cognitive emotions. Her investigation field is rehearsals at famous theatres in Berlinsuch as Hebbel am Ufer, Deutsches Theater Berlin, Berliner Ensemble, Schaubühne am Lehniner Platz etc.Title of Presentation: “Theatrical Rehearsal as a Model of Performative Transformation Process”Abstract: The emerging field of rehearsal studies reveals concrete opportunities to explore the transformativepower of performance in theatre-making processes. The final product, theatrical performance itself, does not allowobserving the production of meaning which remains prerogative of the rehearsal. Maintaining the importance ofrehearsal studies, I would like to show and to interpret the way of the transformation of one scene during therehearsal process to Anton Chekhov’s “Ward No. 6” at the Deutsches Theater Berlin. The repetition of the samemise en scène during the whole rehearsal is a kind of model how performative acts transform the evolvingperformance and lead it to its final version. Zooming in on performative acts produced by the actors, I will have achance to illustrate in some brief video episodes the quintessence of the entire theatre-making process. At thesame time, I will highlight the possibilities which reveal rehearsal studies in comparison to the studies based on aready performance.\ Elisabeth Massana is a PhD candidate in the University of Barcelona, working on the performance of cruelty incontemporary British Theatre. She has worked as an associate professor teaching British Contemporary Theatre:Postdramatic and Radical Drama in the University of Barcelona and currently teaches History of the AnglosaxonCountries and Early 20th century Literature at Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia. She coordinates atheatre reading group and collaborates with catalan playwright Jordi Faura in the translation of his writing. Herinterviews with gender activists Itziar Ziga and Del LaGrace Volcano have been published in the volume Glamour iResistència (Glamour and Resistance) (El Tangram publishers). Research interests include contemporary Britishdrama, gender studies, the intersections between queer theory and activism, performance studies andcontemporary philosophy.Title of Presentation: Transient bodies, altered meanings. Bodily co-presence and spectatorship response-ability inMark Ravenhill's Birth of a NationAbstract: “Your city is in ruins.” Thus starts Birth of a Nation, one of the short pieces from British playwright MarkRavenhill's epic cycle of short plays Shoot/Get Treasure/Repeat (2007-2008), a series of twenty-minute shots whichresulted in almost six hours of theatre reflecting upon war (read Iraq war). Throughout the Royal Court productionof the play, different voices on stage talked directly to an audience which was automatically transformed into avictim of war, and a religious and racial other. Lightning, stage picture and space delimitation were used to break

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the distance between actor-spectator and to critically engage both of them in the construction of politicaldiscourse.In this paper I want to focus on the 2008 production of Birth of a Nation in the Royal Court Theatre, to argue how,in the case of this particular play, different bodies and identities (both on stage and in the audience) alter thereading of the text, thus un-fixing the words on the script – “Your text is in ruins”. Drawing from Hans-ThisLiehman's notion of response-ability, Ranciere's ideas on emancipated spectatorship and Erika Fisher-Lichte'stheories regarding the bodily co-presence of actors and spectators I will argue how the audience's bodies weretransformed through the production, and how –what– meaning(s) emerged, as well as how frail, transient anddependent on the identities/bodies of both actors and spectators these meanings are.\ Stefan Donath, Ph.D. student and Program Coordinator at the International Research Center « InterweavingPerformance Cultures », Freie Universität Berlin.Title of Presentation: Speaking with one voice: The transformative power of synchronized collectivesAbstract: The year 2011 brought a series of worldwide protests of unprecedented dimensions and unparalleddensity; while violent demonstrations and riots led to the fall of totalitarian regimes in the Arab world, thousandsof people were occupying Wall Street in New York City to fight social injustice and corruption. It became evidentthat these new social dynamics are an international phenomenon and, rather than referring to each other, emergeas a new transnational and global movement of people. The crucial point here is not only the extraordinarypresence of bodies acting collectively in public spaces but the theatricality of the protests, that present thecollective itself as a scene of action.Thus, the new level of social capital is reflected in the opportunity for a self-determined use of space and culture.While re-formulating inalienable fundamental rights, the demonstrators are using theatrical means: they wearmasks, speak as a chorus or move in choreographed formations. Therefore, the attention is focused on the processof the production of collective bodies. The approach to “speak with one voice” manifests a specific form oforganization: the collective activism is heavily relying on the use of structures of synchronization. In trying to moveand especially to speak in unison, the protests become aesthetically and politically relevant. Hence, the question towhat degree these aesthetic strategies influence or boost the transformative power for political change becomesrelevant. This paper examines examples of performances that stand out due to their highly participatory approachbut avoid (a) vivid polyphony of its members. “Speaking with one voice” means to adopt choral elements. In thatrespect, what is their new quality? What implies the embodiment of the collective and what images of collectivepatterns are produced? And finally: Could the ancient chorus become an important starting point or even a modelto understand the new social dynamics?\ Priyanka Chatterjee is M. Phil in English Literature from the University of Calcutta, India. Her M.Phil topic was“Male friendship in the plays of Samuel Beckett: a study of Waiting for Godot and Endgame.” She was invited bythe University of Oxford (UK), University of Gdansk (Poland) and IFTR’s Annual Conference at Osaka University(Japan) in the year 2009, 2010 and 2011 respectively to speak on Samuel Beckett. Presently, she is working onBeckett between Cultures: Reception of Samuel Beckett in the Theatres of India to get herself enrolled to a DoctoralProgram.Title of Presentation: “Oriental Beckett”Abstract: Reception of Samuel Beckett in the South Asian countries, especially in India, was quite unconscious untilthe leading universities introduced his works as a part of the course work. But their sheer quality not only drew themass to talk about the “theatre of the absurd” but also left them to discuss the identity of Godot! But theinterpretations always took place in terms of the firsthand reading. Decades have passed since Godot stood for Godand Pozzo and Lucky stood for the colonizer and the colonized. The 21st Century interpretations of Samuel Beckettlead to an understanding between the text and the reader. Though Indian version of Beckett mainly deals withExistentialism, but due to globalization the minds of the intellectuals shifted a bit from the orthodox reading ofBeckett to a wisdom which sometimes leads to salvation! My paper will seek to explore the identity of Godot in anIndian context and the adaptations of Waiting for Godot which took place in India. The primary focus of the paperwill be the intercultural and intertextual interpretations of Beckett’s work.\ Rebecca Moody, a PhD student in religion at Syracuse University in Syracuse, NY, studying contemporary visualrepresentations of women in film and other forms of visual culture, such as photography. My research lies at theintersection of religion and culture with an emphasis on Judaism and Islam in Morocco and, more broadly, NorthAfrica; I use global feminisms as my theoretical and methodological models. I’ve also earned an MA in Religion fromSyracuse University and an MA in Women’s and Gender Studies from The University of Texas at Austin.Title of Presentation: Performing Her Self: Luce Irigaray’s “La Mystérique” and Lalla Essaydi’s Les Femmes du MarocAbstract: In “La Mystérique,” Luce Irigaray speaks of a place “where consciousness is no longer master,” a place intowhich ‘she’ descends and from which ‘she’ “speaks about the dazzling glare which comes from the source of lightthat has been logically repressed.” Conversely, while it is “for/by woman that man dares to enter the place” hedoes so only “in order to speak woman.” Here, she speaks while he speaks her, not to or with her. Might JeanIngres’ 1814 La Grande Odalisque perform his speech act: what he speaks when he speaks her? Here, his odalisque

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shows us what he wants to see and, thus, what he wants us to see, not what she sees or speaks. In la mystérique,then, where his ‘consciousness is no longer master,’ what if she spoke back?In this paper, I argue that Moroccan artist Lalla Essaydi offers a striking visual and verbal response: an illustratedperformance of her self. In her recent Les Femmes du Maroc, Essaydi literally illustrates – makes visible – women’sbodies, first marking them with henna, then framing them within her camera lens and thereafter reproducing thoseframes for us, her viewers. Does she reproduce Ingres’ and Picasso’s odalisques: passive yet overtly sexual andsexualized bodies? Or does she instead perform transgression: “a continuous dialogue with Western art, mostnotably Orientalist painting” in which she registers “a place of converging difference: between East and West,absence and presence, nearness and distance?” Here, I look forward to arguing the latter.

Emerging Scholars Panel II

Rabia Ben Latifa: Ph.D candidate from Tunisia. She is a teacher at the Institute of Arts and has many publications innumerous Arab journals.Title of the paper: “Transformations in Performance and Documentation and their Impact on TheatricalPerformance in Tunisia”Abstract: This intervention revolves around the variables and the changes that new technology introduced tomodern drama in terms of practice and reception. Hence I discuss 3 main related points:1- Transitions in the theatrical performance.2- Shifts in theatrical documentation.3- Problems of receiving contemporary theatre.\ Amal Benouis: A Moroccan PhD researcher specialising in Theatre and Performance Studies. She is also a teacherat the city of Taza.Title of the Paper: “Towards a Fertile Arab Theatrical Spring”Abstract: Arab theatre is - under the so-called Arab spring - on the verge of knowing some challenges stemmingprimarily from the new intellectual environment and the new social and political changes of the current phase thatimpose unprecedented levels of conscious creativity and intellectual fertility and serious effectiveness on theatre asan art. Therefore, this is the right time for the Arab world to produce more sophisticated and modernisedperformances, at the level of form and content that may take it to mature and at effective aesthetic levels that goalong with the aspirations of Arab masses. This paper tackles this topic by asking such questions as whether theArab theatre may answer to such urgent demands and fulfil its task amid provided conditions and transformations.\ Zitan Mohammed: A Moroccan PhD candidate and playwright. His field of study is Moroccan Theatre within theGlobalized Cultural and Artistic contexts. His MA and BA degrees were on theatre, too, and he has manycontributions and publications in the domain. He participated in many seminars, lectures, and meetings both at theacademic and associative levels.Title of the paper: “Meta-Theatre: An Artistic Model of Protest”Abstract: We can say that the world has recently become more revolutionary, it is a world of political, economic,and cultural changes par excellence. This situation brought with it a performative situation worthy of study.Accompanying it came a kind of performance that is more than a classical tragedy- in fact a real consecration ofmeta-theatre in its revolutionary form. Henceforth, the revolutionary situation in the Arab world is but a kind ofmeta-theatrical expression, which certifies that the rules on which tragedy is built do not work in a world constantlychanging and bringing forth new laws and rules. What we witness nowadays through revolution is but a sort ofpractice and activation of a revolutionary theatre, seeking to revolutionise society, and manifest the power ofmasses and communities. Herewith, the meta-theatre becomes not only a mere ordinary practice, but anembodiment of the system of values and relationships in a relative and changing world.\ Jaouad Radouani is a specialized researcher in dramatic studies. He is holder of an MA in Humanities and AreaStudies: Colonial and Postcolonial Discourse. He is also EFL teacher and PhD candidate in Cultural Studies: Cultureand Identity in Morocco. Thesis being prepared: The Image of the Moor in British Drama, under supervision of DrKhalid Bekkaoui. He is author of two books: stereotype and Prejudice in Elizabethan Drama and Poems from theMoroccan Desert. Author of numerous of articles on various subjects published in local as well as internationaljournals, magazines and newspapers.Title: “From Jemma Elfnaa to Tahrir Square: Theatres in Action during the Arab Spring”Abstract: This paper tries to shed light on two famous ‘popular stages’ in the Arab world, Jemma Elfnaa inMarrakech and Tahrir Square in Cairo. Through holding attention to the role these open sites played in the Arabpolitical Spring as famous ‘social arenas,’ I will try to expose them as stages that offer masses ample opportunitiesto gather and perform a symbolic role. Second, I will provide tips from real theatrical performances that take placeon such plazas in order to demonstrate that the mentioned ‘public squares,’ as ‘potential stages,’ have been usedby the Theatre itself to make valuable artistic contributions and participate in ongoing revolutionary affairs. DaliaBassiouni’s performance with Group Assabil, entitled “Tahrir Stories,” which relates detailed events tied to theEgyptian mass revolution, together with an artistic Halqa performance taking place in Marrakech, and in which the

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actors joyfully/sadly sing and dance to the rhythms of a revolutionary-like song in which cries for ‘peace’ (l’aman)are sung ‘on/in-air’ and will provide ground artistic works/shows that mark the connectivity of Arab stages, explainhow Arab theatres react to the heated revolutionary home realities, and highlight direct attachment of the theatreto local as well as regional facts.\ A. George Bajalia: Fulbright Scholar in Morocco (2011-2012), PhD student, Northwestern University, Chicago,Illinois, Theatre DirectorTitle of Paper: “Global-Local-Motion: Globalization, Circulation, and Identity on the Moroccan Stage and Off”Abstract: In this paper, I present a critical analysis of cultural production in 21st century Morocco, focusing onTangier and artists within its deceptively porous borders. I argue that the widespread movement of goods, peoples,and texts in and out of Northern Morocco–vis-à-vis (il)legal trafficking, new developments such as TangerMed, andincreased Internet connectivity–has created an absorbent, sponge-like culture in Tangier. Meanwhile the human-sanctioned limitations of movement impose restrictions that foster the intense localization of transnational ideas.Therein, global goods mix with local values and transnational texts take on the flow through the local culturalcanon. I begin with a survey of the contemporary theatre scene in Morocco and, focusing on Tangier, examine theways in which theatre artists are relating and responding to the transforming social hierarchies in the Middle Eastand North Africa. Here I aim to examine the literal transformation of spaces and critique the ways in which theyfoster different performances, distinct but undoubtedly Tanjawi, on stage and off. Subsequently, and in example ofthis phenomenon, I will provide a “close reading” of both the scripts and performances of work by Tanjawiplaywright Zoubeir ben Bouchta and relate the patterns in the texts to the transformations in identity enforced byglobalization.\

PUBLIC AGENDA NOTES//Etranger Comme le Fleuve: Poésies et MusiqueVenue: Conference main room Hotel RIF SPA (Friday June 1)

Faculty of Letter, Tetouan (Monday 4)Quartet des Paroles Passagères is a united group of a foursome talented musicians and poets. Their music andpoetic chants have a unique and charming aura. They create special scenes and moods, what we may call ‘nirvanas,’through ‘strange’ and original ‘artistic' combinations of sentiments, light musical instruments, and selected lines ofverse. Their shows, which may be classified as real performances, are transcending in nature and carry theaudiences into momentary ‘Utopic’ worlds of emotional romance and pure mental reflection. Performing for thesecond time in Performing Tangier international conference, this time, with “Etranger Comme le Fleuve” (Strangelike a River), they intend to share few pieces of their unconventional art which stems from the bottom of thehuman instinct. This occasion’s show brings together fine music and a selection of the most revolutionary Arabpoetry of Mahmoud Darwich and Badr Chakir Essayab in a very compelling way that attracts ears, hearts, andminds.

Muhamad SEF, Metteur en scène «Oncle Vania», « Hamlet», «Le crâne de Nazim Hikmet», critique, comédien etdramaturge irakien (« A la recherche de Mr Galkamïch», «Le monde est une vallée de larmes», il réside à Parisdepuis 1984 et dirige la troupe «Les deux rives». Sa connaissance, à la fois de la littérature arabe et du théâtre dumonde, permet d’asseoir plus encore le spectacle dans son optique d’universalité. Il donne à entendre les mots despoètes en arabe (langue originelle) et en français. Redouane RAÏFAK, Né à Casablanca entre un grand-père et unoncle musiciens, Redouane s’adonne à sa passion depuis l’âge de sept ans. Evoluant entre percussions et cordes,c’est principalement avec le Gumbri qu’il joue avec Nass el ghiwane, Jiljilala, Rouicha, Sapho…Au-delà des frontièreset des styles, les sons se faufilent entre blues, gnawa, traditionnel et impros. Auteur-compositeur. Il se ressourcedes musiques du monde pour continuer son chemin à la découverte de l’autre. Smaïl AÏT-OUMGHAR, Né à Bouiraen Algérie, son enfance est bercée par la musique traditionnelle (grand-père flûtiste et bendiriste et père adepte dela musique arabo-andalouse). Adolescent, il découvre, grâce à un oncle percussionniste, cet art majeur. Guitariste,batteur, chanteur dans divers groupes (Thouloudj, The lions…), il participe à de nombreux festivals d’arts lyriquesen Algérie. Installé en France depuis 1979, il s’ouvre à divers styles. Pop, folk, chaâbi, raï, gnawa. Erick AUGUSTE, Néen territoire poétique rebaptisé «Neuf-Trois» par le syndicat d’initiative, le hasard le mène à Molière, Koltès, Pinter,Cormann…Un deuxième hasard lui fait découvrir la poésie et c’est le coup de foudre. Neruda, Pessoa, Rimbaud,Darwich, Sayyâb, et tant d’autres ne le lâchent plus.

/ Sing, Embody, Transform: the Man of the Heart Project, a lecture-demonstration, outside the regular format of a20-30 minute paper presentation.Venue: Conference Room II at Hotel RIF SPA (June 1)Sudipto Chatterjee & Proshot Kalami will present video clips from performance as well as their field research, ‘thickdescriptions’ and analytic commentary along with live performance of Lalon Shah’s songs. Emerging from a post-

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avant garde perspective that challenges “rules” of normative performance, Man of the Heart is a meditation on thelife and times of Lalon Shah Phokir (Bengali for faqir), the 19th century Sufi-Baul saint and song-maker from Bengal,whose fame stretches across the political and religious borders dividing Bangladesh and West Bengal (India). Basedon several years of field research conducted in Bangladesh and West Bengal and 6 years of performance life—beginning at UC Berkeley in 2005, it has travelled through New York, Los Angeles, Calcutta and New Delhi, toLondon’s Barbican Centre and currently in Berlin—Man of the Heart is located between academic research andcreative praxis, between deep ethnography and mediated live performance. It is a multi-media solo-performanceincorporating live music, dance, spoken word, video and recorded audio. Without assuming any ‘character’ or aplot-driven dramatic narrative, it attempts to speak/sing/perform around the biography of Lalon Phokir and thehuge impact his music has had on not only Phokirs but also the role it has played in defining Bengali culture per seand Bengali nationalisms in Bangladesh and West Bengal. While doing so, in its internal orientation, it is also anexploratory piece on the body-based philosophy and the virtuosic musical practice of a sect known as Bauls. Ofthem, Lalon Phokir is regarded as the greatest. Although he practised personally, he spoke publicly through hissongs. His music performance and practice em-bodied a highly syncretic philosophy that drew from diversereligious sources and sought to transform the ‘order of things’ in a largely patriarchal society that fought withinitself along lines of religious orthodoxies. He confronted all orthodox fundamentalisms and preached a radicallydifferent search for divinity that could be located within the corporeal frame, with an ideology that sought totransform the human being through/within the body. According to this belief, divinity is attained only by means ofdisciplined, non-carnal physical practice with a female companion, for the Godhead is said to reside only in thefemale body and male has to play the supplicant, thus challenging and transforming a phallocentric, patriarchalorder. Performing transformations at several levels (both inside and out), Man of the Heart performs the manifoldaspects of “Lalon Shah” and the public performance of his practice, unpacking, inter alia, complex layers oftransformative hermeneutic and spiritual practices, using music performance as a mode of transformation from thecommonplace to the metaphysical, a transformative reversal of gender hierarchies and social/communal divisions,as well as the concomitant co-option/corruption of Lalon by agents of the nation state, through both its lures andfailures.

/ LIVING BOOK: MISS WOLFE’S TANGIER STORIES: Memories of a young American woman’s sojourn in Tangier 1944-1946A Narrative Performance by the American artist Dorothy Weems (June 2, at 18: 00 pm/Venue: TALIM - Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan Studies, 8 rue d'Amérique, Tangier)Based on the written and oral stories, and personal correspondence, of Ruth Wolfe Weems. Performed under thedirectorial consultation of Emmy-award winner David Harwell. The reflections of Ruth Wolfe (Weems) (1921-2005),an American Legation employee in The International Zone of Tangier during WWII, told through dramaticperformance: a tapestry of young Ruth’s autobiographical short stories, letters, and memories, chronicling the epicmystique of 1940’s Tangier and the hard reality of war as imprinted on the heart of a beautiful and brilliant youngAmerican woman, against the great Moroccan landscape. Living Book: Miss Wolfe’s Tangier Stories transports us tothat special time and place: 1940’s Tangier. For Ruth, who had a front seat to one of the greatest eras of history,this time of her life was the quintessential “Casablanca” experience, replete with political intrigue and mortaldangers, genteel romance, clandestine meetings, acts of heroism, and the keeping of most important secrets, neverstraying from her unceasing sense of duty and professionalism. As she discovered the unparalleled personality ofthis great city “whose ancient streets had the power to turn back time twelve centuries”--through taking tea withthe family of a Legation chaouch (guard), exploring the art of haggling in the market place, embracing the exquisitearchitecture under the soft, warm touch of the wind from the Strait of Gibraltar, and breathing in the endlesslyvaried and fathomless beauty of the city and its people--Ruth found in Tangier one of the great loves of her life.Portraying the older Ruth reflecting on her Tangier experience is her youngest daughter, actress Dorothy Weems,through whom the spirit of these stories imparted to her from childhood rises from the pages of history into ourhearts and minds. This performance is a testament to the power of living memories handed down to generations,and of the importance of history and the telling of stories not only to remaining loved ones, but also to all people inall places for all the times to come.Dorothy Weems recently appeared as the Lady Aemilia in Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors for TheatreUAH; gave apreview performance as Sarah Bernhardt in Sarah in America for Ars Nova Gala; and as Gertrude in Hamlet forTheatre Renaissance, for which she received a Wings Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Highlights ofher stage credits include the role of Eleanor of Aquitaine in Lion in Winter, for which she won a Best Actress Award;First Place Panoply Solo Acting Competition Award for a monolog from Gingerbread Man; First Place Panoply DuetActing Competition Award for role of Eleanor of Aquitaine in Lion in Winter; the role of Emily Brent in Ten LittleIndians, for which she received Best Supporting Actress Award; Rain; Mousetrap; Six Rms Riv Vu; Play It Again, Sam;Born Yesterday, Come back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean; Scandal Point; The Real InspectorHound; After Magritte; ‘Night Mother; three seasons of the One-Act Theatre; Coriolanus; Agamemnon; and The

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Marriage Proposal. On camera, Dorothy performed the role of Natalya Stepanova in Chekhov’s The MarriageProposal for Alabama Public Television; appeared in NBC’s “Unsolved Mysteries” with Karl Malden; performed dualroles in Resistance, a Cindy-award winning film; and performed in and wrote a number of independent films. Inaddition Dorothy has given many dramatic readings of poetry and short stories. Dorothy received the Master ofEnglish Literature degree from the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and was elected a member of The HonorSociety of Phi Kappa Phi for her academic achievement (4.0 / 4.0 Grade Point Average), graduating with Honors inthe top ten percent of her class. Also a writer, Dorothy’s poem “Blasted Tree” won 8th place nationally in the 2009Writer’s Digest Annual Writing Competition. Currently she is writing memoirs, fiction, plays, and screenplays. Shesays, “Descending from wonderful parents such as mine, a writer and a performer, I am so blessed to share in theirlegacy.”\/Diaries from Exile: The Prison Letters"Witten by Abdellatif Laabi, directed by Bousselham Daif“Diaries from Exile” is a Moroccan performance relating the story of a man in Exile. Written by the famousMoroccan author, Abdellatif Laabi, and directed by Morocco’s most progressive artist, Bousselham Daif, the playcomprises only two actors on stage using the prison-diaries of the author himself. A foreword summarising the playreads as follows: “When we read Abdellatif Laabi’s letters, those he wrote while in prison, we understand that thesituation meant something for him from the start: He developed a concept of the deep meaning of jail as a placewhere the two dimensions ‘space and time’ take a specific shape. He grasped the place as a location where Man istransformed. He is transformed towards his proper erasure. The prison annihilates a large part of his entity as aman, and limits his functions and aspirations to a deadly state. Thus the prison fulfils its role; it sentences to deathwithout killing, and always leaves behind a ‘living’ creature practicing life in its most restricted manifestations.”\/SOMEONE IS SLEEPING IN MY PAINDOCU-MOVIE/ By Michael Roes, with Andrea Smith, Germany / Yemen 2002, 1:29:12 DV

Exposé: Shakespeare's Macbeth has often become the template for artistic adaptations. Well known is AkiraKurozawa’s adaptation of the subject in Throne of Blood (1957). The docu-feature film Someone Is Sleeping in MyPain, shot in the year 2000, is following a different strategy in dealing with the material: The film tells. how anAmerican director tries to rehearse and to perform Shakespeares play with local lay actors in tribal Yemen. Hecomes across with a number of cultural barriers; but at the same time it becomes clear that Shakespeare evenworks in a very foreign environment. The realization of this film is from the first idea on an experiment. It is notclear how far the Yemenis will participate in this experiment. All of the Westerners are aware that it could becomea pure documentary about the failing of realizing a Yemeni version of Shakespeare’s Macbeth. To make sure that alltheir efforts would not be in vain the film starts as a documentary. The whole setting seems already Shakespearienif not Macbeth-like: a question of power, tribal clashes, superstition, corruption, gender conflicts, war... There is analmost smooth transition from the documentary to the directed scenes. The result is something very new and(post)modern, not just a kind of docu-fiction, but a new hybrid genre, where borders are blurred.\/ The Dressmakers, a Documentary, directed by Shara K. LangeVenue: Conference Room II at Hotel RIF SPAConstructing and Deconstructing Moroccan Clothes Part “Project Runway,” and part experimental treatise onMoroccan surfaces (fabric, clothing, city, identity), THE DRESSMAKERS interweaves the stories of traditional tailorsand factory seamstresses with the story of Tangier-based designer Salima Abdel-Wahab as she races to prepare herline for the Festimode fashion show in Casablanca. Contextualized by the Arab Spring, THE DRESSMAKERScombines observational style filmmaking techniques with super-8 footage. The documentary goes behind theMorocco of travel guides to present an intimate and absorbing portrait of a country in the process of refashioningand redefining itself.\/ Workshop & open laboratory: “The Way of the Energetic Voice and Vocal Action”Performance & Work demonstration, photo exhibition and a Film document about Lalish Theaterlabor.Venue: The Kasbah Museum

A photo exhibition of Lalish Theaterlabor performances, research projects in Europe, North Africa, Middle East andJapan from 2000 to 2012. In this exhibition a short documentary film will be presented about different internationalprojects of Lalish Theaterlabor, directed by Nigar Hasib and Shamal Amin from Lalish Theaterlabor/ Research Centrefor Theater and Performance-Culture, Vienna/Austria. With the research-project “no shadow” (2006-2009) and the

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continuing research “Songs as a Source”, the Lalish Theaterlabor dedicates itself, in performance, to today’s mostlyforgotten archeological search for the human voice, its individual and cultural origin and its direct impact. NigarHasib and Shamal Amin seek to discover an original, intermediate and artistic language, outside of the conventionallinguistic symbolism. This new, non-linguistic language consists of syllables, sounds, tones and possibly still othervocal expressions, stemming from various different cultures. All this leads to a new way of communication inperformance, and a special work on one’s own composed experimental Voice- and Singing techniques. Voices andsongs become the source of rhythm, of physical presence and also the source of action. Shamal Amin aptly namedthis new phase in the work of the Lalish Theaterlabor the “Awakening of the Abstract Solemnity”: “We create aflowing space, wherein voices and songs turn into pleasure. The voice resembles an action which always allows oneto discover something new.” This new, non-linguistic language in the performance work of the Lalish Theaterlabortherefore distinguishes itself fundamentally from today’s so-called artistic languages of world theatre, whichprimarily deal directly with representation, with things, subjects and stories."Nomads" A Photo Exhibition of Lalish Theaterlabor Performances and Research Projects 2000-2012 (The KasbahMusuem)\/ Open Air Theatre Performance & Workshop by AteliercuncheoN from ItalyVenue: Delegation of Culture, Tangier , June 4AteliercuncheoN is the international theatre research project for actors, dancers and musicians guided by AndreaBenaglio - Italian actor, director and theatre researcher. AteliercuncheoN work is closely connected to themulticultural and multidisciplinary aspect of creation. In performance and actor’s training we explore, apply andintegrate theatre techniques coming from different traditions, unifying various elements of actor’s expression –body, voice, rhythm, work with the mask and objects, the art of using stilts (including the pneumatic stilts on theadvanced level), dance, voice techniques, etc. AteliercuncheoN has been deeply researching the connectionbetween the training of the actor and the artistic techniques coming from the Islamic culture. This direction of workis guided by the strong certainty that the research discovers important and insufficiently explored elements ofactor’s work in the training process and the performance both within the theatre and the open space performance.AteliercuncheoN is the multicultural and multi-lingual team of theatre artists open to new professional contactsand creative collaboration.\« Exircises sur la revolution», a Performance Intervention on a theme related to ‘Arab Spring’, by the MoroccanTheatre Company Daha WasaVenue: The Kasbah Museum, Tangier, (Monday, June 4)The idea of the performance evolved during workshops built by "Daha Wasa" around a series of codedimprovisational exercises facilitated by the Spanish director, Jose Sanchez Sinistera. These exercises haveconstituted the balk of the performance and deployed by director Ahmad Hamoud as an immediate response to the"Arab spring" sweeping around the Arab World and its impact on Morocco. /

Mohammed Kaouti’s Seven-Door Cities

by Dr. Mohammed AmansourPeople would ask you: which city is Kaouti’s?Tell them: they are seven cities. Each has its own door.They would ask you: tell us about each door.Tell them: Mohammed Kaouti’s has seven cities. Each has an independent door and each door has a story.The knowledge city – linguistics is its door, the red city – the comrades science is its door, the crafts’ city – themanagement science is its door, the Theatre’s city – writing is its door, the amateurs’ city – love of theatre is itsdoor, the breeding city – innovation is its door and the humans’ city – friendship is its door.

1- The knowledge city whose door is lingustics:…The one who enters this city has only to ask its Bidaoui people about the F’qih Kaouti. They would show her/ himthe great reader of Arabic and foreign books and manuscripts, old and new: the book worm who has acomprehensive knowledge of European and Arab heritage, a knowledge that one seldom encounters amongtheatre scholars.One cannot enter Kaouti’s kingdom without being stimulated by the three-fold adjacency of his lingual and culturalworlds:

1- His perfect mastery of Arabic, archaic and new. This is reflected in his Arabic language that echoes a longexperience in surveying authentic Islamic and non-Islamic books.

2- His mastery of Molière’s language, his extensive readings of authentic European works and his shunning ofpoor translations that make universal theatre masterpieces lose their magnificence and essence.

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3- His mastery of Moroccan Arabic, especially the Chawiya region dialect, and his affluent vocabulary andderivations in this scope.

Mohammed Kaouti’s bicultural and bilingual serious education, in addition to his "Ta'rubeet dialect", explains theunique nature of his theatrical experience. Hence, it is natural that derivation is actively present in his works. Isn't itthe perfect place for a bilingual artist whose theatrical culture includes Arab and European trends? Isn't derivationin this case the best version that allows the artist to fuse two separate theatrical references? He who says yes, hewho says no becomes "Al-‘Ada" (The Habit). Waiting for Godot becomes "Sidna Q'dar" (Destiny, Our master). MrPuntila and his Man Matti becomes "Boughaba". Kaouti fluctuates between different spaces: from universal tolocal horizon and vice versa. It is no wonder then that Kaouti’s theatrical repertoire is presented as an equation thaticludes European forms and Moroccan content: authenticity and openness to the other; and altruism andadherence to the origin.It is Kaouti’s call for knowledge and artistic-cultural dialogue with the other's culture and art. It is a search of thedifferent; it is reaching acculturation within the artistic melting pot. There is no theatre without knowledge and noacculturation without deep roots in the country's land, culture and language. There is no deep rootedness in theland of Moroccan and Arab theatre without getting in contact with European and Arab masterpieces. In a word, anytheatre based on intuition alone is unreliable according to Kaouti’s experience.

2- The red city whose door is comrades scienceThis door leads us to Kaouti’s partisan experience within the ranks of progressive left with the Development andSocialism Party. At this point, we are before Kaouti the communist, the holder of a political vision characterized bydialectical materialism. Kaouti is adhered to his time and to his partisan practice through political action as amember of a Moroccan party which is the successor of a world-wide communist rising . Here, we are confrontedwith Kaouti the historical creature, Kaouti the social body situated in a historical process loaded with class strugglewithin the whirlpool of a backward traditional capitalist society. He is, thus, besides all the comrades within the riseof the progressive leftist movement in Morocco, deeply involved in advocating social justice values, democracy andall the other values that serve the causes of Moroccan society. He is Kaouti the organic scholar who seeksequilibrium between the two sides of the cultural-political equation.Even though he has not written, literally, political plays, he has devoted much of his effort to exploring heritage andhas tried to find masks, symbols and equations (al-qaramita/ alhallaj) that represent political and social reality.Kaouti’s theatre has never been separated from Moroccan reality and political and social situation in the Arabworld. Hence, the social concern and the political background of his works, written during the seventies and theeighties of the past century, still reflect the deep rootedness of Kaouti’s art in the soil of Moroccan reality in all itsdimensions. They also reflect deeply the harmony between the political issues he tackles and the artistic andcultural concerns.

3- The professions’ city whose door is management scienceIn this city, Kaouti the rebel reveals the conditions and loathed monotony of public service. This is Kaouti the artist,Kaouti the instigator, the founder, the one who rejects restrictions, the changeable who knows how to renewhimself without repeating it, reconstructing his processes constantly. In the professions’ city, we are before Kaoutithe founder of Rawafid Corporation, the successful producer of television programs that has worked ondocumenting Moroccans' memory, consciousness, language, proverbs and tales. "Alif Lam" and other programsthat make the viewers recall their forgotten and repressed part of their oral and folklore.This awareness of the importance of memory: peoples and words' memory (oral heritage in general) throughprograms produced by his corporation remains a bright pause in the career of a gloomy amnesic Moroccantelevision, loathed with oblivion and forgetfulness.A lot is said about Kaouti’s creative touch in cultural media and editing direction at "Al-Bayane" newspaper thatrepresents the Development and Socialism Party in Arabic and French. Much more is said about Kaouti the militantin trade unions: one of the main founders of the National Union of Theatre Professionals. Equally Kaouti is muchpraised as a health insurance advocator who has been deeply involved in supporting a better health situation of theMoroccan theatrical body. Everyone witnessed his involvement in the first attempt of its kind, in the Moroccanhistory of art, to create the Moroccan National Health Insurance Company of Artists.

4- The Theatres’ city whose door is writingKaouti has already worked on stage as an actor. However, the main inherent and proper characteristic of hiseffective contribution to Moroccan theatre is writing. Writing here has two connotations: authoring and excerpting.His works vary between two parallel directions in theatre practice: (Alkaffa/ al Ada/ Alqarameta yatamarranoonkama rawaha Khalifa fee sooq shteeba / alhallaju yuslaby marratayn/ indiharu al awthane/ rihlatu mooh/No Man'sLand/ Sidna Q'dar/ Boughaba/ Noor ala Noor/ arreeng/ hobbun wa tibnun. These works vary between authoring,excerpting and production that has not only extended to reach the borders of "assalam albarnoosse" troop, but ithas also attained and dealt with unique and leading experiences in the history of Moroccan theatrical movementwith prominent producers in their fields of practice, like Abdel Ouahed Aouzari with "Masrahu alyawm", "masrahualhay" and "masrahu ashams" troops. In addition to that, he wrote a number of educational stories that were

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translated into French and published in Paris by L'Ecole des Loisirs Publications. These stories are "Je suis Parti"(rihaltun fee khayale faqaT), "la Chaise Blueue" (alkursiyyu al Azraq) and "Zouzou".

5- The amateurs’ city whose door is love of theatreIn this city and with adventurous young men, who became later on prominent artists, Mohammed Kaouti was bornas a star. With Ncheikh Ibrahim, Ait Attajer, Lehboub, lhlil, alazhar and Leouidi, Mohammed Kaouti’s name becameone of the most important names of the "assalam albarnoosse" experience. Thus, he became one of the knights ofwriting and authoring within Amateurs' Theatre, the school that was the mother, the lung and the soil that gave lifeto acting, mimesis, performance, playing values and the forms of expression in 'the Morocco of lead and paper'.Kaouti managed with his authoring and varied excerpts to find his way within that Eternal River and golden wombthrough adventurous nice writing that left outstanding effects on the history of amateurs' theatre that witnessed itsgolden age during the seventies and the eighties.Mohammed Kaouti is a stung man as the departed Mohammed Timoud goes. That is why his career, his memoryand his generation are associated with the love of theatre. That generation loved theatre and sacrificed for its sake;they volunteered and bestowed. Amateurs' theatre has accepted "the support policy" or "the theatre of assumingresponsibility" as Assediq Elkouibdu says. It is for history to decide in the future which group will be the winner:those who won and made the history of Moroccan theatre win or those who rode the wave and profited fromtheatre, and because of their ride we lost the love of theatre.

6- The Planting city whose door is noveltyIn this city, Kaouti plays on two chords within the Moroccan theatre :

- Borrowing the European form (the universal horizon) and Moroccanizing the content (the local horizon).- Recording the Moroccan dialectical- oral heritage through the breeding strategy.

Planting for Kaouti is not only a cloning mimesis. It is rather a dialoguing provocation and an artistic fusion of twosensitivities, two eras and two remote horizons: European drama and popular Moroccan culture; that is to say, theEuropean theatrical mold and the Moroccan soul deposited in Moroccan Arabic. Kaouti confronts the argumentthat talks about the non-existence of theatre in Moroccan and Arab culture by delving into the Moroccan Arabicand the popular Moroccan culture and soul that lies in the thesaurus of the countryside language. He, thus, raisesthe value of Moroccan Arabic revealing through it how the Moroccan soul deposited in Moroccan Arabic -thedramatic, tragic, intensely ironic, emotional and rhythmic soul- has the characteristics that would enable her toassimilate the most refined, difficult and rigorous dramatic situations and dialogues.For some reason, I prefer to compare Kaouti and his relationship with the dialect of Chawiya with Noah. The latter,who feared the extinction of creatures because of deluge, put couples of all creatures in his boat. Likewise, Kaouti,who fears the extinction of the fluency of Chawiya dialect, transforms his planting into a new Noah’s ark that savesthe wonders and oddities of the dialect from forgetfulness. His theatrical texts become moving dictionaries teemingwith Chawiya dialectical thesaurus. Here Kaouti has managed to hit more than a bird with the planting stone:

- Fighting traditional writings that prevail in professional theatre through innovating the concept ofexcerpting.

- Making of breeding a form of fusion into source texts.- Serving the Chawiya dialect through linking it to new artistic contexts and targeting two objectives:

o Enriching the excerpting possibilities of the dialect.o Recording its structural and morphological treasures and pearls.

He is the Noah of Chawiya and the son of its perspective who has documented and recorded in his theatre words,proverbs and expressions that linguists couldn’t derive. He would have obeyed, thus, the call of his grandmother,the oral library that inculcated in him as a child the secrets of the Chawi tongue. Therefore, when he started dealingwith the breeding science, he unleashed the memory of his childhood. Hence, his bred literature was transformedinto catalyst for discharging the suppression of our oral heritage.

7- The Human’s city whose door is friendshipMy relationship with Mr. Mohammed Kaouti as a viewer dates back to the mid eighties, and precisely to a day inDecember 1986 in the second session of the National Meeting about Theatre in Meknes organized by the RouadAlKhshaba Association under the slogan “Towards a Theatrical Experimentation that Constructs Action”. No Man’sLand is the title of the first theatrical performance I saw, by Kaouti. It was performed by the ‘knights’ of “AssalamAlbarnoussi Company”. Subsequently, he made the greatest event with “Masrahu Alyawm Company” through theirturning point performance “Boughaba”.Up to nowadays, the scene of the collective cell, the monologue-like dialogue between the four prisoners and thetransformation scenes among the chorus of masks and faces are still crossing my mind. It was a theatricalperformance that condensed the atmosphere of the seventies and eighties through strong symbolism. Ittransmitted the political, existentialist and social situation of the lead years with a dense theatrical languageenriched with Sufist reference and rich poetic depth that is subtly free from any literary tendency in playwrighting.Hence, Kaouti sought to establish a theatrical writing style that is only devoted to the sought dramaticrequirements.

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Ever since, I have kept in my mind a bright illuminant picture of Kaouti and Assalam Albarnoussi Troop, a picturewhich is associated with the delicious wonder that the Meknassi dramatist audience (with excellence) reached inthe lectures room at the Maerid Palace. It was not a coincidence that this very play was awarded, in the sameseason (1986) during the 26th National Festival of Amateurs’ theatre, the acting prize (Omar Lehboub) and thedirecting prize (Ncheikh Ibrahim).I still remember that I was then a member of a gang/ Meknassi boys who sucked theatre through the atmosphereof the active theatrical movement established in Meknes by the glories of Alhubul Festival, Alfossol association, theicons of the subsequent phases (Bouzoubae, Timoud, Lemnii and the National assembly of Rouad Alkhashaba). Wewere stung and we criticized sharply all poor performances, trial-like criticism. Thus, when we saw No Man’s Land,the performance streamed within our souls like dew. We interacted with the atmosphere of the ruined cell or theruined land that was theatre-ized successfully by Ncheikh Ibrahim on the stage of the lectures room at AlmaeridPalace. That is why we left Kaouti and his followers in peace.That is Kaouti the artist whom I knew as a spectator. Kaouti the man with whom I shared friendship and affection

was a rare friend in an age when friendship has become rare. Kaouti has different personalities: the author and theteacher; the translator and the scholar; the Ngos, partisan, union and health insurance militant; the theatrical artistand the communist comrade; the bilingual and the Urubian (the speaker of a local dialectical Arabic); the journalistand the director, etc. However, when you deal with each other closely, you would discover a deeply human andwarm personality of one of the rarest people who know the value of friendship and the meaning of faithfulness tofriends through thick and thin. He is the kind of person that loves truthfully and devotes himself to this love in wordand deed. Moreover, he loves to gather and confabulate with friends and he has special rituals in this regard. Whenhe gathers with them he has special manners; his rituals have different features; his confabulations have differentways. Elegance is among those ways: elegance of wear and soul; elegance of drink and talk; elegance ofcompanionship and blues; elegance of seriousness and fun.For you dear artist, militant, man, friend and well known dramatist, as my journey among your cities and townsends at all the revelation that you see, I offer my deepest love and most cherished affection of pride.

(Translated by Rajae Khaloufi)

Conference Location: Faculty of Letters at Abdelmalek Essaâdi University, Tétouan & the Kasbah Museum,Sahat El Kasbah, and RIF SPA Hotel, Tangier.

The Kasbah: A historical glimpse\The Kasbah Palace, also called “Dar al Makhzen” or “the Sultan Palace”, is situated in the eastern part of the Kasbaharea. The strategic surroundings of the land on which the palace had been built were colonized by the Romans andthe Carthaginians: according to a roman legend, a temple devoted to the roman god Hercules was erected on theKasbah hill. Historical writings state that during the first era of the Islamic presence in Tangier, a 12th centuryMuslim Governor established his residence on the Palace location. Later, in the 15th century the spot had beenused by the Portuguese, who erected their Governor’s residence called the “Domus Praefecti” (1471-1661). In the17th century, the British raised, on the same site, “the Upper Castle” which was inhabited by the British Governors.The Kasbah Palace, as we can admire it in its actual form, had been constructed by Ahmed Ben Ali, son of Ali BenAbdallah Al Hamani Errifi, the man who, in 1664, liberated Tangier from its British settlers. Since then, the palacehad been used as headquarter for the local authority, and considered as the symbol of the central political Powerand the Monarchy. The Kasbah Palace had been converted into a museum in 1922.\The exhibitionThe Kasbah Museum offers a synthesis of the major aspects of the culture, the artefacts, the techniques, thecraftsmanship, of Tangier and its surroundings. The exhibition is divided in three sections organise. It illustrates thedominant features of this area which played a privileged part in the relationship between Africa and Europe. The

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Gibraltar Strait, real crossroad between the two continents, helped make of Tangier a confluence of encounters andexchanges in the occidental basin of the Mediterranean. The first room, covered by an eight faces dome, is the “BitAl Mal”, or the accounts department. The visitor can admire its original safe, made of a heavy cedar boxstrengthened with fittings. In the centre of the Palace, we find seven rooms surrounding a magnificent patioencircled with white marble columns crowned with composite capitals. These exhibition rooms display anassortment of artefacts evoking the material history of Tangier and its area from prehistoric times, up to the 19thcentury: sets of bone and stone tools, pieces of ceramic, a series of terracotta figurines, Phoenician silver jewels,amulets, silver necklaces, decorated ostrich eggshells… This collection is enriched with a magnificent set of paintedpieces of ceramic and figurines excavated from the workshop site of Kouass, the activity of which goes back up tothe fifth century before our era. The room devoted to the Roman era is characterized by a low-relief representingthe scene of a lying banquet, and a block evoking the theme of the Victory sacrificing a bull. The visitor can alsoadmire some pieces of ceramic, statuettes, ivory jewels and some masterpieces of Roman glassware. The copula, orthe “kubba kbira”, is a room the walls of which are covered with polychrome earth ware pannels or “zellije” andwith sculpted plaster, and the ceiling of which is ornate with sculpted and painted cedar wood. Manuscripts,illuminations, a writing set and a gilded and an illuminated Coran manuscript of the 13th century are exposed forthe visitor to admire. The poetic verses carved in the earth ware panels all around the walls make of this room amajestic one. The rooms 5, 6 and 7 are dedicated to the Islamic period: fragments of ceramic coverings, sculptedcedar wood friezes covered with Kufic inscriptions and enhanced with floral designs, ceramic vases, coins andfuneral steles. The visit of the first patio ends with the exhibition of works belonging to the Alawite dynasty: agilded and illuminated manuscript, bindings, coins, a brass chandelier, fire arms… The ground floor corresponds tothe important commercial activity which has existed between the Tingis peninsula and the other Mediterraneancivilizations. The floor of this patio is cobbled with a mosaic from Volubilis representing the goddess Venus sitting inthe back of a ship. This exhibition is enriched with masterpiece objects such as a vase with fish decorations, anEtruscan wine jug, an Egyptian shabti, a Greek lamp, pieces of amphorae, anchors, and an astrolabe. All theseobjects are testimonies of the fertile encounters which had occurred between the local populations and the otherMediterranean civilizations, and put the Tingis Peninsula at the confluence of the maritime roads. Testimonies ofreligious and funeral rites are displayed at the first storey: a life-size scale model of a Phoenician tomb excavated inMghogha’s area, accompanied with the ritual objects it had delivered, the remains of a child inhumed in anamphora, lead sarcophagus, incineration urns found in the necropolis of Marshan, and painted frescoes comingfrom the roman site of Boukhachkhach. “Riad As Sultan”, an Andalousian garden, is ornamented in its middle with awhite marble fountain, and displays an open cast exhibition of marble capitals, heads of wells, and canons.

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The City of Tangier (Tingis/Tanja/Tanger)Tangier was founded in the fourth century BCE as Tingis. An ideal trade centre located on the borderline betweenEurope and Africa, the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, the city is situated at extreme northwest of theMoroccan kingdom, facing across the Straits of Gibraltar toward the Iberian Peninsula. Tangier has long been at thecrossroads of civilizations, a point of intersection for various encounters, coveted by different powers notablyPhoenicians, Romans, Vandals, Spaniards, Portuguese, and English. A few kilometres farther west of Tangier is CapeSpartel and precisely in the Hercules Caves where the legendary hero named Hercules struggled with Anteaus,history and legend are remarkably blended to give the city its mythical proportions. Its geographical location inproximity to Europe has largely affected its fascinating history, making it open to the outside world andtraditionally liberal. In 1471, Portugal invaded the city and made it a defensive fortress against piracy as well asoccasional assaults from Western rivals. In 1661, right after the Restoration of the monarchy in England, Tangierwas given away to King Charles the Second of Britain and Ireland on the occasion of his marriage to the PortuguesePrincess, Catherine of Braganza. In 1684, the British were forced by the troops of Sultan Moulay Ismail to evacuatethe city after destroying the mole and blowing up York Castle in the Kasbah along with other forts. The old medinais still a rich archaeological site that has been permanently occupied and even overpopulated. After the departureof the British, Dar el-Makhzen palace was built upon the ruins of York Castle, and now houses the museum ofMoroccan Art and Antiquities. Even the big Mosque of the medina is built upon the ruins of one of the oldesttemples in the continent.In 1912, the French Protectorate was established in Morocco while ceding the north and the southern Sahara toSpanish power. In 1923 Tangier became an international zone that was politically neutral and economically open.The new statute formalized international control over the 140 square miles that represented the city and itssurroundings. For almost 23 years, Tangier became a notorious dream city and a congregation site for a number ofimportant Western artists, writers, and politicians who fell captive to its magical spell including Henri Matisse,Eugene Delacroix, Walter Harris, Jean Genet, Paul Bowles along with his wife Jane Bowles. During the late fiftiesand sixties, the Beat Generation made a well-worn path to the underground life that marked the international city.Writers such as Brion Gysin, William Burroughs, Tennessee Williams, Allen Ginsberg, Truman Capote, Gregory

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Corso, Ira Cohen, Irving Rosenthal, Gore Vidal, and Alfred Chester all passed through in transit and marked the city’scollective memory. Tangier’s urban tissue is characterized by a strong dualism that includes an old medina withnarrow meandering streets around the big mosque and with quarters for bazaars and artisans organized accordingto activity and craft, and the modern city that has been constructed according to modern architectural norms sincethe internationalization of the city.\

The Conference Daily announcements in real timewww.icpsmorocco.organd on the board at the reception of HOTEL Rif and Spa

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Supporting Committee:

Mohammed Saad Zemmouri (Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at AEU, Tetouan)Mustapha El-Ghachi (Vice Dean, Faculty of Humanites, AEU, Tetouan)Hassan Mniai (Distinguished Professor, faculty of Letters, Fes Dhar L-Mehraz, Morocco)Mohammed Taqqal (Regional Director of the Miniustry of Culture)Aziz Idrissi (Delegate of Culture & Curator of the Kasbah Museum, Tangier)Mohammed KAOUTI (Independent Playwright, Morocco)Hassan Benziyan (Professor, Abdelmalek Essaadi University, Morocco)Redouan El Ayadi (Professor of Discourse Analysis and Translator, Abdelmalek Essaadi University, Morocco)Younes El-Assad Ryani (Professor of Cultural Studies, Abdelmalek Essaadi Uni, Morocco)Mohammed Amanssour (Professor of Arabic Studies, Moulay Ismail University, Morocco)Rachid Daouani (Artiste et Professeur Universitaire, Casablanca, Maroc)

Academic co-conveners:

Christel Weiler, Professor at Institute for theatre science of the Freie Universität Berlin;Marvin Carlson, the Sidney E. Cohn Distinguished Professor of Theatre and Comparative Literature in the Ph.D.Program at the City University of New York Graduate Center, USA;Carol Malt, Museum Curator, Adjunct Professor at the University of West Florida, newspaper columnist specializing inMENA cultural history and Ex-Director of the Art & Culture Center of Hollywood, USA;George F. Roberson, Adjunct Assistant Professor, Geography Human Dimensions Research Cluster, University ofMassachusetts-Amherst, USA;Marjorie Kanter, Author of short literary and poem-like pieces, USA; margiekanter@gmail.comKhalid Amine (Professor at AEU & President of ICPS)

Organizing Committee:

Mustapha Chaouki (Artist & Founding Member of ICPS)Mohammed Boubker (Founding Member of ICPS and its Legal Adviser)Badereddine Charab (Teacher & Founding Member of ICPS)Abdellatif Bakkali (Teacher & Founding Member of ICPS)Mouhssin Abdessadak (Teacher & Founding Member of ICPS)Abdel Aziz Khalili (Designer& Founding Member of ICPS)Said BenAllouch (Teacher & Member of ICPS)Mohammed Zine (Actor & Member of ICPS)Latifa Zaidi (Teacher & volunteer)Nadia Khoumbarek (Teacher & volunteer)Ahmed Faraj Roumani (Poet and Journalist)Jaouad Radouani (Ph. D candidate, Morocco)George Bajalia (Fulbright Scholar, Northwestern University, Illinois, USA)Mohammed Harti (Teacher & Volunteer)Abdelmajid ELSAYD (High school teacher, Member of "MATE")Mohamed ELMEJDKI (High school teacher, Member of "MATE”)& other Volunteers…/…\

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Thanks to

The Ministry of Culture of MoroccoDean of the Faculty of Letters and Human Sciences of Martil

International Research Center "Interweaving Performance Cultures" Freie Universität Berlin Ministry of CultureLa Wilaya de la Région Tanger-Tétouan

Theatre National Mohammed VThe Kasbah Museum of Tangier

Collaborative Media International (CMI)Staff and students of the English Department at AEU

Rawafid Communication et ProductionGoethe Institute Rabat-Casablanca

TALIM - Tangier American Legation Institute for Moroccan StudiesThe Austrian Embassy in Rabat

La Commune Urbaine de la ville de TangerLe Conseil de la Région Tanger-Tétouan

L’Institut Culturel Italien à RabatMr Ahmed Akbib

Faissal AghribNortEvents (Traduction)

AltopressRif SPA HOTEL de Tanger

Librairie les InsolitesLibrairie les Colonnes

Librairie Page ET Plume

Contact: Prof. Dr. Khalid Amine, Conference Convener, Residence Al Andalous N° 11, Rue Birr Anzaran, Tanger 90010, Maroc Adresse: E-mail:khamine55@gmail.com, Tél/Fax: +(212) 539330466, Portable: 0664596791/ Web: www.icpsmorocco.org

© ICP