Not me... a theater performance on the red stage that presents the absurdity of life and its reflection on women

Damascus-SANA

The theatrical performance entitled “Not Me” was mainly based on the original text with the same title by the French writer Samuel Beckett with a combination of two other texts after preparing the harmony of Syrian society through the language of the show produced by the National Theater Directorate of Theaters and Music.

The show belonging to the Monodrama Theater of the Absurd, starring the actress Tulip Hammouda and directed by Ibrahim Gomaa, who also prepared the scenography for it, as part of an attempt to present a perception of the world of distorted illusions and fantasies in a critical manner of reality in a symbolic and semantic way.

At the level of form, the director adopted changing the space of the Al-Hamra Theater so that the show and the audience were on the stage at the same time with new dimensions that reduced the size of the theater to accommodate only fifty spectators, which entered the audience early in a strange and absurd condition that was the condition of theatrical spectacle by conforming with it on its terms with the appearance of a large mouth in the middle The wall came from a projector throughout the show, who would occasionally speak alternately with the actress, forming a narrative case helping to convey the thrust of the show.

The director of the show, Jumaa, said in a statement to SANA: “We started by working on a script that is not me by Beckett, then we took some ideas from two other texts by the same writer, telling about a lonely woman, to satisfy the main theme of the show related to female issues and the madness that afflicts people due to life circumstances, which attracted us to the main text, including It contains ideas suitable for this time.”

And about his lack of reliance on a local text in all the theatrical experiences he presented, Jumaa considered that there is a poverty in local texts, so he quotes foreign texts and every time he resorts to a different method of quoting according to its relevance to the Syrian society and audience.

Director Gomaa pointed out that in every show he presents, he tries to experiment with a new theatrical genre, from kinetic theater to realism, to the theater of the absurd, indicating that the search is still going on until he finds his own style.

It is noteworthy that director Ibrahim Gomaa, a graduate of the Department of Dramatic Studies at the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts in 2013, has performed several shows, the last of which is a show entitled “Suspended” presented on the stage of the Institute of Dramatic Arts.

Mohamed Samir Tahan