Theatre
Rituals of Signs and Transformations
طقوس الإشارات والتحولات
Saadallah Wannous · 1996
Synopsis
A ritual for a metamorphosis: Damascus, in the 1860s. The city's mufti carries out a scheme to consolidate his power. The provost, arrested with a courtesan, must be pulled out of this scandal: the mufti proposes to his wife, Mou'mina, that she take the prisoner's place so as to make people believe in a police error. From this substitution other metamorphoses are born: the woman of high society wants to become a courtesan, a notable turns into a mystic vagabond, and a man discovers a passion for another man.
Context
The play appears in Arabic in 1994, when its author knows himself to be ill, and Nidal al-Achkar premieres it in 1996 at the al-Madina theatre in Beirut, in his presence. Translated by Rania Samara, it appears in French the same year from Sindbad and Actes Sud-Papiers. In 2013, staged by Sulayman al-Bassam, it becomes the first Arab theatre text to be entered in the Comédie-Française repertoire; English has given it in a selection of the work published at Yale in 2019.
Who it is for
A large-scale play, whose freedom on religion, power and desire may come as a surprise; the Ottoman setting is understood without preparation.
Prizes and reception
Regarded as its author's most famous play and as a masterpiece of Arab theatre, it has been staged in Cairo, Beirut and Paris.