I had been in Damascus for two weeks when I met her. Had gone through the various stages of hyper-adaptation that presumably one goes through when setting foot in the oldest continually inhabited city on our planet after having lived in Toronto for the last twenty years. Toronto was founded in 1793, by the way. Damascus has been lived in continually for the last 5,000 years. That’s a lot of history to smack your face against.
At the moment I met Noura Murad, I was struggling with the invisible signs my body was sending out without my explicit approval. This is not as metaphysical as it sounds. I was simply annoyed that men kept stopping me on the street to welcome me to Damascus. How did they know I was not from there? I bought clothes from the Stefanel a few doors down from my apartment. I was born 1492km and three border crossings away. That’s like driving from Toronto to New York…twice. So my physical appearance is not that different from the people of the land. However, I did not realize my body language screamed ‘Foreigner!’ louder than my familiarity with traffic chaos, non-elected leaders, and taste for black olives and salty cheese sighed ‘aaaahhh…I’m home!’. Thankfully, I lived on one of the busiest street in the city and so I spend hours observing people hanging out from my 3rd floor balcony.
The first thing I noticed was that in terms of clothing (costumes?) women were very much ‘women’, and men were very much ‘men’. Not a lot of androgyny or gender-neutral clothing items going on here. Then I noticed that women took up space in a very different way than men did. Men hung out and watched, while women were the ones being watched. Women went out with a purpose: they shopped, they walked to a destination. I have neither the space nor the desire to detail the cultural practices in the public sphere of urban (and mostly well-off) Damascenes. Books such as Secret Life of Syrian Lingerie by Malu Halasa and Rana Salam attempt to document some interesting and observable details.
As I was in the midst of attempting to decipher this puzzle, I met Noura across the table at a very smoky café. Her hair was cut short, no gel or product. No makeup. Sleeveless shirt showed off the tone and muscle of someone whose body is their instrument. She pulled out a package of tobacco and started rolling herself a cigarette. We started talking, maybe out of politeness, maybe out of curiosity, and I confessed my struggle to override my body language. She told me she was the Artistic Director of Leish Troupe, a local movement theatre company, and that her latest project aimed to pull apart and question the construction of gender in the Arab world. Hmm…nothing is ever a coincidence in this world, now is it?
A few days later I was in the old city, in an old home that had been converted into a theatre / performance / studio space. Actors had come from all over Syria to take an intensive workshop led by Noura on movement. My Arabic did not extend much beyond the point of paying for food, drink, and taxis, but words were not necessary to understand that inside the studio, Noura had built a space of profound transformation, exploration, and deconstruction of that which we take for granted.
Founded some 11 years ago by Noura, Leish Troupe aims to create a Movement Theatre vocabulary that’s particular to the current regional context. The first work of its kind in Syria, Leish aims to identify “the symbols we use to construct the sentences, paragraphs, and eventually the stories of our lives here and now. The methodology used is the auto portrait, which accesses the personal stories, emotions, and body language of the performers and engages them as collaborators in the creative act of constructing the performance. Our work demonstrates the dynamic search for expression between performers (actors, dancers, singers, and musicians) and artists, designers, and the audience, aiming to dissolve the traditional boundary between observer and observed.” (www.leishtroupe.com)
Spear-headed by Noura, Leish has an ambitious 10-year plan of research and performances entitled the Identities Project (2006 – 2016). “Identities Project is a multidisciplinary research project working to define a Movement Theatre vocabulary which is relevant to the contemporary lived experience of people living in the Arab world.” (www.leishtroupe.com). Their latest performance entitled Congratulations! is the second performance of this project and explores the socio-religious construction of gender in contemporary Arab societies through the wedding ritual.
Aside from the religious forces which drive the public and private spheres in Syria, we are all superficially familiar with the restrictions which shape the political and cultural realms. Much has been written on this topic, much of this writing is uninformed at best, and I wish you all good luck in finding something which at least doesn’t shy away from declaring its left/right leanings and admitting its agenda. Such a context of obtaining official ministry permits for any and all artistic endeavours surely influences the kind of art that is produced. Some time ago, my use of the word ‘evade’ when it came to censorship was objected to. “We don’t evade,” I was told. “The conditions shape our art, become part of it.”
Then I remembered subtlety and nuance. How much more complex and layered art was under the Communist government of my home country than under today’s hyper-Capitalism. Perceived freedom makes us lazy. Overt restrictions make us think.
For those of us who don’t speak Arabic, Leish (ليش ) means Why.
For more info, www.leishtroupe.com
