The Speaker’s Progress

About.

The Speaker’s Progress , 2011-12

Written & Directed by Sulayman Al Bassam

Dramaturgy & Editor- Georgina Van Welie

Running time, 90 minutes without interval
Performed in Arabic and English (with surtitles)

Premiere: at the Al Maidan Cultural Centre, Kuwait.

US Premiere: Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM) New York, USA.

Kuwait, Beirut, New York, Boston, Tunis, Cairo, Amsterdam.

In a totalitarian state, somewhere in the Arab World apparently inured to the changes sweeping across the region, all forms of theatre and public gatherings have recently been banned. But a condemned 1960’s performance of Twelfth Night has become the focal point for resistance blogs and underground, dissident social networks. The state, eager to quell this dangerous mixture of nostalgia and dissent commissions The Speaker, a once radical theatre maker now turned regime apologist, to make a forensic reconstruction and public denunciation of the 1960’s piece. As The Speaker and his group of non-acting volunteers delve deeper into the ‘reconstruction’, they find themselves increasingly engaged with the condemned material they are supposed to be condemning and discover in the act of performance – and the growing complicity of their audience – a solidarity that transforms the gathering into an unequivocal act of defiance towards the state.

A dark satire on the decades of hopelessness and political inertia that have fed recent revolts across the Arab region. A daring theatrical metaphor for the mechanisms of dissent.