Yesterday, I was at the all-you-can-eat dinner for the Caribbean Student Association (CSA), where I remembered to pay a boy $20 for a book I had borrowed from him last year but then forgot to read, or return. This inspired me to fulfill the other random promises that I have made over time. Last year, I saw a Tisch play with a friend with whom who I promised to share my thoughts. I found the assignment in my old files. He doesn't read the blog, but I posted it up anyway.
11.22.04
The Princess is Waiting
Written by Salal Abdel-Sabur
The eye is centered in an arched window. Wrapped in hieroglyphics, the words engraved around the window pane read: Theater, Truths, Sight, History, Illusion, Reality, Justice, Repetition, Death.
The pamphlet for student production “The Princess is Waiting” included a drawing of an one-dimensional eye around an elaborate panel of symbols and letters. The nine words that surround the eye are significant to the play, which grapples with issues of feminism and the Arab World. Directed by Naila Al-Atrash, a professor of acting from Damascus, “The Princess is Waiting” unravels the complexities of womanhood. In particular, the play explores the women’s performative roles—as traitors, lovers, mourners, and daughters.
The play begins with the sound of mourning in Arabic. Of course the lush, translucent voice sings of what I cannot know, the weeping-like quality of her voice elicits feelings of pain and loss. The lighting finally focuses on a wooden door, the gateway into a woman’s consciousness. Three maids, Maftoura, Birra and Um Al Khair are setting the table, awaiting their beloved princess, who is greeted by their incessant praises. At one point, the four women sit at a table and laugh in sync. But with the mention of an unsolicited memory (one woman asks, Do you remember?), the women cannot perform this basic task of laughing. They cannot pretend to carry on in mirth and happiness, frolicking around in their modest flowing gowns. After several attempts at laughter, the women finally succeed in laughing but the laughter quickly becomes wailing. They laugh. Then they cry. The transition from laughter to lament is quick, effortless, almost the same. The pitches in the women’s voices change, and their faces contort differently, but the laughter and the wail happen in the same breath.
Just as there is little separating a cry from a cheer, there is fluidity in the way the women perform their roles. The princess is perhaps the most complicated of characters. She is the princess but she is also a lady in mourning her father’s murder. She is complicit in the murder because she leads her lover to her father. Thus she is a princess, a lover, a traitor, and not least of all, a lady. One dialogue suggests that she may even flirt with madness:
What makes this dialogue poignant is the fact that there is no carriage. The women are hiding, it seems, in a small cottage in the forest. The princess’s thinking that she has access to the luxuries of her palace suggest that she has not yet come to terms with her father’s murder. Indeed, the women all pretend to forget, to suppress their memory of what happened, how they are all complicit in murder. They perform their roles as women but do not remember What it is that commands them to perform these roles. Moreover, it is the princess’s love that blinds her. She is duped by her lover into forgetting her role as daughter, as princess.
The notion of performativities arises in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, in which Judith Butler discusses the performative quality of gender. She insists that gendered identity is a social construct that exits because of repetitions of ordinary daily activities—in this case, setting the table, cleaning the cottage, preparing the princess’s baths. Butler argues that nothing is natural, not even sexual identity. Butler argues that anatomical differences can be experienced through the categories and expectations set out by the culture’s signifying order, and that sexual desire happens only between the binaries of men and women.
Desire functions on two levels. First, there’s the desire between the lover and the princess which results in murder and a transgression of Natural law (murder is always a sin). Then there’s the desire to remember one’s origins, one’s original lover or Creator. The prologue in Heaven, where God creates human beings to worship and remember Him, dictates that human beings possess a priori knowledge of God (in Arabic the term is taqwa). Desire, then, to know the Creator is a transcendental quest, one that defines human existence. The play vaguely touches on the notion of transcendental love and Sufi elements of spirituality. Perhaps desire lies in knowing one’s function or role, especially that for women in Muslim society.
The play ends with the princess asserting her femininity, declaring herself a lady, remembering her role as a lady. She may have worn different identity tags—as a lover, as a traitor, as a mourner, and as a daughter—but ultimately she is a lady. The director introduces modernity, too, into the play: the princess walks off the stage and is replaced by a woman in a tank top and high heeled boots; the maids, too, strip off their gowns and reveal the tank tops underneath. The ending was disturbing because the role of women cannot be categorically limited to the way one dresses. The inner psychology of the heart and the mind reveal much more about the role of women than does the simple act of stripping one’s clothes. Truly, theater allows for an open window into the vistas of possibility, especially in considering a woman’s place in society. The tropes of women as traitor, lover, daughter, and mourner are simply part of a larger package of womanhood.
11.22.04
The Princess is Waiting
Written by Salal Abdel-Sabur
The eye is centered in an arched window. Wrapped in hieroglyphics, the words engraved around the window pane read: Theater, Truths, Sight, History, Illusion, Reality, Justice, Repetition, Death.
The pamphlet for student production “The Princess is Waiting” included a drawing of an one-dimensional eye around an elaborate panel of symbols and letters. The nine words that surround the eye are significant to the play, which grapples with issues of feminism and the Arab World. Directed by Naila Al-Atrash, a professor of acting from Damascus, “The Princess is Waiting” unravels the complexities of womanhood. In particular, the play explores the women’s performative roles—as traitors, lovers, mourners, and daughters.
The play begins with the sound of mourning in Arabic. Of course the lush, translucent voice sings of what I cannot know, the weeping-like quality of her voice elicits feelings of pain and loss. The lighting finally focuses on a wooden door, the gateway into a woman’s consciousness. Three maids, Maftoura, Birra and Um Al Khair are setting the table, awaiting their beloved princess, who is greeted by their incessant praises. At one point, the four women sit at a table and laugh in sync. But with the mention of an unsolicited memory (one woman asks, Do you remember?), the women cannot perform this basic task of laughing. They cannot pretend to carry on in mirth and happiness, frolicking around in their modest flowing gowns. After several attempts at laughter, the women finally succeed in laughing but the laughter quickly becomes wailing. They laugh. Then they cry. The transition from laughter to lament is quick, effortless, almost the same. The pitches in the women’s voices change, and their faces contort differently, but the laughter and the wail happen in the same breath.
Just as there is little separating a cry from a cheer, there is fluidity in the way the women perform their roles. The princess is perhaps the most complicated of characters. She is the princess but she is also a lady in mourning her father’s murder. She is complicit in the murder because she leads her lover to her father. Thus she is a princess, a lover, a traitor, and not least of all, a lady. One dialogue suggests that she may even flirt with madness:
Princess: Um Al Khair, have you readied the carriage?
Third Maid: The carriage, your highness?
Princess: Never mind, I’ll walk through the forest pathways till the castle gates. I’ll enter the courtyard of my Palace on foot.
What makes this dialogue poignant is the fact that there is no carriage. The women are hiding, it seems, in a small cottage in the forest. The princess’s thinking that she has access to the luxuries of her palace suggest that she has not yet come to terms with her father’s murder. Indeed, the women all pretend to forget, to suppress their memory of what happened, how they are all complicit in murder. They perform their roles as women but do not remember What it is that commands them to perform these roles. Moreover, it is the princess’s love that blinds her. She is duped by her lover into forgetting her role as daughter, as princess.
The notion of performativities arises in Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, in which Judith Butler discusses the performative quality of gender. She insists that gendered identity is a social construct that exits because of repetitions of ordinary daily activities—in this case, setting the table, cleaning the cottage, preparing the princess’s baths. Butler argues that nothing is natural, not even sexual identity. Butler argues that anatomical differences can be experienced through the categories and expectations set out by the culture’s signifying order, and that sexual desire happens only between the binaries of men and women.
Desire functions on two levels. First, there’s the desire between the lover and the princess which results in murder and a transgression of Natural law (murder is always a sin). Then there’s the desire to remember one’s origins, one’s original lover or Creator. The prologue in Heaven, where God creates human beings to worship and remember Him, dictates that human beings possess a priori knowledge of God (in Arabic the term is taqwa). Desire, then, to know the Creator is a transcendental quest, one that defines human existence. The play vaguely touches on the notion of transcendental love and Sufi elements of spirituality. Perhaps desire lies in knowing one’s function or role, especially that for women in Muslim society.
The play ends with the princess asserting her femininity, declaring herself a lady, remembering her role as a lady. She may have worn different identity tags—as a lover, as a traitor, as a mourner, and as a daughter—but ultimately she is a lady. The director introduces modernity, too, into the play: the princess walks off the stage and is replaced by a woman in a tank top and high heeled boots; the maids, too, strip off their gowns and reveal the tank tops underneath. The ending was disturbing because the role of women cannot be categorically limited to the way one dresses. The inner psychology of the heart and the mind reveal much more about the role of women than does the simple act of stripping one’s clothes. Truly, theater allows for an open window into the vistas of possibility, especially in considering a woman’s place in society. The tropes of women as traitor, lover, daughter, and mourner are simply part of a larger package of womanhood.
oh, but i do read the blog...sometimes.
ReplyDeletevery well written. although, i would've appreciated it a little sooner after the play since i forgot most of it...
maybe there needs to be either 1) more plays or 2) better follow-ups
ReplyDelete:)