Project Summary

Eyad Houssami presented two projects at March Meeting 2011: the book Doomed by Hope and the non-profit theatre organisation Masrah Ensemble—presented to the public for the first time. The new organisation proposed many programmes, including audience workshops in Beirut that would draw together students to go to theatre, dance and visual arts events; the production of an amateur publication to present the responses of workshop participants; a multilingual production of August Wilson’s Fences (1983), which Houssami believes is relevant to the current status of migrant labour in the Middle East; and a three-day international workshop in 2012 with artists, theatre-makers and scholars with a view to creating new work. Houssami presented the concepts of Masrah Ensemble at March Meeting to seek feedback and proposals, as well as recommendations for suitable board members to help take the organisation forward.

Presentation Proposal

Doomed by Hope is a book of Arabic and English essays on contemporary theatre and performance. The artists and scholars of Arab theatre today are an international, multilingual and multigenerational group. Doomed by Hope provides an unprecedented bilingual platform for the voices of this diverse cultural and intellectual field. The collection is edited by Eyad Houssami (Beirut), Marie Elias (Damascus), Marvin Carlson (New York City) and Nehad Selaiha (Cairo). The Prince Claus Fund Library has pledged support for the book. The project is inspired by Saadallah Wannous who in 1996 delivered the international message ‘Thirst for Dialogue’ for World Theatre Day. He mourned the traumatic effects of globalisation on theatre and culture, but he insisted on theatre’s necessity and on the promise of the future in saying, ‘We are doomed by hope.

Speaker

Eyad Houssami studied theatre and political science at Yale University. He makes and writes about theatre. He works with Solidere, researching the urban and commercial history of Beirut city centre. He has directed great works of American and European theatre at Yale; performed in dead Byzantine cities in Syria; hosted cabarets in Beirut; written a trilingual monodrama and produced it in a 13th century mansion; and most recently his play, Mama Butterfly, received a staged reading in New York. As a researcher he has presented at conferences in South Africa and Korea and has published in peer-reviewed academic journals, newspapers, and magazines. A recipient of Rotary, Fulbright and Yale fellowships, he also co-chaired an international Yale Arab Alumni Association conference on urban sustainability at the American University of Beirut in 2009.

December 2011

Subjects: Artist Projects