The name “Revival” may seem shocking at first glance, but as soon as the curtain falls on the events of the work, the audience is convinced that this is the most appropriate and most expressive idea in this Saudi play, which is currently being shown at the 33rd session of the Cairo International Experimental Theater Festival.
The show goes beyond the literal meaning of the title, which is the pallbearers at the funeral of the dead, to a more philosophical meaning, which is that the living have become the dead themselves, when the world has lost its compass of salvation through conscience and morality, and needs a sincere cry that will bring a moral cry to it. Get back to real life.
The play was distinguished by courage, not only at the level of the title and the intellectual vision adopted by the creators of the work, but also by the dramatic plot, which rebelled against the familiar traditional structure. There is no story that begins, complicates and ends within the growing events, but rather adjacent scenes and overlapping panels that warn of the transformation of everyday life into fear, slow death and everything that robs the eyes of peace and the spirits of joy.
The author of the work, Fahd Rada al-Harithi, considered the choice of title logical because of what has happened over the years in terms of wars, epidemics, political and economic crises, which is a bad sign for people. What if the living became moving coffins, or moving bodies, but they lost passion, hope, and the ability to create their own future.
Al-Harithi added to Asharq al-Awsat: “Death is so strongly present in our modern world that people have come to coexist with it and get used to it, and may sometimes celebrate it more than life itself. Therefore, the question is no longer: how do we die?” Moreover: do we even live?
Al-Harith pointed out that the coffin in the work is not only a symbol of death, as much as it is a symbol of lifeless reality, and therefore the message of the play is harsh and painful, but it is real and irreplaceable, because it proves that the real danger is not that a person dies, but that he becomes a dead person from within.
The play is funded and supported by the Saudi Arabian Theater and Performing Arts Authority and produced by the Taif Theater Troupe.
The cast includes: Badr Al-Ghamdi, Mamdouh Al-Gashmar, Abdul-Wahab Fandi, Adel Al-Harithi, Ahmed Al-Khamri and Matar Al-Sawat, with Abdullah Daari in charge of the lighting design, Sultan Radda providing the music, and the set design is directed by Hassan and the artwork by Ahmham.
The work combines fantasy and tragic atmosphere through successive funeral scenes and funeral processions. However, the dead are not only people, but eternal values that have protected humanity from the threat of destruction, the most prominent of which are truth, goodness and beauty, as well as poetry that touches the heartstrings and which has also become lost.
On whether the author was worried about the effect of this “nightmarish, oppressive” atmosphere on the audience, al-Harith says: “The play is not so crude, but it contains confrontation and movement about life, death and the death of life.
Al-Harithi praised the final image of the show in terms of direction, actors and various scenographic elements, especially lighting, scenery and costumes, noting that “a theatrical text is not written only by the author, because the rest of the working group participates in writing it and its final image with their touch and visual vision, so that everyone becomes a partner for the final product”.
