A friend of mine was recently bemoaning the fact that these days, plays go on for ages. After watching Imam Hussein, I just had to SMS him. Here’s one that finished in less than an hour!
Admittedly, having adjusted my own body clock to these two-, three-hour creatures, it took a while to register, as the lights went up, that I had just watched a play that said what it wanted to say in all of 50 minutes.
What Corposcopio Teatro’s Imam Hussein was saying and what I came out with, however, were two different things.
It’s a very unusual play for me, and I suspect the rest of my fellow audience members. A quiet, unassuming story relating to the aftermath of a historical event in Islam – done in Spanish by Mexicans for Mexicans. The title refers to the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson and Shiite martyr who was killed in the Battle of Karbala (the original one in the same Iraqi city and not the one at the start of the US’ war on Iraq).
We’re told of the story of two survivors, his sister Zeinab, who is consumed by a desire to keep the memory of the tragedy alive – by making sure Hussein’s daughter, Sekina, doesn’t forget her roots. The thing is, Sekina’s a 17-year-old teenager. And anyone who’s ever met a willful teenager knows that they’re nobody’s son or daughter.
Imam Hussein unfolds as a slow and steady verbal sparring between the two, and what made it quite popular in Mexico (according to director Felipe Cervera, it ran on and off for a little less than a year) was the wallop right at the end – as a barrage of images of atrocities from Mexico’s history flash before us, from its colonial wounds to its ongoing, debilitating war against drug cartels.
According to Cervera, it was a huge jolt for Mexican audiences expecting to watch a “Muslim play” to all of a sudden be confronted with their own violent, tragic history.
And here, I’m thinking, is where things get interesting in a different way.
It’s the first time they’re showing it outside of Mexico and like me, I’m pretty sure the audience tonight was also expecting a “Muslim play”. But unlike in Catholic Mexico, Islam is not an alien religion here. What’s unknown to us is the very thing that gave the knock-out punch to its original intended audience – Mexico’s drug war, its traumatic history against Spanish conquistadors. (Drugs in Singapore? What’s that?)
Add to that the fact that the structure of the piece itself lends to that swift, unexpected twist in the end to shock and, well, it doesn’t turn out as intended. (It also underscores the iconic power of images and also its cultural limitations and specificities – while instantly having an impact on Mexicans who connect with these as part of their lives, they were reduced to somewhat familiar but nonetheless distant codes of oppression).
That’s not to say the reactions weren’t interesting, as some audience members during the talkback session were perturbed by the portrayal of these historico-religious figures – these commonly-held personas championing messages of peace, as has been taught to them – as slightly more vindictive, in a sense more human, manner. Not as Sekina the great-granddaughter of the Prophet Muhammad but Sekina the stubborn teen with cropped hair.
Which in turn brings up questions regarding the treatment of figures, events and places that are historically and culturally important to a certain group of people by another group with a more detached perspective. Very interesting, to say the least.
And all that in less than an hour!
(There’s one more show on Wednesday night. Details here.)
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