Based on the pain of exile and leaving one's homeland, the play 'Ash' leans on the nostalgia and suffering of those forced to travel, clinging to memory just as ash clings to the remnants of a fire. The play, presented on the sixth day of the Dubai Youth Theatre Festival, organized under the umbrella of the Dubai Youth Performing Arts Festival and produced by 'Art Moves', combines text and body theatre based on expressive dance. It speaks a physical language that transcends linguistic boundaries, offering a journey that combines movement, human fragility, memory, and what we leave behind.
The stage is completely devoid of any decorations. A girl enters carrying her suitcase and stands in the center, announcing her decision to leave. She then begins to unpack the pain she carries inside her, revealing emotional layers in her monologue that turn this departure into a full play of questions. The body and expressive dance are the main drivers of the performance, supported by lighting that floods the stage. The text, based on confession rather than dialogue, supports the bodies that speak in all forms of pain and breakdown.
A language that tells a story, and a body that screams. The theater fills with the girl's emotions as she carries a suitcase packed with a past, photos, and memories that never fade. In the following scenes, she encounters two young men: the first embodies the past she tries to escape, and the second embodies the future that calls to her. The young man embodying the past conveys severe emotions; he stands behind her, close to suffocation, and reaches out every time she tries to move forward. His performance carries the rigor of memories that expose our fragility, no matter how we try to escape. The future, however, is embodied in an expressive language that shows it as a long shadow seeking recognition, a suspended space, or an incomplete possibility. His performance carries the state of confusion the girl is in. The trio on stage (Maram Ismail, Basel Anid, Bashar Azam) succeeded in transforming the psychological conflict into a living struggle on stage, embodied in the positioning of the bodies, the space, and the light that breaks on each character in emotionally charged scenes.
Perhaps the departure is not the main driver of the work, despite the suitcase that titled the show from the beginning, but it is nostalgia itself that hinders the concept of departure, even if the past was not beautiful. The play succeeded in avoiding a melodramatic perspective, offering a realistic pain without exaggeration—the pain of one seeking hope amidst a pile of suspended memories that hinder their progress.
Expressive dance was the main driver of the play. It is a language that requires no translation, and through it, the actors on stage embodied all the meanings of suffocation, breakdown, and nostalgia, as well as attempts at liberation through repeated performative movements that put the audience in direct contact with the body. The dances translated the girl's attempts to free herself from the hands of the past, to answer the call of the future and recognize it, and her entry into a stage of wandering, unable to leave or draw closer.
Despite the simplicity of the tools it relies on, the play explores the fragility of a person when uprooted, without falling into self-pity or showcasing pain. It appeared as a complete theatrical canvas. All these emotions culminate in the final dance scene, which begins with body gestures, transitions to the debke with all its symbolism of connection to the homeland, and ends as it began: the girl carrying her suitcase, remaining suspended in her ash, but building a state of peace with the past and future.
The author and director Sherine Shoufi spoke about this work to 'Emirates Today' and said: 'I tried to present the concept of exile when we are forced to leave our homeland and remain suspended in memories and family. It mirrors our experience in Syria and everything we went through, especially since, despite entering a new reality, we remain burdened with this internal conflict and nostalgia.' She added: 'I relied on movement because I see dance not just as an aesthetic means, but as something that can carry many vocabularies. The body, through gestures, offers a language that everyone can understand.' As for the abandonment of microphones that negatively affected the sound reaching the audience at several points in the performance, Shoufi noted that it was due to the strong movements of the actors and the lack of technologies that would allow their use without being attached to the actors, explaining that the play relied more on dance than text and can be captured without language.
Meanwhile, actress Maram Ismail noted that the role she played touches many people, especially as it embodies the conflict a human being experiences in exile, trying not to reject the future without leaving the past. She noted that the challenges in theatrical work are always present and allow the actor to be challenged and give their best, praising the festival and the support it offers to youth.
The Pearl Diver nStudents of the Academy of Performing Arts presented the play 'The Pearl Diver' on the sixth day of the Dubai Youth Theatre Festival. It is adapted from the book of the same name by author Julia Johnson, in which the author follows the journey of Said in diving, which faces many difficulties, including waves and sharks. The play delves into the depths of pearl diving and the seas, presenting the most important aspects of this profession that our fathers relied on. Johnson said to 'Emirates Today': 'I wrote this book 23 years ago because I couldn't find a novel for children about diving and pearl diving. And this is the first time the book has been adapted into a play. I was happy to see the performance in this form and with this beautiful directorial vision.'
