Migration and Memory: Displacement Narratives of Syrian Refugees Women on Stage

This paper focuses on different theatrical experiences that, through re-enactments of memories of a near past, intend to give a response to the current events in Syria. These experiences replay, on the one hand, the memories of Syrian women refugees living in Amman and in the Sabra, Shatila, and Bourj el-Barajneh refugee camps in Lebanon and, on the other hand, the personal stories of arbitrarily detained and sometimes tortured victims of the Syrian security forces. The paper will mainly draw attention to four theatrical experiences: the “Syria Trojan Women Project” (http://www.syriatrojanwomen.org) that began by creating drama workshops in Amman, Jordan in autumn 2013, with a group of Syrian women, all of whom were refugees living in Amman under the direction of Omar Abusaada (the process became a documentary film, Queens of Syria by Yasmin Fedda); “Antigone of Syria” (http://www.apertaproductions.org/current-project/), an eight-week drama workshop with 35 Syrian women that culminated in three performances at al-Madina Theatre in Beirut in December 2014; “66 Minutes in Damascus”, devised by Lebanese director Lucien Bourjeily on 2012, where the audience is plunged into a recreation of what it might be like to be detained in Syria; and “Can You Please Look Into the Camera” by Syrian playwright Mohammad al-Attar. The central issue of the paper is to examine how real-life testimonials and subjective experiences become art practices and theatrical performances in a particular style of Arab theatre that is becoming very common these days.