Artist’s Sanctum

33 min.         Premiere 26. 12. 2020

Theatre, Drama, Theatrical Performance, Participatory Workshop, Community Participation

Cast

Concept: Seba Nasser, Waseem AlBado, and Saleem Asfour

Producer: Studio 8 & Art Vision

Drama specialist: Abdulhadi Alrukb

Performance:

Marah Remawi, Omar Sallam, Mohammad Nasser,

Hosne Jamel, Sara Sa’ed, Dea’a Alhmoud,

Omar Yassin, Rakan Alhmoud,

Bashar Smerat, Mohammad Aydi, Esra’a Mousa

Light design: Maher Jaryan

Videography, video editing: Wa’ed Almahameed, Xiaoman Ren

Photography: Xiaoman Ren, Reema Shatat

This production has been realized as part of “Choreography Creation Camp” (CCC) organized by Studio 8, with the support of Drosos Foundation, EUNIC Jordan and European Union in Jordan.

“This performance is a try-out of a program called ‘TheaDonce for Youth’ we plan to develop. We envision this program to include theater, dance and music, using a participatory approach to invite young people from various communities across Jordan to co-create an art work, and tell their stories.”

— Art Vision (Concept)

The Process

This project is created by three young artists Seba Nasser, Waseem AlBado, and Saleem Asfour, who founded a multidisciplinary collective call “Art Vision”. To conceptualize this project, Art Vision has conducted a series of movement exploration sessions in September, 2020, which resulted a six minutes of dance trio. Based on this experience, Art Vision designed a 10-session-participartory-workshops for members of the public.

Through an open call, 11 participants for the workshops were selected. From 7th of November to 28th of November, these 11 participants were lead by Art Vision, and external drama specialist Abdulhadi Alrukb, video maker Wa’ed Almahameed, went through basic acting trainings, script development, in-progress rehearsal and on-stage rehearsals for more than 40 hours. The result of the workshops is a 30-minute-play, which has music and dance elements, called “Artist’s Sanctum”, exploring the subject of the rights to liberty of opinion, expression and association of young people in Jordan. The play was premiered on 26th of November of 2021, at Osama Mashini Theatre, Amman. A small group invited audiences were present at the premiere. Art Vision, and the performers of the play had a short Q&A session with the audiences. The general feedback was positive.

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The Performers

Noticeably, many of the performers who took part in this project had never participated in theatre production and performance making before. When the play ended, the performers were given a certificate that indicates they completed the production. In an informal reflection photo shooting and reflection session after the paly, many of the performers said they believe taking part in this kind of projects benefits them in various aspects in life, such as personal development, self-esteem, self-reliance, self-worth, confidence, responsibility, heightened awareness, deeper consciousness, better and broader social skills, tolerance, understanding, friendship, romance, community development, group dynamic, cross-cultural exchange, and collective identity.

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A special thanks to Osama Mashini Theatre, Maher Jaryan, and Seenaryo which is a leading specialist in participatory theatre and play-based teaching for marginalised communities in Lebanon and Jordan.

What is most remarkable is that Seba Nasser, Waseem AlBado, Saleem Asfour, and videographer Wa’ed Almahameed had been documenting the entire process and created an Instagram account to share the highlight videos, short interviews, and practice photos to public. For the performance, Art Vision has also designed its own poster of the piece, business card of the collective and shared them with invited small group of audiences. Art Vision is planning on developing its own website, social channels, and more of its programs.