Bringing back the darkness

A few hours before his show's eighth performance at Toronto's Luminato festival, Tim Supple is trying to explain to me, 6,000 miles away, why it's so important to realise the difference between the Arabian Nights and the 1001 Nights. The Arabian Nights, it turns out, is the version we're accustomed to. "It's familiar from the panto, Disney, Hollywood, Indian cinema," Supple says, panting a little as he scurries from a taxi to a meeting. 

Whether we picture Disney's giant blue genie or an Ottoman palace guard with harem pants and a scimitar, it's the Arabian Nights we're thinking of. All those, Supple says, are "false images." When the ancient stories of Shahrazad and the 1001 Nights were first recorded, in 9th century Baghdad, they were violent, bloody. You’d never learn from the Arabian Nights, for example, that Shahrazad was raped.  

"These are stories from an oral tradition – of course they’re open to change, adaptation, addition. But you miss out the strong sexual content, the vivid and extreme violence and harshness which are both in the nature of folk stories and the nature of the times in which they emerged."

So Supple set out to stage a version of the Nights which captured their original bloody immediacy. He would omit both the sentiment and the scimitars. His actors would be the real deal, the best artists the fertile crescent could produce, while to get a sense of the hugeness of the text from which the work is drawn, the performance would be a marathon – five hours long, spread over two nights and performed, in part, in the language in which it was written.

Above all, he would bring back the darkness. The rape scene is in; and while there are moments of black comedy, giant blue genies are most definitely out. The vision was to restore the original spirit of the Nights. 

But when Supple tells me how he pursued that vision, it’s clear that in some ways he's an heir to the orientalists who helped give us such a wonky idea of the tales in the first place – especially where the question of recruitment was concerned. Generations ago, eager Europeans went to the exotic East and brought back the tales in the romantic, kohl-eyed form we recognise today; in the summer of 2009, the 21^st century impresario went on a grand tour of the region, seeking out its artists, and inviting them to participate in theatrical workshops.

"It wasn't a holiday," Supple says when I suggest to him that this trip sounds rather fun. "This was very hard work."

Hundreds of actors attended his workshops across North Africa, in the Levant and the Gulf. Supple invited the ones that fit best back for another, longer workshop. And another. So it went on, for months, until his cast was ready: 19 actors and performers from around the Middle East. 

It was a year before they all got down to work. Originally the rehearsals were planned for Cairo, but the cast was relocated to the ancient Moroccan city of Fes when revolution got in the way. Supple set his cast to poring over Hanan al-Shaykh's new translation of the text in an effort to boil away their preconceived notions of the story until they were left with something more vital. 

"What I was doing with actors was trying to look into what it's about, and trying to find the form that it could exist in onstage.” 

When I speak to Supple the show is nearing the end of its debut run. After a couple of slightly strained reviews (consensus: the first night's great; so great, in fact, that bringing everybody back for a second is over-egging things a little) he's keen to point out that his play is still evolving, still "a work in progress." 

The difficulty, he says, "is partly the scale. When you do something this ambitious, you do run a greater risk of making something that does not make simple sense."

There's another risk, too: one which can't afflict many theatremakers, but a familiar one for anybody who has travelled in the Middle East. Visa trouble. Soon after my conversation with Supple, six members of Supple's cast, mostly Syrians, were unable to get their passports stamped to let them into America. The next stage on the Nights' journey—the Shakespeare Theatre in Chicago—fell through, leaving an uncomfortable six-week gap in the company's touring calendar.

19 actors, three languages, six hours – and that's not to mention the £1 million the show cost to produce: Supple's method clearly isn't to achieve beauty through pruning and paring down like mamy of his contemporaries. He would rather make something huge, messy and ultimately—touch wood—transcendent. He's quick to stamp on my suggestion that the sheer logistical difficulty of putting together a show like this must have left him wondering now and then about taking on something easier next time.

"No, no. It will be a major project. I don't want to accept the fashionable idea that theatre is better when it's small and neat." 

"I want to keep exploring the..." He tails off for a moment, a second's pause which becomes three seconds as his breath is transmitted across the Atlantic: "...exploring the large possibilities of the world."

Houda Echouafni - Shahrazad

It's very daunting: it's such a legendary, well-known role, both in the Arab world and elsewhere. It's very important to make the role as original as possible and show the vulnerability at the heart of her situation. Every night is a struggle for her.

When I first met Tim I was doing a play based in Palestine. That was 2009, a year before the rehearsals started. I didn't think much about it. I did the workshops but didn't expect it to go anywhere. That went on for months. But after the fourth workshop, we all stayed for a week, 70 actors from around the world. Then he picked 20 of us for the show. None of us knew which role we would end up taking – we practised all of them.

Toronto was epic – literally epic. It was incredible to see people sit trough six hours and then say "we loved it."

Getting into America is a long process for certain Arabs and it became obvious that Chicago wasn't going to work out. The six cast members couldn't get their visas; it was impossible. We were all excited after Canada, our emotions had started going, so we were so disappointed. 

Now the next time we'll perform the show is in Edinburgh. And after that, it'll be my life for two or three years if people want to come and see our show. I won't get a chance to do anything like this again. 

Amnesty and the Arab Spring

Amnesty International are not only back at the festival this year, but are back to celebrate 50 years of fighting for freedom around the world. Their programme, celebrating freedom of expression in the arts, focuses squarely on the upheaval in the Middle East-North Africa region.

The Arab cast of 1001 Nights face a dilemma as they prepare for months, perhaps years, of touring. They have the privilege—or duty—of presenting a crucial element of their cultural heritage to audiences across the world, but the pride will be tempered by the knowledge that while in the West, they are missing a turning point in the history of their homelands. 

Even more frustrating is the fact that the play could not be performed in the many of the countries the stories come from. The Middle East's more conservative regimes would censor the show for its sexual content – and for this production, censorship is not something worth considering.

Many Middle Eastern artists can't opt out of censorship, or even persecution: they are facts of life, to be either yielded to or challenged. 

Ayat al-Qarmezi, a 20-year-old poet, student and activist from Bahrain's majority Shi'ite population, took the latter option. She knew the likely consequences when she read out a poem critical of the king of Bahrain at a pro-reform rally in Bahrain's capital, Manama, in February. "We are the people who will kill humiliation and assassinate misery," she recited. "Don't you hear their cries, don't you hear their screams?" 

She turned herself in to the authorities at the end of March when masked police threatened to kill her brothers. She wasn't allowed to communicate with her family for a fortnight, and was allegedly tortured in captivity. On June 12 she was sentenced to a year in prison for "participating in illegal protests, disrupting public security and inciting hatred towards the regime." Amnesty International made al-Qarmezi the focus of their Protect the Human campaign.

As Fest went to print, al-Qarmezi was released along with 200 other activists, but only after signing a document promising not to repeat her offences. Her defiant response? "I am not afraid to speak out. I have something to say and I won't be afraid of a paper I signed."