You enter the campus of the Lebanese University in Hadat, and the most striking thing is the withering of its green open spaces. Graduates of the pre-pandemic years may have witnessed this chaos, but not to this extent. The situation is reminiscent of destruction on many levels, including bureaucracy, visual pollution of party slogans, and so on. It is customary for graduate students in the theater department, in the first department, to present their graduation performances in a room or small “studio” instead of on stage in Beirut. In this room you can see the students now preparing the stage design and conducting technical rehearsals to perform more than one performance spread over several days in a row due to the small capacity of the auditorium. The actors sweat with worry, tension and the power of the light falling on their faces. But another reason why they are sweating this year is the lack of air conditioning due to the heat of the weather. The show will begin and the audience will live an unprecedented “cool” experience with “fans” holding hands to watch the show, which lasts for almost two hours. At the beginning of the performance, the power went out, and it wasn’t the first time, because it happens to students all the time.
The emergency is about to begin. More like a holiday carnival. The juxtaposition of dance scenes, gestures, body expressions, oral and classical texts preserves the text of Camus’s high literary skill. The old people of the city, its fishermen and doctors testified in amazement about the death of their “clown”. The sea inspires them to dance, even though their lives are “tired” in a city full of bureaucracy, judicial corruption, and Jewish spiritual judgments. The text passes, with kinetic constructions, in a well thought out “mezencen”. Team spirit is high and palpable, a driving force for most students, often stifling creativity. However, at other times, the kinetic and textual rhythm weakens due to some “clichés” and stereotypes in the performance of some characters. Faces glistening with sweat: “We are sick of this closed city.” The phrase in Camus’s text heals our anger and puts us in a state of “purification” to the applause of its representatives. Despite this, dear Royda, the importance of breaking the fourth wall with the audience is not neglected, removing the text from its literary and poetic form and bringing us into a state of wonder and curiosity. The show ended and the cast exhausted themselves, looking like tireless miners.
Studying theater requires physical presence, and you can’t stage performances “online”, and this makes the situation worse. Theater is not like other disciplines that require you to attend only two hours, for example, to take an exam. Actors sit for long hours from eight in the morning to eight in the evening, without a break. They have a passion for theater. One of them said: “The main suffering is our dependence on the cost of transportation, as a result of the increase in prices in dollars.” In the same context, one of the students assured us that he was unable to pay the costs of returning to his home in the north, nor was he able to pay the rent for a house near the university, forcing him to sleep on campus some nights. Another indicates that the absence of some teachers and their absence from classes due to high fuel prices has a negative impact on the education process. The conditions were harsh, but their impulse was unstoppable. A state of desire, satisfaction and self-sufficiency, born from the study of theatrical aesthetics and the study of its sciences. “From here we tried to start our artistic and cultural journey, and we didn’t let the authorities and their policies stop us from achieving what we wanted to achieve.” “The theater is the best stage in our life,” is a phrase you will hear from all members of the current group. “Time here is invisible…Most of us walk.” The circumstances did not weaken these young people, especially since the theater provided a safe space for their free expression.
Rowayda El-Ghali, professor of theater and contemporary dance at the University of Lebanon, called this year’s graduating students a “coronavirus party.” Circumstances forced him, as a leader, to make an extensive plan, combined with technical training for students. “The main challenge in the theater is the performance, which the late Yacoub Al-Shadrawi and Jacques Lecoq in France always talked about, in addition to the perseverance in creating works of art in the theater to contribute to the cultural production.” Ruwayda Al Ghali sought to find an artistic identity for the “emergency” participants as well as focus and crystallize their technical skills. “Each of the students looked for their strengths as much as they did for their weaknesses.” On the other hand, the thesis leader describes what is happening now as an “act of resistance,” adding, “We always separate ourselves from everything that happens outside the practice room. We are not immune to all problems because we have created them in an aesthetic with an artistic dimension.” The former head of the theater department in the first department of the Institute of Fine Arts of the University of Lebanon and his teacher Walid Dakroub said that “health problems are still in front of us after the first and severe quarantine in March . , until mid-June (June) 2020. At that time, we were forced to teach practical subjects in the theater “online” and then return to the halls, regardless of the health risks, until we finished the practicals that subject. Note that on August 4, 2020, an explosion occurred in the port of Beirut during the arbitration of the current rate of the first year. As for the acting diploma project judging, it took place on August 11, 2020, one week after the port explosion, due to the poor psychological and medical condition of everyone, students and teachers. For 2021, most practical subjects are taught in person, although we have to be flexible in calculating absences due to corona damage. As for the financial situation, there is nothing wrong with it.”
The crisis is not only healthy, but the effects of the financial crisis spread to everyone. “Cinema and theater workshop equipment needs regular maintenance. Cameras, projectors, sound and light mixers and other equipment we need to fix, collecting money from professors and students. It is currently impossible to carry out any renovation work due to the economic situation, the collapse of the currency and high fuel prices, which have prevented access to the university. We have many students who have to go to the university on foot from the neighborhood or on bicycles.”
According to Dakroup, the crisis affected the salaries of teachers and employees, because their pensions, which remained the same, caused their value to decrease. “As for the contracting parties, they have not received their payments for a year and a half.” Undoubtedly, all of the above negatively affects the level of education. There are materials that are still provided “online”, due to the impossibility of professors from distant places to reach the university, because their salary is not enough for a “gasoline tank”, and the financial burdens are falling into everything. shoulder, from the cost of the generator, to fuel, and now the Internet and communications. All this leads to a decrease in the level of performance of each. “The theater department needs what the university as a whole needs in terms of safety,” said Waleed Dakrob. Regarding the transfer of professors and lecturers, he claims that there are no exact statistics, “but at the level of departments in the first department, we have been suffering for many years from a sharp reduction in the number of professors, due to the retirement of the first, and second, the avoidance of hiring new professors. Now we have started to encounter cases of business trips by some professors, even full-time ones, for immigration reasons.
Many students have to walk to university
Who is responsible for the great collapse? Walid Dakrob said that the university professor is concerned about how to provide a decent livelihood and health care for his family, except for primitive livelihoods such as electricity, water, communication and others… As for in providing alternatives and providing sustainable education for the students of the Lebanese University in general, and not only the theater, they are the responsibility of the university administration and the Ministry of Education and the Council of Ministers, which, unfortunately, sees the university as nothing but a burden to them. “In all this ,” there is no clear plan, so how all our energy goes into providing test procedures, diesel fuel, papers, ink, certificates, and equipment maintenance, happens every day things.” Dakrub regretted saying that.
The theatrical department of the Lebanese University is dominated by the state of “absurdity” or “absurdity”, the theatrical direction left by wars, epidemics and political lawlessness of the authorities, in the middle of the last century. The crisis in the theater department of the Lebanese University is not a consequence of the current crises: for decades, students have suffered from a lack of financial support and marginalization by the relevant authorities. Now, after the last presentation of the State of Emergency, what is the future of the students? And what awaits them outside the acting hall? You see the emotional impact on the parents’ faces as their children graduate, in a state of losing their future!
Source: Al-Akhbar
