Crossing Borders

Al-halqa Performance in Morocco from the Open Space to the Theatre Building

Khalid Amine

[A]l-halqa is the didactic and entertaining space of the general public from different walks of life. [...H]alqas are characterized by the representation of the traditional repertoire based on fantastic stories and myths that attract passersby who form a circle around actors, acrobats, musicians, or around storytellers. —El-Meskini Sghir (:)

The disavowal of Western culture cannot in itself constitute a culture, and the delirious roaming around the lost self shall never stir it up from dust. —Abdellah Laroui (in Abdellatif :)

Al-halqa is a public gathering in the form of a circle around a performer or a number of performers (hlayqi/hlayqia) in a public space, be it a marketplace, a medina gate, or a newly devised downtown square. It is a space of popular culture that is open to all people from different walks of life. Al-halqa hovers between high culture and low mass culture, sacred and profane, literacy and orality. Its repertoire combines fantastic, mythical, and historical narratives from A Thousand and One Nights and Sirat bani hilal, as well as stories from the holy Quran and the Sunna of the prophet Mohammed (peace be upon him). The form of the halqa also varies from storytelling to acrobatic acting and dancing. My main objective in this article is to highlight al-halqa’s theatricality as a performance space and to critique its transposition to the stage building, a transposition that has intensified al-halqa’s hybridity and performative yet ironic double effects. The morphology of the Arabo-Islamic city as manifested in some ancient medinas in Morocco (like Fes and Marrakech), reveals that the circle is a com- mon paradigm in the refashioning of the city as well as the social imaginary of its inhabitants. The Moroccan medina is most often a square section of the city surrounded by a wall and many gates/doors, with the mosque(s) located at the center as a spiritual icon, as well as a commanding and surveying cultural apparatus. Concentric circles are organized hierarchically around the

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mosque, from the most privileged artifacts, bazaars, and houses located near the center to minor workplaces and poor areas of the outer circles that face the gates. Al-halqa performance, as a free and state-licensed expressive behavior, is mostly situated at the medina gates and marketplaces—far from the sacred center and its sacred didactic halqas. It is a tolerated form of voicing the boundaries between sacred and profane. However, colonial intervention has affected the morphology of most Moroccan cities, giving birth to new cities (villes nouvelles) beside the old ones. In most cases, the result is the creation of new centers and peripheries whereby the old gates and open squares ( Jema’ el-fna is a case in point) have become centers that criss-cross different worlds. The circular form is also manifested in the nomadic life of Moroccan peasants living in the duwar (which literally means a circle). In the medieval Moroccan society, a duwar was a circle of tents of the nomads whose cattle were kept inside the circle in order to be well supervised. Thus, the circle is deeply rooted in the morphology of Moroccan architecture as well as the social imaginary of Moroccan people. Al-halqa, then, has been perpetuated as a free and liberating site of social tolerance. Deborah A. Kapchan identifies the relationship between the sacred and the profane within the space of al-halqa as an oscillation that is fueled by tension yet resolved within the performance. She argues that:

Morocco is a sacred society where the official discourses of Islam provide both counterpoint and drone to the languages of license and commodification that symbolize the marketplace; indeed because “official order and...ideology” are perpetually present, the profane and the untrustworthy come into relief. (; see also Kapchan )

Though al-halqa is situated on the periphery of the circle, it functions as an entertaining social commentary—that sometimes amounts to parody—on what is going on inside the circle. It is a carnivalesque mirror whose reflection flickers back and forth, from the inside-out to the outside-in, encompassing the whole circular medina. Al-halqa is the most overtly theatrical genre of performance among several that take place in the public spheres of the marketplace and medina gates. How does al-halqa contribute to the shaping of both Moroccan

. This drawing shows Al- halqa, a public gathering in the form of a circle, as practiced in most popular sites in Morocco. (Drawing by Abdou Ajwaw)

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individual and communal identity? Does it actively contribute to the construction of Moroccan cultural identity or merely reflect a given environment? Al-halqa has been a vital source of artistic delight and entertainment in all its diversity, as well as a means of constructing cultural identity. Besides its aesthetic aspects as a performance event, it is a medium for providing information and circulating social energy, a social drama and a subsidiary school whose syllabus is as fluid as its rich repertoire. In sum, al-halqa contributes to the representation of historical consciousness and cultural identity, through formulaic artistic expression. Philip D. Schuyler acknowledges the many functions of al-halqa:

Not so long ago, market performers served vital functions in Moroccan society. The itinerant entertainers acted as journalists, carrying news from one market to the next. Public preachers offered moral guidance and ex- planations of religious texts to a largely illiterate public. Comedians pro- vided political and social commentary. Storytellers gave lessons in history. Musicians put all these messages into song. (:)

Richard Bauman argues that narratives—existing within spaces like al- halqa—are vehicles “for the encoding and presentation of information about oneself in order to construct a personal and social image” (:). Seen from a Bakhtinian perspective, these stories and narrative utterances, which are strongly affiliated with individual and communal lives, have been repeated often enough to become artfully narrative performances that bear clear references to the individual’s sense of identity.

Al-halqa is a popular performance framed in a circular architecture and characterized by the making of spectacle as a process in motion rather than a final product presented to a passive consumer.

Given al-halqa’s capacity to implicate “Others,” it negotiates the differing relationships among its participants. And in the process, it reformulates cultural values and self-knowledge as it engages its audience in a constant game of role- playing. The performance imbues the human actions of the narratives with a heightened potential to shape, reflect, and mirror cultural identity. This aes- thetically marked space is a constantly rehearsed oral text that is told through artistic expressions ranging from narrative folktales and storytelling to ritualistic dancing, theatrical pantomime, and improvisation. Al-halqa encompasses all these genres and representational practices in a single performance text, a text that is dialogical through and through since it is constructed as patterns of infi- nitely self-erasing traces or arché-écriture. Al-halqa’s textual practice, however, transcends the boundaries of the written word as a scriptocentric closure, for it is a dynamic network of interrelated codes that are not necessarily linguistic. In a related context, Roland Barthes, after being liberated from his early logocentric structuralism, informed us that, “[a]ll signifying practices can en- gender a text: the practice of painting pictures, musical practice, filmic practice, etc. The works, in certain cases, themselves prepare the subversion of the genres, of the homogeneous classes to which they have been assigned” (:). In Barthean terms, al-halqa can be seen as a site of textuality rather than a nontextual oral delivery, for orature is no less important than literature as regards textuality.

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In al-halqa performance, “the aesthetic dimension comes to the fore as performers accept responsibility not only for what they do, but also for how they do it. The audience of a performance maintains a dual focus, attending to what is said and done, and how it is accomplished” (Bauman :). Al-halqa, in this sense, has a managed environment that is strictly opposed to the Euro- centric closed theatrical institution. Its audience are called upon “to drift” spon- taneously into an arc surrounding the performance from all sides. The space required by the hlayqi (the maker of the spectacle) is not a specific space, and the timing of the performance is random. No fourth wall with hypnotic fields is erected between stage and auditorium, for such binary opposition does not exist in al-halqa. Any marketplace or medina gate can be transformed into a stage; the entire circle is a playing area, as open as the al-halqa’s repertoire of narratives and dances. Al-halqa, then, is a popular performance framed in a circular architecture and characterized by the making of spectacle as a process in motion rather than a final product presented to a passive consumer. In The Voices of Marakesh, Ellias Canetti provides a significant description of al-halqa, though without an a priori knowledge of the performance. In the section called “Storytellers and Scribes,” he starts his surveying narrative with: “The largest crowds are drawn by the storytellers. It is around them that people throng most densely and stay longest” (:). Obviously, Canetti admits, this is a popular spectacle that draws an exceptional number of spectators. What is so special about al-halqa that makes it a site for such a concentration of bodies? It is precisely due to its set of socio-cultural preconditions, artistic grace, and the par- ticipative energies of the performer(s) and audience, along with a formulaic repertoire. Al-halqa stages a script that is persistently rewritten under erasure (sous rasure, if we wish to put it in Derridean terms). It is a script that escapes closure through its insistence on openness. Canetti observes that throughout the lengthy performance, “an inner ring of listeners squat on the ground and it is some time before they get up again. Others, standing, form an outer ring; they, too, hardly move, spellbound by the storyteller’s words and gestures” (:). At least four intrinsic components of a performance event are implied in Canetti’s description: first, a general predisposition to recognize al-halqa’s theatricality; second, the circular architecture of al-halqa; third, its spell-binding effects upon its viewers; and fourth, its acting strategies that fuse verbal and body languages. Gesture as a visual metaphor is artfully articulated in the performance. In fact, the gestural and kinesic constructs exemplified in al-halqa are considered by Antonin Artaud as the fundamental codes of theatre. The artistic import of al- halqa, then, functions both as a “hybridized space of social license in the Moroc- can imagination” (Kapchan ) and as a performance tradition that is fueled by festive behavior—playful, improvisational theatricality. Hassan Bahraoui, in his preliminary study of Moroccan pretheatrical forms, also observes that, “besides the mimetic and acting strategies of al-halqa, its distinguished play with distanciation can hardly be found in (Western) classical theatre” (:). Of course, Bahraoui acknowledges Bertolt Brecht’s theory of Verfremdungseffekt. Still, his remark brings to the fore one important aspect of al- halqa’s theatricality: its traversing of extremes, back and forth. Distanciation, then, has a double function in al-halqa. It highlights the judiciousness of sus- pense, a device as old as A Thousand and One Nights. Distanciation causes the fragmentation of one performance into a series of performances that amount to meta-halqas as aspects of the mise-en-abîme. In al-halqa performance, the transition from one performance to another is marked by a pause where the performer asks the audience for money. This is delivered in a comic way and incorporated within the performance. Schuyler describes the subtlety of the transition from performance-as-action into performance-as-solicitation, a musical pitch for money, in the following terms:

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Musicians may engage in a mock argument over the text or the rendition of a song. [...] The introduction of prayer is a second fund-raising strategy: the attempt to divorce the appeal for money from entertainment. The performers’ pleas may be cast entirely in religious formulae. (:)

These mock arguments, prayers, blessings, and appeals for financial assistance are artistically delivered in such a way that they become part of the spectacle. Such a fusion brings together a number of contradictory acting strategies in a single performance: Stanislavskian acting methods of identification are enacted by the performers who are adopting trans-historical characters; Brechtian techniques of distanciation are foregrounded to shift from one narrative to another, from one persona to another within the same narrative, or to reflect upon the performance itself, or comment on other performances and al-halqas. In his unpublished memoirs, Aziz Abassi—now a U.S. citizen but originally from Morocco—records the outstanding aesthetic merits of the traditional halqa performances. In his narrative, Abassi portrays Labsir and Harrba (two distinguished showmakers of the s) as performers who magically engage their audience in their imaginative circles. Employing a tremendous repertoire of acting strategies, Labsir cunningly manipulates his viewers in a theatrical way. Abassi describes one of the performances in the gate, Bab Al-Mqaam:

“[...A]nd then, brethren, our Hero with one hand well in control on the reins of his horse waved his mighty sword to the right beheading five men,” continued Labsir, beating on a small square hand-drum in between sentences, both to keep up the cadence of his oration and to attract the attention of undecided listeners of his halqa; “then he waved it to the left beheading five others,” (drumbeat sounded) [...]. (:)

Thus, the story line of Labsir’s oration is deliberately disrupted from time to time. Moreover, the spoken word is accompanied by gesture, forming a con- sonant partnership. The performance becomes a mixture of dramatic and epic genres blended together in a theatrical way. The same potential can be seen in Harrba’s performances:

Harrba, in his outrageously funny one-man/woman show, was swaying his hips to a popular tune that he was singing using his vocal track, his mouth, his lips, his hands, and his feet for accompaniment. [...] Harrba then stopped to rest and to compose himself for a minute in preparation for the next act. Meanwhile, the spectators were trying to catch their breaths from the hilarity brought on by the most popular entertainer in the region. After covering his head and part of his face with a scarf that he had selected from the pile of accoutrements which lay behind him in the inner circle, Harrba returned with a new verbal act playing several characters. “Fakhita!” he said to an imaginary interlocutor in a very affected feminine voice, “have you finished bathing yet?” “No, I have not sister Latifa, can you help me or keep me company? God will repay you for the good deed.” (:)

The Harrba performance as manifested in the above excerpt is characterized by doubling and role-playing within role-playing. The show is composed of a series of little dramas like the drama of Fakhita and Latifa, who are village women striving to raise an inner feminine voice within a patriarchal social order. There is no linear story line in the two women’s drama, but a series of loosely connected fragments that depict women’s predicament in a highly codified society. These dramas are like little circles, coming around again and again. Harrba performs for an audience that is familiar with the shows, but still

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want to see them performed over and over. This composition confirms the reflexive structure of al-halqa as a social drama that rehearses a script already inscribed and licensed by the collective imaginary of its public. Reflexivity and self-referentiality, then, are significant constructs of al-halqa performance. Victor Turner, in The Anthropology of Performance, states that “through a myriad number of choices performers make, ranging from select- ing or composing a text to the tone of voice or style of movement, they have the opportunity to comment on others, on a situation, and on themselves” (:). Their representation becomes representing; it reflects back upon themselves as performers, their functions, codes, statuses, discursive social structures. This self-referentiality calls into question the very socio-cultural constructs that locate their public “selves.” The audience, as a collective of in- dividuals, is theatricalized in the process of reflexivity. They are “not simply a boundary and stage backdrop,” as Schuyler argues, “but may be recruited as actors or as a chorus commenting on the events” (:). Admittedly enough, the audience’s identification with the personas (re-presented in the performance) is often disrupted, which provokes auto-criticism and reorgani- zation of previously fragmented narratives. It is precisely in this sense that al- halqa performance demonstrates qualities similar to the Brechtian Lehrstück, for it engages its audience in a dialectics of learning. Thus, the affiliation of al-halqa with Brechtian V-effekt is strong, and this explains the exhaustive appropriation of the Brechtian model of theatre-making by Moroccans since the mid-s. As in Brechtian epic dramaturgy, al- halqa performers insist on historicizing their narratives, through comments and accompanying transitory devices (as extra-narrative blocking devices). Mostly, these comments are sources of humor, yet, they are also demythologizing mechanisms. They bear a matrix of exteriority; meanwhile, they are legitimate parts of the whole body of al-halqa. And this is how al-halqa can be seen as a performance event that is both representing and represented. Its narrative utterances elevate it to an explicit space of textual practice that is discursively contextualized. And this fact constitutes the traversing of al-halqa from a geographical space (ringlike circle) to a cultural space, from narrative to narratives, from texts to con-texts, and, most importantly, from orality to literacy. Today, al-halqa is transposed to the world of literacy and dramatic practice (in the scriptocentric sense). After a brief period of passive appropriation of Western theatrical models (from the s until the early s), Moroccan postcolonial dramatists established a dialogue with al-halqa and eventually shifted it to the space of dramatic writing. Tayeb Saddiki pioneered this new dynamic with a play entitled Diwan sidi abder-rahman al-majdub (). Ahmed Tayeb Laalaj’s Al-qadi fl-halqa (circa ) is another play that inaugurated a whole phase of intracultural dialogue with traditional pretheatrical forms of orature such as al-halqa. Saddiki is part of the “festive theatre” movement—al-masrah al ihtifali—which is related to ceremony and festivity. Indeed, Saddiki is considered the first festive theatre director to revolt against the Western tradition and its closed theatrical building. Saddiki benefited from the first wave of theatrical training in the al- Mamora center, the first training center in Morocco for the practice of theatrical art, supervised by two French artists. He then moved to France in  for further theatrical research. There he was exposed to the techniques of Hubert Gignous in Rennes and Jean Villar, founder of Théâtre National Populaire (TNP). After his return to Morocco, Saddiki created his first theatrical group, al-Masrah al-‘Um-mali (the Workers’ Theatre) in , with the collaboration of Ahmed Tayeb Laalaj. The aim of the group was to embrace the everyday suffering of the laborers. However, this task failed, for Saddiki was still heavily influenced by Western theatre. Saddiki, then, realized that the plays

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that he had adapted, translated, or “Moroccanized” were not projecting his deeply rooted festive instincts and finally disavowed the Western model:

The story started as a result of my refutation of the texts that I had translated and adapted from foreign theatres. After adapting about  plays, I was overwhelmed by the idea that this is a transplanted theatre that does not reflect the inner self of Moroccans. Then, I started a new journey with people, their surroundings, collective imaginary [...]. I enjoyed people’s stories and myths. [...] It was in this context that I discovered the th-century poet Almajdoub. His poetry was not written, but transmit- ted orally amongst people in every Moroccan home. Then, I started as- sembling his verses and rewriting them in a dramatic way. That was the birth of the play entitled, diwan sidi abder-rahman al-majdub, a drama that won exceptional success in Morocco. (in Farhat :)

Tayeb Saddiki’s theatre is an exemplary first instance of hybridity in festive theatre. After consuming numerous adaptations from the Western theatre, he inaugurated a new approach to theatre-making in Morocco. The play Diwan sidi abder-rahman al-majdub represents the emerging festive theatrical enterprise in postcolonial Morocco; it is on the borderline between Western theatre and Moroccan pretheatrical forms. For the first time in the brief history of Moroccan theatre, Saddiki transposed al-halqa—as an aesthetic, cultural, and geographical space—into a theatre building, the space of the Western Other (transplanted to Morocco as a subsidiary colonial institution). Diwan sidi abder-rahman al-majdub is a play conceived in an open public place. Its opening refers us to its hybridized formation through its persistent reflexivity, a device that holds up the mirror to the performance itself. The play’s structure is circular rather than linear. The narrative takes place in Jema’ el-fna, an open site for orature and a space of hybridity itself. The first scenes of the majdub production attract our attention to the making of al-halqa and its circular architecture. Onstage actors transcribe the circular form of al-halqa through a series of acrobatic games and body language. They play audience for each other as the narrator (the storyteller) gives space to his little halqa. However, most of the time Saddiki’s al-halqas are semicircular rather than circular, expressing his tendency to engage the audience in the making of spectacle rather than having them hyp- notized in a Western bourgeois auditorium divided by a fourth wall.

. Al-fil wa-sarawil was directed by Tayeb Saddiki and presented by Karma Theater Company,  July , at the Second Na- tional Festival of Theater in Meknes (Morocco). (Photo by Ait Brahim)

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The halqa of al-majdub is presented after a series of other related halqas: that is the epic of bani hilal, the battle of Ali, and the funny halqa of the tamer and his monkey. Thus, the play truly reminds us of Jean Villar’s advice to Saddiki: “When you go back to your home country forget all that you have seen here and remember just the technique” (in Alkaghat :). The result of the transfer of al-halqa to the theatre building is that Saddiki’s theatre becomes a site of hybridity located at the crossroads between different performing traditions. It is a theatre that can be presented everywhere, and this constitutes one of its domi- nant features. “Peoples’ Theatre” is the name that Saddiki has given to his theatre company since  when he was still the director of Théàtre minicipale (a post he held from  to ), a name that implies public participation in the making of the theatrical event. The theatrical event, according to Saddiki, can be achieved either though the transfer of theatrical happening from a theatre building to the street and open public space, or through the transposition of popular arts’ techniques to traditional theatre buildings, as in the case of al-majdub. Saddiki’s Al-fil was-sarawil (The Elephant and Trousers) is also a play that was conceived within the parameters of the Peoples’ Theatre, a moving theatre in search of its audiences. The play inaugurates a new series of plays that are related to the Moroccan l’bsat performance. L’bsat is a performance tradition similar to conventional theatre. It is based on a managed stage and sce- nography, and most importantly, it has archetypal characters, namely: L’msiyah, L’bouhou, and Neshat. The origin of l’bsat performance is disputed as either Fes or Marrakech. Hassan Mniai writes: “l’bsat started during the rule of king Sidi Mohammed Ben Abdellah (–) who used to see its spectacles and observe through them the corruption of the state” (:). Mohamed Soukari describes the play:

The prologue that opens the text is at the same time an intention and a proposition of writing. Through the field of narrativity we are intro- duced to this semiotics of universal theatre: kabuki, kathakali, African, Greek, Italian, and Chinese. The proposition is not pedagogical; it pre- supposes an aesthetics of a new writing. (:)

In fact, Saddiki’s appeal for a universal theatre at the outset of the play is part of a strategy of resistance and confirmation of Moroccan theatrical differ(a)nce. In Al-fil was-sarawil, Saddiki makes a space for a new theatrical tradition in Mo- rocco that retrieves l’bsat as an old Moroccan performance behavior that incorporates much of the halqa’s performative techniques, and transposes it not only into the present but also to the stage building. Here, Saddiki’s negotiation of l’bsat is genuinely hybridized with other universal theatrical traditions. He in- vokes international theatrical traditions, bringing to the fore a universal theatrical genealogy into which he incorporates his present practice of l’bsat, which is based on action and narration:

Offering our obedience Offering our obedience to those who precede us Offering our obedience to those who taught us Hamadani’s Maqamas, and the wise Majdub The ears attended to their melodious asset Sophocles and Shakespeare Gogol and Molière From famous to renowned They cleared up the pathway We’re following their footsteps

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Partaking of their water The brothers in charge of Peoples’ Theatre The brothers in charge of l’bsat theatre. (Saddiki :)

Here, Saddiki acknowledges the contributions of international figures who marked theatrical history; yet at the same time, he foregrounds l’bsat’s tradition as a legitimate performance behavior that has been practiced by Moroc- cans since the th century. Of course, the hybrid formation of the play resists any claim of originality and authenticity even on the part of Saddiki himself, for the play is a fusion of Western theatrical methods and local techniques of l’bsat. But Saddiki’s claim of originality, authenticity, and the return to tradition sometimes runs the risk of falling into the trap of purity and essentialism. El-Meskini Sghir’s hkayt Bou-jma’ l-faruj (The Story of Bou Jma’ the Rooster) is another play that makes use of the space of al-halqa. In this drama, the audience encounters a group of hlayqiya (performers) in a square, or a medina gate, or any other imaginary place (it is not specified by the writer). The whole halqa is orchestrated by the famous hlayqi, Lmqadum Bou-jma’ L-faruj, who narrates along with the other hlayqiya, the story of the Ghul (an evil spirit that changes its form), the people of the village, and ‘azri Duwar, the resisting hero. The play’s structure displays a quick development of the events in accordance with the rhythms of music and dancing. These rhythms maintain the audiences’ attention as they reflect upon contradictions that constitute the core of Bou-jma’s story (Sghir :). Sghir makes use of a very simple story, yet does so within an intricate plot and a nonlinear structure. It is the story of a village people who have been exploited, terrified, and robbed by the Ghul. Their major weaknesses are hypocrisy, fear, and a lack of team spirit. Bou-jma’ l-faruj is informed by a self-reflexive network that amounts to what is often termed mise-en-abîme. A mistrust of the very means of theatrical representation is manifested at the level of the play’s structure, theme, and character delineation. It is also thematized through the deployment of a series of meta-theatrical devices: the play-within- a-play, role-playing within the role, ceremony within the play, and literary and real life referents. The play’s stage directions insist that each actor play more then one role: the actor who plays Bou-Jma’ plays the leader of the halqa (the main narrator of the story) and the policeman; the actor Moulay Bih plays Zineb, one of the village people, a policeman, and the son of the buried; the actor Al-hrash plays al-Ghul, the butcher, the respectful man, Abass, the judge, and the outsider; the actor Mimoun Ahmed Bou Shama plays ‘azri Duwar, the disguised girl, the immigrant, and the tourist. As for the Ghul, throughout the story, as he transforms into different characters, he is played by different actors. All these devices draw attention to the mechanisms of playwriting, acting, and directing in a reflexive way. Sghir’s play, then, insists on representing representation itself by foregrounding theatrical semiosis to the extent that the audience becomes implicated in the making of the representational act in a conscious way. The play also manifests a subversion of conventional hierarchical structures in the theatrical mode of representation through the contrary effects of double distancing that is effected between stage/auditorium, actor/character, illusion/reality, and dramatic/epic. Thus, the play as a whole strikes the receiver with a sharp reflexiveness and self- referentiality. Throughout the text, fragmentary dramas, clusters of images, and snatches of action function as metaphors for a theatrical reality, access to which can only be granted subjectively. The most significant features of the play are its subjection of theatrical representation to scrutiny. The use of theatrical space as an experimental venue, and the disturbance of certain boundaries—namely those between artist and spectator, actor and character, spectator and performance, art

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object and artist—create a festive event that demands collective participation. Dramatic language in Bou-jma’ l-faruj is also permeated with a subtle obscenity and the colloquial jargon of Darb Sultan (an over-populated area of Karyan Cen- tral in Casablanca). However, the use of slang words and jargon is part of Sghir’s strategy, to emancipate language and free it from everyday life’s restrictions. This ‘Arbadajiya, or “third language,” which is constructed from both formal and in- formal variations, operates both as extreme verbal abuse and also the expression of a desire to resist established taboos. It is precisely because of this combination of abuse and desire that these words are irreplaceable, and any attempt at elimi- nating them from the text would not only restrict linguistic import but also emo- tions. Through the deployment of an in-between language, Sghir negotiates a new space for dramatic writing that strives to retrieve all that used to be seen as inferior and low and exalt it, lifting it into the realm of the sublime. The transposition of al-halqa to a theatre building reveals an unexamined indecision. Such indecision is part of the predicament of the Moroccan postcolonial subject, a subject who finds him/herself constructed at the crossroads of different narratives: the Western and the local. Postcolonial theatre has boldly come to terms with the hybrid condition of the Moroccan subject who cannot exist otherwise, due to the traumatic wounds that were inflicted by the colonial enterprise. The transfer of al-halqa to the stage constitutes a

. & . In Al-fil wa- sarawil (), director Tayeb Saddiki makes a space for a new theatrical tradition in Morocco. Here, onstage actors form a circle around the storyteller. (Photo by Ait Brahim) positive oscillation between opposites insofar as it bridges the gap of bipolar opposites by marrying them. Saddiki and Sghir’s theatres exemplify this mar- riage between East and West, past and present, traditional and modern. In a related context, Hassan Mniai argues that Saddiki was:

suddenly transformed into a proponent of a Moroccan/Arabic theatre that would benefit from the potentialities of Western theatre, on the one hand, and construct its own form through an appeal to patrimony, be it history or a theatrical form, on the other hand. (:)

However, there is a conflict between two different approaches to traditional performance behaviors like al-halqa. In the first approach, the Western model at large is repudiated and replaced by a return to the “indigenous” performance traditions (which is another way of returning to precolonial Morocco). This approach has led some to the worship of ancestors, and eventually a useless quest for purity that amounts to a new kind of logocentrism, which can be called

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“Arabocentrism.” Such essentialist theatrical enterprises rest upon a new myth of origin in the name of “authentic” Arabic/Moroccan theatre. The reality is that these so-called indigenous performing traditions are diasporic cultural constructs that change time and again and are transformed according to the inner dynamics of folk traditions, which are adaptive, fluid, and changing. Thus, decolonizing Moroccan theatre by extracting it from Western influence does not mean a recuperation of a pure and original performance tradition that pre- ceded the colonial encounter with the Western Other. This approach falls within the scope of an inevitable essentialism and Orientalism:

Does there even exist the possibility of returning to an “authentic” state, or are we not all somehow caught up in an interactive and never-to-be- completed networking where both subaltern formations and institutional powers are subjected to interruption, transgression, fragmentation, and transformation? (Chambers :)

There is no way back to an authentic state. In Derridean terms, the “authentic” is very much like a “cinder” or a “trace,” for it destroys its purity at the very moment of presenting itself.

In the second approach, Western theatre is seen as a supreme model opposed to its local counterpart, which is so often called pre-theatre. In fact, this position also reproduces the same Eurocentric exclusion of other peoples’ performance traditions. In this context, the Western theatrical tradition is considered the unique model that should be imitated and reproduced. In other words, there is no other theatre but the Western one. However, the Western theatrical model is more than a dramatic/theatrical space, it is a cultural and discursive one as well. Borrowing the Western model without critiquing its exclusivist tropes amounts to a new kind of colonialism. In brief, this second position—which is held by some Moroccan critics and practitioners, such as Abdelouahed Ouzri— falls into another kind of essentialism, which holds that the European theatre is a unique model that should be disseminated all over the world, even at the ex- pense of other peoples’ theatrical traditions, for there is no tradition but the Western one. However, despite the illusion of boundedness, historically, theatre evolves through mimetic borrowings and appropriations—cultural ex- changes. There is no theatre in isolation. The Western theatre itself is a hybrid

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model. Furthermore, theatrical art is a hybrid medium that necessitates a transformation of something written into an acoustic and visual world.

The result of such negotiation is a third space, a hybrid construct that fuses Self and Other, East and West, popular and modern, and all other bipolar opposites that the hybridized mind imagines to have existed “before.”

I am proposing a third position betwixt-and-between the two essentialist traps. This position is precisely the hybrid nature of postcolonial Moroccan theatre. My argument is that Moroccan theatre today is construed within a liminal space, on the borderline between different tropes. It cannot exist otherwise, for it juxtaposes different heterogeneous entities only to emerge as a hybrid drama that is spaced between East and West. It is a fusion of Western theatrical tradition and the local Arabic performance traditions. The hybrid nature of Moroccan theatre is manifested in the very transposition of the halqa from Jema’ el-fna to modern theatre buildings. Hybridity characterizes the postcolonial condition of Moroccan theatre today. In Homi Bhabha’s terms, hybridity is not simply a fusion of two pure moments, but the persistent emergence of liminal third spaces that transform, renew, and re-create different kinds of writing from previous models:

[A]s I was saying, the act of cultural translation (both as representation and as reproduction) denies the essentialism of a prior given originary culture, then we see that all forms of cultures are continually in a process of hybridity, but for me the importance of hybridity is not to be able to trace two original moments from which the third emerges, rather hybridity to me is the “third space” which enables other positions to emerge. (:)

Following Bhabha’s theory of hybridity, Moroccan theatre, as it is practiced today, can be situated within that liminal space that emerges between different tropes. It is a theatre that is informed by an intentional aesthetic hybridity as it juxtaposes different heterogeneous elements that belong to different performing traditions. The effects of this hybridity are manifested in its ironic double consciousness. The result of this quest is the hybrid transposition of some native performance behaviors such as al-halqa and l’bsat into the Western aesthetic/cultural space of the theatre building for an absolute refusal of the Western theatre building remains an unattainable desire. Al-halqa and l’bsat inevitably have been transposed to the theatre building. This transposition is not simply a transfer of a performance behavior from Jema’ el-fna into a modern theatre building, rather it is a cultural and aesthetic negotiation between two different performance traditions. The result of such negotiation is a third space, a hybrid construct that fuses Self and Other, East and West, popular and modern, and all other bipolar opposites that the hybridized mind imagines to have existed “before.” Today, postcolonial Moroccan theatre is characterized by a general tendency toward mediating different performing traditions that belong to the Orient and its Other. These mediating strategies are, indeed, informed by the postcolonial Moroccan subject’s hybridized formation. Moroccan theatre becomes a hybrid theatre, par excellence. It is no longer an imitation of the West-

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ern theatre, or a pre-theatrical form. Instead it is a new hybridized theatrical tradition that is based on transposition of all that used to be conceived of as pre-theatre to the theatre building. The openness and free play of Jema’ el-fna are forced upon the rigidity and closure of the Western theatrical building. The result is not a return to pre-theatre, but rather a creation of an aporitical space within the fixity and closure of the building. The same aporia has affected the postcolonial dramatic script, which has become a hybridized script that em- braces both orature and literature alike, as in the case of Bou-jma’ l-faruj.

Notes . All translations, unless otherwise noted, are my own. . In this article, I discuss the street halqa, the performance that takes place outside of religious sites and is licensed by them. It is a performance that is meant to entertain. A sacred halqa is informed by a whole spiritual apparatus and is located in a specific site such as the mosque or the zawya, which is a sufi site. . Sirat bani hilal is a series of medieval romances and narratives that were popular enter- tainments thanks to the lively theatrical manner of the storytellers. These romances are a mixture of prose and verse, half dramatic and half narrative. Among the famous he- roes of the sira we find Abu Zayd Al-Hilali and Antara. . These gates are named, such as Bab Rwah, Bab Al-Mqam, Bab Mansur Lalej, and Bab Fahs. . Jema’ el-fna is one of the famous sites of popular culture in Morocco. It is a huge and open square in Marrakech wherein storytelling and other performance behaviors that belong to Moroccan popular culture are practiced as licensed and free oral expression. In brief, it is a site of popular orality and ritualistic forms. . See also Christopher Prendergast, The Order of Mimesis (:); and Victor Turner, “Social Dramas and Stories about Them” (:). The etymology of “narrative” is closely affiliated with the notion of “knowledge.” “To narrate,” Victor Turner reminds us, “is from Latin narrare, which is akin to gnarus (‘knowing,’ ‘familiar with,’ ‘expert in’), both derivative from the Indo-European root gna (‘to know’), from which comes that vast family of words variously related to Latin cognoscere, Greek gignoskein and old English greenawwan” (:). In like manner, the Arabic word for narrator is a’r- rawi, and his/her narrative is called a-r-rewaya or al-hikaya. Obviously, in Arabic, to narrate implies “knowledge,” which is why much respect has been given to narrators throughout the history of Arabic storytelling, ever since A Thousand and One Nights. . Regarding Khleifa, one of the leading indigenous performers of al-halqa who died in the early s, Bahraoui comments: One of the lovable things in Khleifa’s al-halqa is that he used to build it on the basis of mockery against his neighbors (scribes and fortune tellers). In a subtle and delicate style that fuses parody and grotesque elements, Khleifa’s criticism provokes the audience to question everyone and everything. (:) Needless to say, al-halqa performers are not aware of Western acting and stagecraft theories. These are spontaneous artists who make spectacles without recourse to any Western theory of theatremaking. Most have never even seen a performance in a theatre building. So, the analogy with Brecht and Stanislavsky is meant to illuminate their highly artistic strategies of acting. 8. Verfremdungseffekt has much to do with alienation (Entfremdung) as used by Hegel and Marx. However, Verfremdungseffekt was transposed to aesthetics by Brecht to deconstitute and dismantle the effects of alienation and reification rather than consoli- date them. V-effect aims at a revolutionary disruption of the complacent passivity whereby the audience, in empathic theatre, is cunningly manipulated to consume the product of the illusion without critiquing it. Brecht defines V-effect as: “a widely-practiced way of drawing one’s own or someone else’s attention to the thing [...] from something ordinary, familiar, immediately accessible, into something peculiar, striking and unexpected” (:). Seen from a poststructuralist perspective, Brechtian V-effect disrupts the gaze of the receiver: We must always remember that the originality of the Brechtian sign is that it is to be read twice over; what Brecht gives us to read is, by a kind of dis-

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engagement, the reader’s gaze, not directly the object of his reading; for this object reaches us only by the act of intellection of a first reader who is already on the stage. (Barthes :) . Festive theatre, al-masrah al-ihtifali, is a theatrical trend in Morocco. It incoporates elements of traditional festivals and ceremonies in dramatic texts as a reaction against the hegemony of Western theatre. . Wa-law kan’t fula () and Jnane shiba () are two other plays that belong to the same hybrid construction. All these plays are performed in a moving tent that Saddiki has used as a moving theatre since the demolition of Théàtre minicipale.

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Khalid Amine is Associate Professor of Performance Studies at the English Depart- ment, Faculty of Letters and Humanities, Abdelmalek Assadi University, Tetouan, Morocco.

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