hard-centred? soft-centred? arab-centred?

What do I mean by ‘arab-centred’ anyway?
(soft centre? hard centre? take a bite and give it to your mum...)

Instead of questions continuing to raise more questions, why not reflect on something that is ‘arab-centred’ – and discuss why, from the inside, as an insider…

Yesterday found myself inside a discussion that progressed from the general to the very specific, talking of TAQA* theatre processes of the 1990s, and the ephemeral nature of performance work (especially before accessibility of digital media – although video documentation of performance work, space and relationship with audience, can only ever be two dimensional)

*TAQA was a sydney-based contemporary theatre group, producing five major works between 1991 and 1999:
• Gibran Khalil Gibran 1999
• Writing with the Hip 1996
• Curves, lines, dots and accents … or writing with the hip 1993
• … and they called her Silence 1992
• Al Qamareya (The Moongate) 1991

Over the last 10 to 15 years, if you were a non-sydney arab, how did you research and even know about any arab work being produced? (ok, I am being sydney-centred, but arabs from other australian cities repeatedly tell me that it’s mainly happening here). yesterday I heard that at some point, information about short films was accessible, but not anything else… (eg. Paula Abood’s “Of Middle Eastern Appearance” 2001, which received various print media coverage)

The dilemmas are obvious about transient / time+place+space based work, such as performance (the significant processes as well as the productions themselves). And is there any value in ephemeral material (such as old programmes, posters, reviews?)

So after talking around some stories of TAQA’s slow long-term approach to performance making, I zoned in on the 1996 production at the belvoir (which had emerged from the 1993 work-in-progress performance / forum discussion) with reconfigured roles, more coherent structure and sound / visuals. (and I remember loving how my own absent ‘offshore’ participation was a tangible reality within that performance, in reading the programme and watching the simple wide-frame video documentation in a little lounge-room in ramallah later that year)

Suddenly yesterday I found that same video after a spontaneous dash to some horizontal filing, and then we watched that same recording: and now here comes the bit about ‘arab-centredness’: what we felt was really difficult to articulate … it was an intensely arab-centred experience (despite the gap of 11 years) … it just was… but that’s not good enough if I want to write about this stuff eh?