Saadallah Wannous

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Saadallah Wannous ( Arabic سعد الله ونوس, DMG Saʿd Allāh Wannūs ; * 1941 in Hussein al-Bahr ; † May 15, 1997 ) was a Syrian playwright.

Life

He was born in the village of Hussein al-Bahr, near the Syrian port city of Tartous , where he received his early education. Wannous studied journalism in the Egyptian capital Cairo and later worked as editor of the arts and culture section of the Syrian newspaper Al-Baath and the Lebanese newspaper As-Safir. He was also the head of the Syrian music and theater administration for many years. In the late 1960s, he traveled to Paris , where he studied theater and got to know different currents, directions and schools of European theater. His career as a playwright began in the early 1960s with several one-act plays that were characterized by the author's basic theme, the relationship between the individual, society and their leadership.

In the late 1960s, triggered by the Arab defeat against Israel in the 1967 Six Day War , the Arab political theater was born. The defeat had created a new level of awareness among artists and intellectuals of the government-controlled press and its infiltration of popular culture. In 1969, Wannous and a group of playwrights called for the creation of an Arab theater arts festival in Damascus , which was later founded and attended by playwrights from all over the Arab world. At this festival he presented his “theater of politicization”, which was supposed to replace the traditional “political theater”. His goal was a more positive role for theater in the process of social and political change. Well-known pieces by him include: The Elephant, The King of All Times (1969), The King is the King (1977) and Hanthala's Journey from Sleep to Consciousness (1978).

In the late 1970s, Wannous helped found the Damascus College of Dramatic Arts, which he later taught. He also initiated the magazine Hayat-Almasrah (Theaterleben), in which he was editor-in-chief for years. Shocked by the Israeli siege and occupation of Beirut , he paused writing for ten years. He returned in the early 1990s with a series of works for the Arab stage that were no less political than their predecessors, beginning with The Rape (1990), a play about the Arab-Israeli conflict. Since then, he has written: Fragments from History (1994), Rituals of Signs and Transformations (1994), Miserable Dreams (1995), A Day in Our Time (1995), and finally Epic of Illusion (1996).

In 1996 he was chosen by UNESCO (United Nations Organization for Education, Science and Culture) and the International Theater Institute to address the world theater community on the occasion of International Theater Day on March 27th. This was the first time since the introduction of this tradition in 1963 that an Arabic author had been selected for it. He died on May 15, 1997 of cancer, which he had previously fought for five years.

Familiar

His daughter, Dima Wannous , born in 1982, who fled Damascus to Beirut in 2011 and has lived in London since 2018, has become a writer, translator and journalist herself.

Selected pieces

  • Evening gala for June 5th (Haflat samar min agl hamis haziran) (1967)
  • The elephant, the king of all time (1969)
  • The King is the King (1977)
  • Hanthala's Journey from Sleep to Consciousness (1978)
  • The Rape (1990)
  • Fragments from History (1994)
  • Rituals of Signs and Transformations (1994)
  • Miserable Dreams (1995)
  • A Day in Our Time (1995)
  • Epic of Illusion (1996)

Web links

supporting documents

  1. ↑ Syria - From Fear, Inability and Greed , Deutschlandfunk Kultur June 16, 2015, accessed September 10, 2018
personal data
SURNAME Wannous, Saadallah
ALTERNATIVE NAMES سعد الله ونوس
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Syrian playwright
DATE OF BIRTH 1941
PLACE OF BIRTH Hussein al-Bahr
DATE OF DEATH May 15, 1997