The King Is the King represents the most effective adaptation yet of THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS; more than other previous work, it succeeds in making use of these tales by bringing them out of the frozen past and placing them squarely within the lively, bustling atmosphere of the present, in the process conveying a political message.

Texts used in this course:
1.M.M.Badawi, Editor; Arabic Writing Today: The Drama. (Princeton, New Jersey: Arabic Research Center in Egypt. 1977)

2. Salma Khadra Jayyusi, Roger Allen, eds.: Modern Arabic Drama: An Anthology (Indiana Series in Arab and Islamic Studies) 1995 (9780253209733):

3. THEATER THREE (No. 6. Spring 1989) there are a number of essays on the drama of the Arab World.


Sa'dallah Wannus THE KING IS THE KING
THE METAPHOR OF THE THEATER AND THE SUBVERSIVE TROUPE

In THE WINES OF BABYLON Khorshid had used the metaphor of a debased theater, with its corrupt Impresario, HABAZLAM, who guided us through the gradual corruption and elimination of Arabic culture, from THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS 'KITSCH' fantasy through to an imagined future DAMASCUS ruled over by HABAZLAM and DALILAH and dominated by the market and P.R. values of the West.

Wannus, in THE KING IS THE KING also sets out to disguise the play's political message under the harmless seeming guise of THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS. Wannus sought to educate his audience politically, using techniques inspired by Brecht. Even more than THE WINES OF BABYLON, Wannus gets even further away from the idealized fantasy of Tewfiq al-Hakim's THE SULTAN'S DILEMMA and presents us with a theater troupe, in exaggerated costume, putting on two famous episodes from the 'ARABIAN NIGHTS' and twisting them into a moral/political allegory. In one episode from the ARABIAN NIGHTS, the Sultan, Harun al-Rashid, goes among his people in disguise at night to hear what they say. He comes across a merchant, a little crazy, who proclaims all that he would do if he were King or Sultan, and he is then drugged and set upon the throne for a day.

In another episode from the NIGHTS, a commoner who is put on the throne as a joke, refuses to relinquish his power. Wannus puts these two stories together in the story of Abu Izza..

2. THE 'NIGHTS' FABLE AS A SCREEN FOR A POLITICAL MESSAGE
Even more than in THE WINES OF BABYLON we are not meant to believe the Arabian Nights world is real. The costumes are very obviously theatrical, as are the props, the actors are only actors, trying out their roles, entering as a group of circus players and waiting to begin their parts. Two characters not in costume, UBAYD and ZAHID, seem to be running the whole show, though they only appear intermittently and secretively in the main action. Where THE WINES OF BABYLON is performed in HABAZLAM'S theater, put on by the corrupt forces who have won out, the theater troupe in THE KING IS THE KING has to be more secretive, because its message is trying to SUBVERT, to attack, the dominant tyranny in power. The message that emerges from the play, as one Arab critic noticed, was that a change of leadership was no change at all. It is the SYSTEM ITSELF that has to be changed. For the SYSTEM creates the all-powerful institutions of Finance, the Police, the Military, the Educational structure that has a powerful life independent of the holders of the office.

The play, then, begins by admitting that its ARABIAN NIGHTS setting is a cliché, a screen, and what we watch is not so much a play being performed as a message put together by the company. It is obvious that, while still trying to address an Arab audience with an Arab setting, the playwright is indebted to BERTOLT BRECHT and also seems to share BRECHT'S utopian socialism. He makes the play a radical parable, like Brecht's Good Woman of Setzuan or The Caucasion Chalk Circle.

3. THE BRECHTIAN INFLUENCE ON THIS POLITICAL THEATRE
Like Brecht's actors, the actors in this play do not impersonate characters so much as demonstrate them. That is, they stand 'outside' their characters, make them exaggerated rather than realistic. Each Scene is preceded by Brechtian posters, telling us what the action will be so that the audience does not feel suspense but waits, instead, for the demonstration of the lesson.

Like figures in a medieval Morality play, the actors in the PROLOGUE announce their roles to the audience and then 'dream' their fictional identities into temporary existence. These identities, again, are the familiar ones of MONARCH (Power) VIZIER (King's deputy: Minister of State) EXECUTIONER (visual symbol of the King's power in action) - these are 'emblematic' characters transferred over from the NIGHTS setting: immediately recognizable to the audience in a form of dramatic shorthand, without needing to be explained. Both the PROLOGUE and the EPILOGUE are there to prevent us from identifying with any of the characters, by reminding us these are only parts performed by actors. And the whole point of the play will be that it is not the PERSON, but the OFFICE that is the real power. As in the theater, the role of KING or LEADER, is one with a powerful life of its own, independent of the individual actor. When, for instance, Abu Izza puts on the costume of the KING his earlier identity is swallowed up by this new role.

When Wannus wrote the play Syria had emerged from a series of coups and counter-coups, with one Leader or 'King" succeeding the other, ruthlessly executing, imprisoning or exiling the supporters of the previous ruler, each proving just as ruthless in power as his predecessor. The latest, Hafez al Asad, though no-one could know at the time, was to remain in power longer than all the others. He iremained in power for over 20 years. And the fact that Abu Izza is shown more at home in the role of KING than his predecessor (his name disappears from the text of the play as he ascends the throne) and shows himself to be more effectively ruthless than his predecessor (the way he caresses the Executioner's axe) suggests that Wannus may have suspected that this latest Leader may have a longer shelf life. Given the nature of the political situation, Wannus was being very courageous with the coded message of this play.

Each powerful leader in Syria had to be extremely careful and watchful against those who were after his position. Wannus translates this actual situation into a more harmless-seeming traditional one, but the last words of the play are a warning that the system needs to be changed, not the leaders. UBAYD and ZAHID who speak these words are, at least temporarily, defeated - though representing the forces of revolt that might yet rise up. We hear the Secret Police have found out about the insurrection being prepared and that it has been put down. But UBAYD and ZAHID address the AUDIENCE with a reminder of how a people rose up against their leader and created a utopia "life without masks or disguises."

The play begins harmlessly enough: at the top of society, a foolishly bored and indolent monarch, instead of attending to the affairs of the state, such as the rumors of an impending coup against him, wants to see what is happening among the commoners and goes off to visit a foolish man who dreams of rising from his common status to be king and revenge himself on his enemies. The VIZIER, a more practical and shrewd man, knows that it is not the KING but his costume, that is the real power.

p. 85.
KING....Help me take this off....(VIZIER helps
KING out of his heavily embroidered cloak)
VIZIER How does my Lord feel when this
awe-inspiring cloak slips off his shoulders?
KING A little lighter
VIZIER Is that all?
KING What a question! Yes, that is all....

The King does not see what the VIZIER is warning him : that it is the costume, the insignia of power, that is all important. The Office, and all the strings attached to it will then dictate reality. The KING really is not much more than his costume, so that the same costume, on another individual, performs the same function. This is true of Presidents, Popes, tyrants and Monarchs. (This is Jean Genet’s thesis in THE BALCONY).

At the lower level of society, we have the henpecked husband Abu Izza in the opposite condition than that of the KING: dreaming that if were no longer a commoner but the King, he would use the OFFICE for purely personal advantage and revenge (getting back at the merchants he feels have harmed him) not realizing that, once KING, his identity will be so taken over by the OFFICE that his individual identity will no longer exist. The powerful merchants sustain the Leader, for they are part of the SYSTEM he has become so Abu Izza now takes their side. THE KING IS THE KING and no-one else.

p. 81 In the PROLOGUE, the actor playing the EXECUTIONER tells the audience in advance how the KING envied the executioner and fell in love with using the axe himself. This refers to Abu Izza at the end of the play, something we are going to see demonstrated: When Abu Izza becomes King, he is more ruthless than the first King and in one moment (p. 111). when all the actors 'freeze' onstage, the only movement is that of the NEW king's fingers, fondling the Executioner's axe. The former KING wants to turn the situation into an existential drama of what is dream and what is reality, but ZAHID, the secret revolutionary, tells him:
It isn't a matter of dream and reality. The whole story is that the gown has changed its stuffing. Details may differ but not the essence. So that it is the gown that has to be got rid of, not the person inhabiting it, who is only its stuffing.

The former KING, without his gown, doesn't exist. ABU IZZA, losing his name, his former identity, becomes, in the script, just 'KING', whereas his servant URQUB, unable to translate himself smoothly into the office of VIZIER, that is, unable to give up his older identity, never loses his name and will be replaced by the first, and more ruthless, VIZIER (whose name we do ot know) who will be given Abu Izza'a daughter as a slave girl by the new KING.

The whole demonstration of this game of POWER is controlled and manipulated by the two figures NOT in costume, UBAYD and ZAHID, who act the roles of shadowy, disguised conspirators within the play, hiding from the Secret Police, and who, in the EPILOGUE, in Brechtian style, step forward and tell the audience the moral of what they have just seen.

THE MYTH OF THE CLASSLESS UTOPIA (98)
(p. 98) At one point, UBAYD, in disguise as a hunchback servant in the Abu Izza household, tells the girl, IZZA, the history of the masquerade - that is, how humanity once existed in a utopian state of Innocence where all were equal, open, honest, and harmonious. BUT then came the Fall when one man set himself apart from the others, acquired power, became a tyrant and created a society of Disguises, of class distinctions, just like those of the costumes the actors are wearing or, by implication, those of the power games of the actual world outside the theatre. The Utopia UBAYD describes, where no-one had to wear disguise (unlike UBAYD as he tells the story) seems to be a version of the utopia at the end of history in the Communist Manifesto of Marx and Engels - which would explain why Wannus is attracted to the theatric devices of Bertolt Brecht.

The play soon abandons the story of Harun al Rashid's joke of setting a commoner on the throne. That is the 'disguise' or 'ruse' the actors are using as a screen. One level of the play which we only get in fragments is that of Secret Police, of counter-plotting, of a failed insurrection - CORRESPONDING TO THE ACTUAL WORLD OF SYRIA at the time Wannus was writing. The new KING even orders that a new Security organization be set up to watch over the Chief of Police's security organization. (118) The new reign will be one of even greater repression than the old. This level of the play is discreetly and enigmatically kept in the background - so you may not have noticed it.

119.In the EPILOGUE the Actors step forward to describe how things have turned out for the worst since the new KING/TYRANT was installed. The merchant SHABANDAR and the religious authority, the Imam SHAYKH TAHA, who pull the puppet strings, (i.e. run society) applaud the new repressive measures of the KING, while ZAHID and UBAYD warn that we must wait for the right moment to change the system. So the play ends with a victory for the forces of repression, and a careful watchfulness by those who would overthrow the System.

So, the ARABIAN NIGHTS format which Tewfiq al-Hakim could use more or less 'innocently' has turned into a coded lesson for revolutionaries. Like much Eastern European drama under repression, it is often difficult for outsiders to see quite what's going on. But once you break the code it turns out to be, like the plays of Slavomir Mrozek, a fascinating political parable. (Cf. Mrozek's THE POLICE and other plays).

One Arab reviewer who was enthusiastic about the play noted, IN 1980: (358)
....the King Is the King represents the most effective adaptation yet of THE THOUSAND AND ONE NIGHTS; more than other previous work, it succeeds in making use of these tales by bringing them out of the frozen past and placing them squarely within the lively, bustling atmosphere of the present, in the process conveying a political message.

This, one imagines, is as far as one can take this genre of Arab drama.

Next week we will look at a completely different genre, Modern Realism in Mahmoud Diab's THE STORM.