Jalal Khoury (1933-2017): Brechtian Realist Forged by 1967 War, and the Birth of Modern Lebanese Theater

 

Historically, the founding of the Lebanese theater traces back to the 1800s, specifically to 1848 when Maroun Nakash built a makeshift playhouse in his home and staged the first ever Arabic language production, “The Miser,” a work by Moliere translated from the French. After this period, known by theater scholars as one of the translations, came a renaissance era, consisting of staged works by prominent Lebanese authors like Said Takieddine and Said Aql. Critics referred to the following periods as the Arab nationalist or political phase during the 1950s and 1960s, followed by the realist or the modernist movement, which Jalal Khoury helped to spearhead from the mid-1960s until his death last December at 84. According to one author of a book on the subject, ideas played a central role in forming the Lebanese theater, as opposed to its European counterpart, which emerged as an amalgamation of traditional popular customs.

 

Considered a pioneer of modern Lebanese political theater and banner carrier of the realist school, Jalal Khoury, a playwright, theater director, academic, and artistic editor, remained a loyal disciple of the German playwright Bertolt Brecht. Khoury began working as a journalist on French language culture pages during the 1950s and then as an artistic French editor for Le Soir and L’Orient Litteraire during the 1960s. He taught theater at the Lebanese University from 1968 until 1975 and at the Saint Joseph University from 1988 until 2012, where he worked as Chairman of the Theater Department from 1988 to 1999.

The political freedoms available in Lebanon during the 1960s, which allowed widespread experimentation with different ideas and theater movements, made Khoury’s championship of realism and political theater possible. His prominence in the Lebanese theater meant Khoury found himself in the company of other great Lebanese playwrights, including Issam Mahfouz, Yaqoub al-Shedrawi, Roger Assaf, Nidal al-Ashkar, Oussama al-Aref, Mounir Abou Debs, Antoine Multaqa, Shakeeb Khoury, and Raymond Jbara. The political theater emerged with the rise of the Palestinian movement and also functioned as part of the famous and intellectual reaction to the defeat in the 1967 War.

 

The 1967 defeat greatly affected Khoury, a son of 60s politics. The calamitous event imprinted many of his plays, and, as cited by Sawsan al-Abtah in Asharq Al-Awsat, the playwright wrote in the An Nahar newspaper, “The defeat of the Arab armies by Israel during the June 1967 War injected a new life into the Lebanese theater, and gave it the justification or reason of existence and provided it a distinct personality or identity.” Khoury added, “In fact, this defeat had a great tragic impact on the consciousness of the Arab individuals, which led them to ask themselves many questions, doubt many of the constants, and to reconsider several issues. Despite its professional status, the theater in Beirut had become one of the most effective means of expression, given the turbulent climate that prevailed during that period.”

 

With his strong commitment to Brechtian realism, Khoury counted himself among the limited number of Brechtian playwrights in the Arab world, which included Saadallah Wannous from Syria and Alfred Farag from Egypt. Khoury’s devotion began when he joined a course in East Berlin and accompanied the works of the Berliner Ensemble, which Brecht founded. After that, Khoury referred to Brecht as his teacher and regarded him as such until his death, once stating, “I am a humble student of Brecht, and [have] attempted to follow his teachings 100 percent.” Upon becoming familiar with the Brechtian school, Khoury joined the National French Theater in Paris, producing several Brechtian plays throughout his life, which led some critics to call him “Brecht’s exclusive agent teasingly.”

 

When he returned to Beirut in 1967, Khoury produced his first work, “Weismano, Ben Gori et Cie” (Weismano Ben Ghoury & Partners), adapted from Brecht’s famous play “The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui,” written in French and translated into Arabic by the late Lebanese playwright Raymond Jebarra. Staged in Beirut Theater, in 1968, the piece marked a change in Khoury, as he moved from criticizing Nazism to attacking Israel in the wake of the 1967 War. He directed another work, his second professional play, “Labor Market,” (based on Brecht’s “Mr. Puntila and his Man Matti”) in 1969.

 

Along with Brechtian plays, Khoury also directed several non-Brechtian works. Inspired by a traditional character to illustrate the methods used by the Lebanese Deuxième Bureau (Lebanese military intelligence) at the time, “Jeeha fi al Qura al Ammamia” (“Jeeha in the Borderline Villages,” 1971) became one of his viral and most widely received plays. Illustrating the mistreatment of individuals, many of whom were driven to security centers to be interrogated, Khoury took his inspiration for the play from a work, “The Good Soldier Švejk,” by the Czech writer Jaroslav Hašek. Khoury did not deny that he used the features of Švejk’s soldier in the development of Jeeha’s personality, attributing to him the characteristics of struggle in a dramatic combination, which, according to Abduh Wazen in Al Hayat, Lebanized the character of Jeeha.

 

Another play, “Al-Rafiq Sejaan” (“Comrade Sejaan,” 1974), one of Khoury’s milestone plays in the archive of Lebanese theater, explored the strange separation and contradiction between the family and political party structures in Lebanon. This topic “remains relevant until today despite the many long decades; it includes social and psychological analysis as well as a criticism that uncovers the class infrastructure of the formations of Lebanese social life,” according to Asharq al-Awsat. The play, produced one year before the onset of the 1975 Civil War, ran for two consecutive seasons at Germany’s Volkstheater Rostock, according to the Daily Star.

 

Other works included the critical and aesthetic play “Al Kabaday” (“The Defender,” 1974), based on John Millington Synge’s play “Playboy of the Western World,” and “Khuzni bi Hilmak Mr. Freud” (“Take It Easy Mr. Freud,” 2014), an analysis comparing the struggle with the state to the problematic relationship between man and woman, and its manifestation in society and politics. Khoury’s last work, “Shakespeare if Spoken,” 2016, summons nine personalities from the Shakespearean theater to approach primary periods in Lebanese history.

 

Among the first playwrights from his country to find an overseas audience and the first Lebanese playwright to be translated and performed internationally, Lebanese President Michel Aoun bestowed the Order of the Cedar on Khoury in “recognition of his contribution to the arts.” As a pioneer of Lebanese theater, his plays, both Brechtian and non-Brechtian, as well as an academic, have significantly impacted the growth of political theater in Lebanon.