The theme of the 14th International Centre for Performance Studies Festival (23-26 November) was Migrant Forms of Theatre. The internationally renowned theatre scholar Khaled Amin created a unique festival design this year, combining an international conference with guest performances connected to the same topic. The conference was held in cooperation with the International Research Centre for Interweaving Performance Cultures (Berlin, Germany). Amin worked hard for years to create a stable and sustainable partnership with the centre in Berlin through the consultancy, advise and advocacy of Erika Fischer-Lichte and Christel Weiler. It was a special experience to see a scientific-scholarly partnership grow over the years between Germany and Morocco, but it was even more special to see how this partnership managed to contribute to the Arab region and international performance sphere, providing profound and innovative discussions in performance research. It is in this context that the festival proposed migrant theatre, a theme that is barely discussed on our side of the sea. Migrant performance is a very pressing topic in almost all Western conferences and theatre encounters, because it not only chimes with current political issues but also serves as a crossroads to re-understand a universal tradition of discrimination and alienation when it comes to foreign-alien newcomers, those whose artistic productions are usually regarded as imports or exotic objects. Changes in world politics definitely impact the cultural policies of Europe, influencing the funding, producing and marketing of theatre and dance. All those policies now target a new community called “the refugees”, with whose emergence a whole new wave of art has been labelled “refugee art”. Discussion of this label is on one hand a current political and legislative discussion, and on the other an ethical, human discussion related to concepts of homeland and the definition of identity, ownership, diversity and hybridity in all societies. Nonetheless, this discussion almost never originated on our shores, on the southern side of the Mediterranean. Even those Arab artistic figures who are famous in Europe have not managed to have their works acknowledged or subjected to exploration and analysis in their original homelands. The ambiguity of their current and new identities apparently generates confusion in the local viewer, to the extent that they cannot adopt a specific perspective on those works, nor even define those artists with a view to having any rapport with them. The conference in Tangiers finally managed to trigger the discussion and locate it “here”, it also managed to bring European discourse to our table in order to instigate a kind of north-south conversation, while freshly exploring what it means to talk about migrant theatre in a country that has always served as a cultural and geographic bridge between Africa and Europe. Sitting in Tangiers, quite close to Gibraltar, gives a unique taste to all the vocabulary of intersectionality, hybridity and interweaving. Being itself a city of interwoven cultures, Tangiers already legitimises and inspires all forms of cultural and social entanglement, demolishing the traditional hierarchy in thinking and cultural supremacy. Tangiers was a space of in-betweenness where the conference speakers met as equals and friends. Professor Gabriele Brandstetter (Germany) and artist Lahoucine Echaabi (Morocco) were the guests of honour of this year's round, and their achievements were paid tribute and celebrated in the opening ceremony. This gesture was also a translation of the practises of interweaving, which suggested a possible model in the life journeys of both Brandstetter and Echaabi. Each in their own style and field, and on their side of the sea, has been devoted to exploring new territories in performance and performance research. Stepping out towards the new and the unknown is also a form of intellectual migration. Professor Marvin Carlson inaugurated the conference with a keynote speech shedding light on migrant theatre — with a focus on that made by artists of Arab origin — in the USA. While almost all Egyptian movie lovers are now familiar with Ramy Malek thanks to his outstanding performance in the movie Bohemian Rhapsody, nobody knows of all the other Egyptian-American actors and artists in theatre, specifically because theatre is a local art, which to be seen must either travel or receive travellers ready to transport their experiences of spectatorship towards their circles of friends and family on returning home. For this reason, one ought to be very grateful to pioneering scholars and critics like Carlson for their sincere and lasting efforts in transporting, interweaving and expanding knowledge across the globe. Throughout the conference and the festival's performances, everybody missed the presence of Nehad Selaiha, I felt that the topic of this year's round would have benefited from her insights and opinions, yet I was very thankful to the General Egyptian Book Organisation for having published her writings about Egyptian and Arab theatre in English. Those writings form a unique reference for Western scholars who wish to study Egyptian and Arab theatre, and hence create a reservoir of documentation, analysis, historical-political contextualisation and universal relevance. Within the conference, Amin designed two panels bringing together young and emerging scholars, and dedicated to the spirit of Hazem Azmi who left us in July this year. One of Azmi's driving principles was his faith in the future and in the next generation of scholars, critics and artists. Dedicating those panels to his spirit paid the right tribute to an international figure who was — and still is — bridging cultures and languages, contributing to connecting the opposite shores, and reinvigorating the Egyptian scene of performance studies and cultural production. I am a Woman, Me was the first performance to be presented at the festival. A monodrama performed by Lobna Edno, a French artist of Moroccan origin living in Bordeaux, where she manages her own company, La Cite. Edno incarnated the story of Khadija, an illiterate Moroccan immigrant who goes to Bordeaux with her three children to join her husband who left several years before. Edno has a very powerful and enduring stage presence fit for solo performers who can live up to the challenge of one hour of solo acting work. Besides being a charming person in real life, she brings to the stage a certain openness and humour that we miss so much in solo female performances. She is a capable writer and theatre director, yet when she goes on stage she incarnates her character with unmistakable ease and softness, leaving behind all the intellectual battles, and vitally embodying the almost instinctive theatricality of the moment. I am a Woman, Me tracks the life story of Khadija since the death of her father at the age of nine, and till she becomes the mother of 25-year-old Ibrahim and his two sisters. It follows her journey starting from the oppressive traditions of her community which obliged her to leave school and care for her younger brothers and sisters while her mother worked in the fields after her father's death, and until the alienating culture of her migrant home in France. In the middle, Khadija loses her entire life to the responsibilities she is forced to carry, she loses her sense of identity and belonging, her femininity, and herself. The one-woman show could be seen as a self-interrogation: where did I leave my life? Towards the end, Khadija discovers that the only thing she needs to hold onto is her femininity, her womanhood, something that she still needs to discover in her 40s. An open end fits the theme perfectly, chiming with the topic of the festival where no destination is a final destination. Edno, an artist who may fit into the category of migrant theatre, presents a performance on the character of a migrant who discovers that the key to belonging is finding oneself and one's identity from within. Khadija found that her gender-womanhood can be her homeland, and this is exactly where she has never landed before. She understands at the end that her upcoming journey must be towards herself. Written and directed by the prominent theatre maker and academic Hafedh Djedidi (Tunisia), Destiny of — which was staged in the next few days — criticises prescribed roles, including theatrical ones. It is a form of meta-theatre, reflecting on theatre itself within the play. Theatre was a topic and a style in Destiny of Women, a character and a world. Djedidi, who played his real-life role of the director in the performance, made a very visible effort to balance the very intellectual thesis of the play with the live and raw craft of acting and bringing a sophisticated text to life. His actors were all magnificent, whether in their prescribed roles or in their moments of revolt against the director and the rules of theatre. It was very touching to see Djedidi plotting against himself, a real act of revolt where the author-director has enough freedom to criticise authority including his own. We could easily see echoes of the Tunisian revolution, we could also see how Djedidi brought theatre into the play as a microcosm of the country, and as a poetic equivalent of life itself. Kudos to a genuine theatre artist who crossed all borders, served almost all disciplines related to theatre, fused academia with live performance craft, and supported generations of theatre students and scholars in Tunisia all through his life. Thus Speaks Gilgamesh by Lalish Theaterlabor (Vienna) was the final performance-event of the festival. Resulting from a workshop, the piece presented the amazing work of Shamal and Negar, based on highly sophisticated vocal work inspiring a sense of ritualistic performance that transcends time and space. The workshop participants showed very good skills in just a short time, which proves how much passion has an influence on art production and training. It was a moment to celebrate: starting from the topic of migrant theatre and ending with a context where we lose our sense of time and place via the voices that transcend borders and free our souls towards a new notion of identity capable of being born in the here and now that should not be defined by geographic location or clock time, but rather by the collective bonding of the freshly born moment. A moment of bonding that Khadija could not enjoy throughout her entire life, a moment that Amin knows how to create.
