| Karim Alrawi | |
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Reading from a work in progress at the Vancouver International Writer's Festival 2010 |
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| Born | Alexandria, Egypt |
| Occupation | Writer, Playwright |
| Nationality | Canadian, British, Egyptian |
| Genres | Fiction; Stage; Radio; TV; Film and Children's fiction. |
| Subjects | Middle East, Contemporary England, and America; Communications theory. |
| Literary movement | Post-colonial, Realism, Post-modern fiction |
| Notable work(s) | Migrations; Child in the Heart; Promised Land; The Unbroken Heart; Deep Cut; City of Peace— Arabic. |
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www.karimalrawi.com |
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Karim Alrawi (Arabic كريم الراوي) is a British/ Canadian/ Egyptian writer born in Alexandria, Egypt. His family emigrated to England then to Canada. Alrawi graduated from University College, University of London and the University of Manchester, England. After his first full length stage play Migrations won the prestigious John Whiting Award he became Literary Manager of the Theatre Royal Stratford East and later Resident Writer at the Royal Court Theatre in Central London. In 1988 he moved to Egypt and taught in the theatre department of the American University in Cairo. In 1990 his plays were banned by the Egyptian state censor[1][2]. Three years later he was arrested and detained for interrogation by Egyptian State Security about his writings and for his work with the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR)[3]. He later moved to the United States where he was Writer in Residence at Meadow Brook Theatre (MBT) in Michigan. He was Editor in Chief of ARABICA magazine[4], the leading nationally distributed Arab-American publication[5] with a certified readership of over 100,000 readers[6]. During an almost ten-year hiatus from creative writing, Alrawi worked for aid and development agencies including the Canadian Institute for Media, Policy and Civil Society, IMPACS, where he was Director of International Programs, later as Executive Director of The US-Arab Economic Forum[7] and the World Bank where he was Communications Advisor and Manager for External Affairs for the Middle East and North Africa working with civil society organizations and the media.[8]
In January 2011, Alrawi returned to Egypt to join in Egypt's Revolution[9], the uprising against the Mubarak dictatorship[10]. He participated in civil disobedience actions against the regime was arrested and released. During and after the fall of the Mubarak regime, he worked with the EOHR[11] to coordinate with foreign media reporting on what was happening, as well as to compile corruption files on former members of the Egyptian government for submission to the new state prosecutors office. He currently divides his time between Canada and Egypt[12].
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Alrawi's first full length play Migrations was produced at the Theatre Royal Stratford East and won the John Whiting Award in 1982. His second play A Colder Climate was produced at the Royal Court Theatre in Central London and was followed by three plays, Fire in the Lake, A Child in the Heart and Promised Land for Joint Stock Theatre, then one of Britain's major touring companies[13]. All three plays are emotionally intense and provoked considerable controversy at the time of performance[14][15]. As Carol Woddis noted about Child in the Heart, "this almost messianic piece about the desperate pain of loss of roots and, in the truly biblical sense, tribal identity, refuses to let its audience off the hook."[16] Fire in the Lake was awarded an Edinburgh Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Festival. Crossing the Water a play about the British in Egypt and the Suez War was given a stage reading at the ICA in London before being produced at the American University in Cairo's Jamil Center despite a banning order by the Egyptian state censor[17].
Alrawi's play Blind Edge, produced by the Old Vic Theatre, was staged at the Commonwealth Institute in London as part of the Festival of Asia (1981). His play Aliens won the Festival of Asia & Capital Radio's national playwriting competition Best New Play Award.[18]
While in England, Alrawi wrote plays for The Old Red Lion Theatre, Soho Theatre, M6 Theatre, Half Moon Theatre, Newcastle Playhouse, the Old Vic Theatre, London, and the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield[19].
In 1988 Alrawi returned to Egypt taking a teaching position in the theatre department of the American University in Cairo (AUC)[20]. His first serious run-in with the state censor was in the summer of 1990 when his play Crossing the Water was banned and he was summoned to give an account of himself to the censor's office[21]. Later that year he adapted The Three Sisters by Anton Chekhov, setting it in contemporary Egypt. It was staged at the Wallace Theatre of AUC in central Cairo[22]. Also, Alrawi wrote four stage plays in Arabic two of which were staged at the Wallace Theatre[23][24]. Madinate el Salam (City of Peace) is a retelling of the life of the sufi poet al-Hallaj who was executed in tenth century Baghdad on charges of heresy. It is a story of censorship by state and religious authorities. The play was produced twice (1991 & 1993), both times after being refused a license by the state censor that led to threats of arrest of Alrawi by state security. The second play, Al-Bayt al Mahgour (The Abandoned House) produced in 1991 is about sexual exploitation and its roots in Egypt's history of class privilege. The production of the plays, despite being denied rehearsal and production licenses by the state censor, was a contributory cause to Alrawi's later arrest and interrogation[25].
Autobis al Intikhabat (The Election Bus), a satire on the Egyptian electoral system and Mudun Gha'iba (Absent Cities) about the destruction of Arab cities by war were two full-length plays that were to be produced with a cast of students from AUC. Alrawi and his actors were denied access to the Wallace theatre during the final days of rehearsals resulting in cancellation of the performances.
During the early 1990s Alrawi was the foreign media spokesman of the EOHR[26] and worked on compiling accounts of human rights violations alongside his colleague Hisham Mubarak[27]. He accompanied foreign journalists to restricted areas to report on security clampdowns, particularly in Upper Egypt and on sectarian conflict in Egyptian cities and in the countryside. He fundraised for the EOHR and compiled accounts of how censorship and blasphemy laws were being enforced in Egypt.[28]
Alrawi's defence of the writer Farag Foda, assassinated in June, 1992, caused problems with al-Gama'a al-Islamiyya group responsible for Foda's murder.[29] They issued a fatwa against Alrawi claiming that Farag Foda was an apostate and that "defence of an apostate is proof of apostasy."[30] The fatwa was subsequently lifted after the intervention of the EOHR.
In 1993, Nasr Abu Zeid, associate professor at Cairo University, was arraigned before a court in Cairo accused of blasphemy. Alrawi spoke in his defence and wrote an article that brought the case to the attention of the foreign media. Alrawi claimed that a court victory for the Islamists would be a death sentence for Abu Zeid and other secular intellectuals.[31] Later that year, while working with the EOHR to set up a theatre company to tour plays on human rights themes to towns and villages outside Cairo, and after over three years of conflict with the state censor's office over the staging of his own plays, Alrawi was arrested by State Security officers and taken for interrogation. He was held in the notorious Gaber Ibn Hayyan detention and torture center in Giza and interrogated about his writings and activities for the EOHR.[32]
After his release, Alrawi responded to his arrest by writing about the experience in international publications and took the lead to remove and replace Mursi Saad El-Din, a longtime state security appointee, as president of Egyptian PEN (the local branch of the international writer's organization). After serving for nine months, Alrawi accepted an international scholarship to Pennsylvania State University and arranged the transition of the presidency to the novelist Gamal El-Ghitani.
During the 1990s Alrawi was resident writer at Iowa State University, Pennsylvania State University, The Oregon Shakespeare Festival and later at Meadow Brook Theatre (MBT) in Michigan. He taught playwriting for a year at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada.
The Unbroken Heart a play based on the life of the blues singer Ethel Waters was first performed at the Fisher Theatre in Iowa before touring nationally[33][34]. His plays for MBT included A Gift of Glory[35], about the Mexican artist Diego Rivera and the Ford family; Chagall's Arabian Nights[36], a story of Marc Chagall's painting of the Arabian Nights and Killing Time[37], a play about physician assisted suicide. He also wrote plays that toured local schools and ran theatre workshops for disadvantaged kids in South-East Michigan[38].
His play Sarajevo about the Bosnian war was given a workshop production at MBT and the Shenandoah Arts Theatre. The play Sugar Candy was given a staged reading at Mixed Blood Theatre in Minneapolis.
Patagonia[39] a play about torture and resistance was first performed by Ruby Slippers Theatre in Vancouver, Canada. Across The Morne a play for two actors and dogs, set in Newfoundland, was given a staged reading at the Playwrights' Theatre Centre, Vancouver, Canada.
Deep Cut a play set on the American Gulf Islands about cultural conflict and political and personal expediency was staged at La MaMa ETC[40] in New York as well as by Golden Thread Theatre in San Francisco and Washington, DC[41].
Alrawi's plays and productions have received several awards including the John Whiting Award, UK, 1982; Edinburgh Fringe First Award 1985; Egyptian Ministry of Culture & Youth Award, 1988 and 1989; Jessie Richardson Award, Canada, 1996; USA Plays Today Award, 1998; Canadian National Playwriting Award, 1999; The Free Press Theatre Excellence Award, USA, 2000. He has received awards from the Arts Council of Great Britain and a mid-career writer's award from the Canada Council.
Alrawi has written two children's picture books; The Girl Who Lost Her Smile and The Mouse Who Saved Egypt.
The Mouse Who Saved Egypt was edited on a rooftop overlooking Tahrir Square in Cairo, during the Egyptian revolution[42].
The Girl Who Lost Her Smile was staged and performed as a children's play in the UK by Tutti Frutti Theatre and York Theatre Royal[43], and in the USA by Golden Thread Theatre.
The Girl Who Lost Her Smile was winner of Parents Magazine Gold Award 2002 and was a finalist for the Kentucky Bluegrass Book Award (Kentucky Students' Choice) 2002[44].
Karim Alrawi has written for BBC radio and television, as well as for Channel Four in the UK.
El Lozy describes Alrawi as a radical playwright influenced by postmodernism. He summarizes the plays in an extreme reading, "Violence is the degree of contemporary Third World life: one is deported from the West Bank, sold to an adoption agency in Ethiopia, sent to England as a mail-order bride, sexually mutilated in Cairo, tortured in Beijing, ethnically-cleansed in Bosnia, and bombed back to the stone age in Baghdad."[45] Later in the same article, El Lozy says, "we are drawn deeply and provocatively into journeys of self-examination and self-discovery where the most intricate and controversial conflicts of our times are dramatized at the level of interpersonal human relationships ... the individual himself/herself is not divorced from history." David Williams calls Alrawi a subversive writer whose early work was the culmination of a strand of Joint Stock Theatre's productions where diaspora was interrogated, not so much as place but as process. He describes Alrawi as a writer who works to uncover "difference as a pivotal conflict in his characters' lives." According to Williams, for Alrawi, "the absence of place is what defines diaspora."[46] Carlson, in a detailed analysis of the plays, arrives at a similar conclusion, it is his "ability to effectively situate and reconstruct the individual in a social and cultural context that has remained an enduring quality of the work of Alrawi."[47]
In a study of British Epic theatre, Reinelt describes Alrawi's work as post-Brechtian, and finds strong parallels between Alrawi’s plays and those of contemporary feminist writers. She states that Karim Alrawi “writes emotionally charged material that comes out of process-oriented workshops and privileges character over plot, often stressing characters’ personal resolutions … issues of identity, family, and a personal past make for an intense, almost psychoanalytic experience in his plays. As with some feminist work, the personal becomes the political.”[48] While Rashad Rida, in a comparative study of Arab-American writers, recognizes that Alrawi's plays represent a break with Arab writers at home and of the diaspora in form and content, reinterpreting concepts of cultural authenticity and grappling with issues of personal integrity in ways that are integral to the plays, it is the degree of humour in many of them that gives relief to the audience, as well as strength to the characters[49].
In Egypt during the late 1980s and early 1990s, Alrawi was active in the EOHR, monitoring censorship, becoming a spokesperson for the organization, working closely with the foreign media to report stories of human rights abuses during the Mubarak era[50][51]. After moving to the United States in the mid-1990s, while on an international scholarship at Pennsylvania State University, Alrawi researched and published studies on censorship in the Middle East[52], as well as studies on Middle Eastern theatre[53]. Applying and seeking to extend the ideas of Harold Innis and Marshall McLuhan, Alrawi developed a study on the possible social and political effects of new communications technology leading to greater freedom in the Middle East. These ideas were developed further during his residency at Oakland University in Michigan where he presented them to students at the Honours College in a discussion group on the possible social effects of the Internet as part of the Festival of the Middle East held at the university campus in 2000[54].
When, in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Alrawi gave testimony before the US Congress[55], he drew heavily on ideas from his research to argue for funding for training journalists in new media in the Middle East. Later, he was to make a similar case to senior officials at the US State Department, and USAID[56], as well as directly to Pierre Pettigrew the Canadian Minister of Foreign Affairs (2004–2006) who he accompanied to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) conference on Good Governance in the Arab World[57] at the Dead Sea in Jordan, as part of the official Canadian delegation. Alrawi was a member of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)'s Programme on Governance in the Arab Region (POGAR, 1999–2005)[58][59].
In 2003, Alrawi with two colleagues, set up the Arab Development and Media Network (ADAM Network), a not-for-profit company registered in Beirut, Lebanon. The company provided support and training, at no charge, to journalists in the use of new media from eleven countries in the Middle East and North Africa. The project received funding from aid agencies in the USA, Canada and Europe. Most of the training was conducted in association with partner organizations, such as the EOHR in Egypt, and civil society and human rights organizations in Lebanon, Jordan, Tunisia, Bahrain, Yemen, and Morocco[60]. In Oman, Syria, Iraq, and Algeria training was conducted through local organizations with funding obtained by ADAM Network[61]. A major focus of the training was computer skills and Internet literacy. At one point workshops were conducted at the rate of three four-day workshops a month in different countries[62]. The early success of the training programs encouraged several international organizations to implement similar training projects contributing to a rapid increase in computer literacy among journalists in the region[63]. ADAM Network was dissolved in 2010 after Alrawi returned to writing full-time.
Alrawi supervised media training and peacebuilding projects in Iraq[64][65], traveling to Iraq to conduct studies on the media and organise training sessions for media professionals[66][67], and was a participant in the Athens conference on an Independent Media in Iraq that discussed the drafting of new media laws for the country[68].
He supervised media and conflict sensitive reporting projects in Nepal during the Nepalese civil war (1996-2006), conflict resolution training for media in South-East Asia[69] and supervised Canadian funded projects to support women-managed community radio stations and a newspaper in Afghanistan[70].
With the start of the Egyptian revolution on January 25, 2011, Alrawi returned to Egypt[71][72][73].
Alrawi is currently working on a novel set in the Middle East and North Africa.