Sudanese theatrical... Confronting Death and War with Art

Follow-up - moatinoon
Before the outbreak of the Khartoum War, when you turn on the national stage door of Amderman, you have a sad sense of long-term havoc, and the raid on its stage, which became a military barracks for years after the fall of Omar al-Bashirs regime.

In the meantime, Sudanese theatrists were blindsided in their diaspora by the policies of the former regime, successfully building their institutions and trade union and establishing a new Sudanese theatrical era, which derives from more than a hundred years of Sudanese theatrical heritage.

But last Aprils mid-April war, which erupted in the capital Khartoum, killed thousands of civilians and displaced millions to Sudanese cities and neighboring countries. More than fifteen creatives were lost to the artistic and cultural environment, and others were displaced by fear and anxiety.

Sudanese musicians’ regained confidence in displacement towns, boomed, prepared texts, workshops and staged theatrical performances in the face of the war machine and destruction. Step by step the theatres of displacement towns began to fire up in Wad Madani, Port Sudan, Qadarif, Damazin, Atbara and Shandi with theatrical performances and art seminars.

On his experience in the face of war, writer and director Rabi Yusuf tells (moatinoon): We met with the shelter center of Wade Madani City. We are an estimated number of theatre creators, musicians and formations, after we lost a journey to this camp. Yusuf is saddened that most of the displaced theatre creators lost their creative identity due to grief and concern for themselves, for the homeland, and described the situation in the shelter camp as a siege and waiting for the unknown, where monotony almost undermined their grit.