Lana Nasser is a performing artist and award-winning playwright, theatre director and storyteller. The co-founder of the Jordanian Aat Network, which raises awareness of women and gender issues through creative self expression, has directed Aat’s International Women’s Day Festival since its inception in 2010. While studying in the US, she wrote and performed solo in Arab Woman Talking, which toured several US cities. A Clore Fellow, Nasser was recently on attachment at the Royal Court. She explains her journey as a writer, an Arab artist and feminist.
I started writing young. My father encouraged me. By the time I was 10 he put me up on a stage to recite my poems, to a full auditorium, at Jordan University. A professor and author, my father is now 75; he is writing his memoirs. “Keef il-kitabeh” is the first question we exchange over the phone – long distance. “How’s the writing?”
My father taught me the love of words, and he raised me to be free. He treated me like a boy – as in ‘no less than’. But the culture I grew up in viewed things differently: man was inherently superior, entitled to have power ‘over’ another. I rejected this and started writing with the voice of feminism.
My characters are mostly women. They talk about politics and sex, gods/goddesses and religions. They question identity and word meanings, and they don’t shy away from taboos. They wear Middle Eastern garments, but they also wear jeans. They speak in Arabic and English, and I do the translation. Their stories are as inspired by life and the human condition as they are by the Arabic language itself.
There are few women writers in the Arab world, and even fewer playwrights. While storytelling is a long tradition, theatre (in the Western sense) is relatively new. We do not have a legacy weighing us down or exalting us. There is less concern for form and rules of writing, which could be liberating.
There is a great deal of devising in modern Jordanian theatre. The writer is oftentimes the director. With no government support, and peanuts from ticket sales, we make theatre for much less money – guerilla style. This leads to creative problem-solving, which is limiting at times.
Emerging writers are generally on their own, with no script development support, aside from the occasional projects brought in from the outside. One such example is the Royal Court’s I Come from There: new plays from the Arab world. We have nothing in Jordan that resembles the Royal Court’s commitment to new writing. So when the opportunity came to spend some time there, I jumped at it.
I arrived at the theatre at an opportune time, when Open Court was just starting. I came in through the back door. Not as artist, but as a Clore fellow, inquiring into women in leadership and writers as cultural leaders, cross culturally.
Although I did not come ‘to write,’ I couldn’t help it. There was too much stimulation. At the suggestion of Royal Court’s new artistic director Vicky Featherstone, I acted like a butterfly, though I suspect I appeared more like a moth. Nonetheless, I hopped from flower to flower. The garden was a lush, and I was fully engaged.
The first week saw the Big Idea, a six week festival of plays and ideas created by 140 writers, including themes such as Sex with a priest, a sex columnist, an activist and an educator; material to feed a writer’s mind. And so it continued, from panel debates and writing workshops, to conversations and shows, as well as a wealth of reading materials. Then there was Peckham’s community soap opera. Talk about innovation.
I leave the Royal Court as a fatter butterfly, or moth. It has been an enriching experience and a valuable education. The biggest gain, however, has been the inspiration and motivation to write more, to write better, and to come back to the Royal Court – as a writer.