Translating Arabic Theatre: The Devil’s Pink Cloak

In 2017, translator-scholar-director Rebekah Maggor (Performing & Media Arts, Cornell U) adapted and directed Hamlet Wakes Up Late, a 1970s political satire by Syrian playwright Mamduh Adwan (trans. Margaret Litvin). This year she is working with Palestinian playwright-poet-director-scholar Mas’ud Hamdan (Arabic Literature and Theatre, University of Haifa) to translate and produce Hamdan’s 2013 play The Devil’s Pink Cloak: a Hallucinatory Play in Two Acts and Thirteen Scenes. The play begins in spring, during the blossoming of the almond trees, sixty years after the massacre at Deir Yassin. At the Kfar Shaul Mental Institution, housed inside the refurbished village ruins, the Israeli head doctor is as mad as his patients. What will U.S. audiences make of this work? Join Hamdan, Maggor, and Margaret Litvin (WLL) for coffee & sweets, a sneak preview of some scenes, and a discussion of how these works can acquire new meanings when they move beyond their original linguistic and cultural contexts. Part of the WLL Culture Pass and the 2018-19 Arab Arts & Humanities Series. Sponsored by the BU Center for the Humanities, the BU Arts Initiative, the Institute for the Study of Muslim Societies and Civilizations, the Mudarri Arab Civilization Fund, and the Department of World Languages and Literatures.