Syrian director and actor Emad Abu Latif is currently staging his play al Qiyamah (Doomsday) based on a script by the writer Mamdouh al Odwan, in Kuwait, according to the Kuwaiti daily al Rai al A’m.
The character Abu Majed (played by Latif) represents the Arab citizen who lives with broken heart as a result of the oppression against his nation. He dies hundred times every day when he remembers the circumstances, which the nation lives.
For one hour and a half, Abu Majed conveys to the audience the pains which he suffers from, along with his comrades, and which made him prefer to live in the cemetery to talk to the heroes who died as martyrs. He tells all what he knows and what he has learnt through carrying his rifle which left him and as a result he lost his life and lived in another world full of ghosts.
He continues searching for his rifle hoping to find it because according to him any one who looses his rifle looses his life. He asks every body to search for his rifle so that he can recover his life but there are some people who try to hide and bury it. He is a man who lives in the past and is unable to enter life and its reality and perhaps he is unable to die too.
The director avoided the routine of the play and its rhythm through introducing a dancing musical part through which he danced with the puppets and sang Ataba on the tunes of the flute. The set was more interpretive of the psychological situation of Abu Majed as it was a cemetery with its first half refilled and the second half including many palm trees, which mask the moonlight, which uncovers the movements of Abu Majed -- Albawaba.com
