The play Hayat Hayat scripted, directed and played by Jordanian actor Ghannam Ghannam was staged three times at al Medina theater in the Lebanese capital Beirut and twice at the Cultural League in the northern Lebanese City of Tripoli.
Actors Ali Elayyan and Ghannam play three roles in the play including old Hayat, young Hayat and the man Nahar.
The drama focuses on the woman character Hayat in two stages of her life when she is fifty (played by Elayyan) and when she is twenty (played by Ghannam). Both characters are different not only due to age and disappointments but also because each of them makes her move in the opposite direction of the other.
The old woman goes back to a suffocating past symbolized by a man called Nahar (Role played alternatively between the two actors) whose dream of life was not Hayat. Meanwhile, young Hayat sees her relation with Nahar as a warm dream full of love and a way for a house, family and a possible happy future. Nahar emerges in Hayat’s life with all the defeats accumulated in the Arab conscious.
As anticipated, what appears to be love between Hayat and Nahar breaks as a result of the conflict between the two dreams: Hayat’s dream of Nahar and Nahar’s dream of Arabs fighting and winning the battle. None of the two gains victory.
The Arabs military, political and human situation goes from bad to worse particularly in view of the fact that the period depicted by the play lies between 1967-1973 -- Albawaba.com
