Could You Please Look into the Camera?

Al Attar, Mohammad; Ziter, Edward; Wedeen, Lisa

doi:10.1162/DRAM_a_00376

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September 01 2014

Could You Please Look into the Camera?

Mohammad Al Attar,

Mohammad Al Attar

Mohammad Al Attar is a Syrian playwright and dramaturge. He graduated with a degree in English literature from Damascus University in 2002 and in Theatrical Studies from the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts in 2007. He also received a Masters in Applied Drama from Goldsmiths, London in 2010. His works Samah (2008), Withdrawal (2008), Online (2011), Look at the street…this is what hope looks like (2012), Could You Please Look into the Camera? (2012), A Chance Encounter (2013), and Intimacy (2013) have been performed in Damascus, London, New York, Seoul, Berlin, Brussels, Edinburgh, Tunisia, Athens, Beirut, and elsewhere. He has written for numerous magazines and newspapers, with a special focus recently on the Syrian Revolution. Beside his writings for stage, he continues his work using theatre in projects with marginalized groups. His main focus has shifted recently to do more work in the North and North Eastern areas of Syria. moattar80@gmail.com

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Edward Ziter,

Edward Ziter

Edward Ziter is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Drama at New York University. His manuscript Political Theatre in Syria: The June War to the Arab Spring is under contract with Palgrave Macmillan. ted.ziter@gmail.com

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Lisa Wedeen

Lisa Wedeen is the Mary R. Morton Professor of Political Science and the College and the Co-Director of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory at the University of Chicago. Author of Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria (1999) and Peripheral Visions: Publics, Power and Performance in Yemen (2008), her articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, Public Culture, Comparative Studies in Society and History, and Critical Inquiry. She is the recipient of the David Collier Mid-Career Achievement Award and an NSF fellowship; she is currently writing a book about ideology, neoliberal autocracy, and generational change in Syria.

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Author and Article Information

Mohammad Al Attar

Mohammad Al Attar is a Syrian playwright and dramaturge. He graduated with a degree in English literature from Damascus University in 2002 and in Theatrical Studies from the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts in 2007. He also received a Masters in Applied Drama from Goldsmiths, London in 2010. His works Samah (2008), Withdrawal (2008), Online (2011), Look at the street…this is what hope looks like (2012), Could You Please Look into the Camera? (2012), A Chance Encounter (2013), and Intimacy (2013) have been performed in Damascus, London, New York, Seoul, Berlin, Brussels, Edinburgh, Tunisia, Athens, Beirut, and elsewhere. He has written for numerous magazines and newspapers, with a special focus recently on the Syrian Revolution. Beside his writings for stage, he continues his work using theatre in projects with marginalized groups. His main focus has shifted recently to do more work in the North and North Eastern areas of Syria. moattar80@gmail.com

Edward Ziter

Edward Ziter is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Drama at New York University. His manuscript Political Theatre in Syria: The June War to the Arab Spring is under contract with Palgrave Macmillan. ted.ziter@gmail.com

Lisa Wedeen

Lisa Wedeen is the Mary R. Morton Professor of Political Science and the College and the Co-Director of the Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory at the University of Chicago. Author of Ambiguities of Domination: Politics, Rhetoric, and Symbols in Contemporary Syria (1999) and Peripheral Visions: Publics, Power and Performance in Yemen (2008), her articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, Public Culture, Comparative Studies in Society and History, and Critical Inquiry. She is the recipient of the David Collier Mid-Career Achievement Award and an NSF fellowship; she is currently writing a book about ideology, neoliberal autocracy, and generational change in Syria.

Online ISSN: 1531-4715

Print ISSN: 1054-2043

2014

TDR/The Drama Review (2014) 58 (3 (223)): 124–155.

https://doi.org/10.1162/DRAM_a_00376

Abstract

Are theatre texts documents of rapidly changing events in times of extreme complexity? If so, then what kind of documents are they? These questions provided the first motivation for writing Could You Please Look into the Camera? The second motivation was purely personal: the Assad regime’s program of arbitrary detention had stepped up the frequency of arrests, creating a republic of fear. This ugly fear that Syrians now share—whether arrested or not—had to be exposed in public.

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