Actors rehearse in one of the halls the National Theater
© AFP/File Karim SahibBAGHDAD (AFP) - Like so much of Baghdad, the building was gutted by looters in the aftermath of the 2003 US invasion and the fall of Saddam Hussein. But, as one of the few cultural institutions to have been renovated, it now provides a haven for artists.
"Death is like a daily breakfast, we have to take advantage of such drama and benefit from it. We do not want our future to be like a scene out of Samuel Beckett's 'Waiting for Godot'," said Abbas al-Khafaji, the head of Iraq's National Children's Theatre, referring to a bleak existentialist play.
Under Saddam, theater was lavishly funded, but tightly controlled.
Productions were restricted to slapstick comedies or patriotic epics glorifying the war with Iran.
Now underfunded actors are dodging car bombs and braving the risk of abduction to gather daily at the crowded theater and rehearse for a series of short pantomime-like children's plays.
"We chose children's theater because they are our future and we need to give them something else besides guns, wars and politics," Khafaji said.
The plays will be performed in schools around Baghdad as it is too dangerous to bring children to the theatre.
"We are working on giving performances in almost all the schools to make the children feel happy and to give them a glimpse of joy," said actress Shahrazad Shakr.
The actors divide into small groups and rehearse in shifts.
In his play "Prince Rose and the Secret of the Necklace", director Hussein Ali Saleh doesn't shy away from the war altogether, but rather incorporates it into the story.
"Our aim is to give happiness to our children, but we cannot ignore what is happening in the country, so we use scenes of violence and bloodshed in a satirical way," he said.
Those who perpetrate violence in his play are not the heroes, but rather the weak characters the audience is meant to ridicule.
Not far from the theater's marble façade, in the shattered husk of the once proud Al-Rashid Theater, another kind of play is being staged -- one that does not shy away from grim realities.
Political theater was increasingly discouraged by Saddam as he rose to power in the 1970s -- on one occasion the whole cast of a play was taken into custody and interrogated.
At the Rashid Theater, however, actors are putting on the "Wishmaker", a poignant throwback to the bold tradition of political theater Iraq had in the 1960s, when it experimented and questioned the status quo.
The play opens with a woman in black surrounded by tombstones mourning her son. With each successive act, the scene grows bleaker as dreams fail and more tombstones appear on stage.
"It is a black drama, where the hopes of people fade with every car bomb and soon the country turns into a huge graveyard, and the wishes of simple people turn into promises to open new jails," said playwright Amjad Taliaa.
"But in spite of everything we still have hope for a better life and for that reason we are working. We did not lose hope," he added.
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