Karim Alrawi

Karim Alrawi
Occupation	Writer, Playwright
Nationality	Canadian, British, Egyptian
Website
http://www.karimalrawi.com

Karim Alrawi (Arabic كريم الراوي) is a British/ Canadian/ Egyptian writer born in Alexandria, Egypt. His family emigrated to England then to Canada. Alrawi graduated from University College, University of London and the University of Manchester, England. After his stage play Migrations won the prestigious John Whiting Award he became Literary Manager of the Theatre Royal Stratford East and later Resident Writer at the Royal Court Theatre in Central London. In 1988 he moved to Egypt and taught in the theatre department of the American University in Cairo. In 1990 his plays were banned by the Egyptian state censor⁽¹⁾⁽²⁾. Three years later he was arrested and detained for interrogation by Egyptian State Security for his work with the Egyptian Organisation for Human Rights (EOHR)⁽³⁾. He later moved to the United States where he was Writer in Residence at Meadow Brook Theatre in Michigan. He was Editor in Chief of Arabica magazine, the leading nationally distributed Arab American publication with a certified readership of over 100,000. For almost eight years Alrawi worked for aid and development agencies including the Canadian Institute for Media Policy and Civil Society, The US-Arab Economic Forum and the World Bank where he was Communications Advisor and Manager of External Affairs for the Middle East and North Africa. In January 2011, Alrawi returned to Egypt to participate in Egypt's Revolution⁽⁴⁾, the uprising against the Mubarak dictatorship. He worked with the EOHR compiling corruption files on former members of the Egyptian government for submission to the state prosecutors office. He currently divides his time between Canada and Egypt⁽⁵⁾.

British Plays

Alrawi's first full length play Migrations was produced at the Theatre Royal Stratford East and won the John Whiting Award in 1982. His second play A Colder Climate was produced at the Royal Court Theatre in Central London and was followed by three plays, Fire in the Lake, A Child in the Heart and Promised Land for Joint Stock Theatre, then one of Britain's major touring companies⁽⁶⁾⁽⁷⁾. All three plays are emotionally intense and provoked considerable controversy at the time of performance ⁽⁶⁾⁽⁸⁾. As Carol Woddis noted about Child in the Heart, "this almost messianic piece about the desperate pain of loss of roots and, in the truly biblical sense, tribal identity, refuses to let its audience off the hook." ⁽⁹⁾Fire in the Lake was award an Edinburgh Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Festival. Crossing the Water a play about the British in Egypt and the Suez War was given a stage reading at the ICA in London before being produced at the American University in Cairo in the summer of 1991⁽¹⁰⁾.

Arabic Plays

In 1988 Alrawi returned to Egypt taking a teaching position in the theatre department of the American University in Cairo (AUC)⁽¹¹⁾. His first serious run-in with the state censor was in the summer of 1990 when his play Crossing the Water was banned and he was summoned to give an account of himself to the censor's office⁽¹²⁾. While living in Egypt Alrawi wrote four stage plays in Arabic two of which were stages at the Wallace Theatre of the American University in central Cairo^(10)(13). Madinate el Salam (City of Peace) is a retelling of the life of the sufi poet al-Hallaj who was executed in tenth century Baghdad on charges of heresy. It is a story of censorship by state and religious authorities. The play was produced twice (1991 & 1993), both times after being refused a license by the state censor that led to threats of arrest of Alrawi by state security.

Al-Bayt al Mahgour (The Abandoned House) produced in 1991 at the Wallace Theatre in central Cairo is a play about sexual exploitation and its roots in Egypt's history of class privilege. The plays produced despite being denied a production license by the censor were a contributory cause to his later arrest and interrogation⁽²⁾.

Autobis al Intikhabat (The Election Bus) and Mudun Gha'iba (Absent Cities) were two full-length plays that were to be produced with a cast of students from AUC. Alrawi and his actors were denied access to the theatre during the final days of rehearsals resulting in cancellation of the performances.

After almost three years of trouble with the state censor's office, in 1993, Alrawi was arrested by State Security and taken for interrogation to the notorious Gaber Ibn Hayyan detention center in Giza where he was held for three days and where he was questioned about his writing and his activities for the EOHR⁽³⁾.

After his release, Alrawi became president of Egyptian PEN (a branch of the international writer's organization), replacing Mursi Saad El-Din, a state security appointee, and arranged the transition of the presidency to the novelist Gamal El-Ghitani when Alrawi accepted a research scholarship to Pennsylvania State University where he produced and published studies on censorship in the Middle East and the social and political effects of communications technology on the region.

North American Plays

During the 1990s Alrawi was resident writer at Iowa State University, Pennsylvania State University, The Oregon Shakespeare Festival and later at Meadow Brook Theatre (MBT) in Michigan. The Unbroken Heart a play based on the life of the blues singer Ethel Waters was first performed at the Fisher Theatre in Iowa before touring to several states. His plays for MBT included A Gift of Glory, about the Mexican artist Diego Rivera and the Ford family; Chagall's Arabian Nights, a story of Marc Chagall and Killing Time, a play about assisted suicide. He also wrote plays that toured local schools and ran theatre workshops for disadvantaged kids.

His play Sarajevo about the Bosnian war was given a workshop production at MBT and the Shenandoah Arts Theatre.

Patagonia a play about torture and resistance was first performed by Ruby Slippers Theatre in Vancouver, Canada.

Deep Cut a play set on the American Gulf Islands about cultural conflict and political and personal expediency was staged at La MaMa ETC in New York as well as by Golden Thread Theatre in San Francisco⁽¹²⁾.

Children's Fiction

Alrawi has written two children's picture books; The Girl who Lost Her Smile and The Mouse Who Saved Egypt.

The Girl Who Lost Her Smile was staged and performed as a children's play in the UK as well as in the USA.

Other Productions

Karim Alrawi has written for BBC radio and television, as well as for Channel Four in the UK.

Common Themes

El Lozy describes Alrawi as a radical playwright influenced by postmodernism. He summarizes the plays in an extreme reading, "Violence is the degree of contemporary Third World life: one is deported from the West Bank, sold to an adoption agency in Ethiopia, sent to England as a mail-order bride, sexually mutilated in Cairo, tortured in Beijing, ethnically-cleansed in Bosnia, and bombed back to the stone age in Baghdad."⁽¹⁴⁾ Later in the same article, El Lozy says, "we are drawn deeply and provocatively into journeys of self-examination and self-discovery where the most intricate and controversial conflicts of our times are dramatized at the level of interpersonal human relationships ... the individual himself/herself is not divorced from history." David Williams calls Alrawi a subversive writer whose early work was the culmination of a strand of Joint Stock Theatre's productions where diaspora was interrogated, not so much as place but as process. He describes Alrawi as a writer who works to uncover "difference as a pivotal conflict in his characters' lives." According to Williams, for Alrawi, "the absence of place is what defines diaspora."⁽¹⁶⁾ Carlson adopts a somewhat different perspective, it is his "ability to effectively situate and reconstruct the individual in a social and cultural context that has remained an enduring quality of the work of Alrawi."⁽¹⁵⁾ While Rashad Rida recognizes that Alrawi's plays represent a break with Arab writers at home and of the diaspora in form and content, and that grappling with issues of personal integrity are integral to his plays, it is the degree of humour in many of them that gives relief to the audience, as well as strength to the characters⁽¹³⁾.

Work in Progress

Alrawi is currently working on a novel set in the Middle East and North Africa.⁽⁵⁾

References

1. "Pop Goes the Censor." http://www.karimalrawi.com/writer/Writers_Blog/Entries/2011/6/3_Pop_goes_the_Censor.html
2. "The still, small voice within Egypt" and "Kindest regards: you're banned." Index on Censorship, February 1992.
3. "Fear of the Word." Media Guardian, The Guardian newspaper, December 20, 1993
4. "After the Revolution," http://www.karimalrawi.com/writer/Writers_Blog/Entries/2011/3/8_After_the_Revolution.html
5. Biographical information from, http://www.karimalrawi.com/writer/Life_%26_Media/Life_%26_Media.html
6. Joyce Devlin, "Joint Stock: From Colorless Company to Company of Color." Theatre Topics Journal, John Hopkins University Press, March 1991, ISSN 1054-8378
7. Ritchie, R. (ed), "The Joint Stock Book: Making of a Theatre Collective," Methuen, London, 1987, ISBN 0-413-41030-7
8. Sara Freeman, "Writing the History of an Alternative Theatre Company: Mythology and the Last Years of Joint Stock." Theatre Survey 47:1, American Society for Theatre Research, May 2006, ISSN 0040-5574
9. Carol Woddis, '"Child in the Heart, play review." City Limits magazine, April 21, 1988.
10. Walter Eysselinck, "Identity and Anxiety in the Plays of Karim Alrawi." Theatre Workshop Paper, American University in Cairo, 1991.
11. Karim Alrawi interview from, http://www.karimalrawi.com/writer/Interview.html
12. "No Queens on the Nile." The Guardian newspaper, July 27, 1990.
13. Rashad Rida, "From Cultural Authenticity to Social Relevance: The plays of Amin al-Rihanni, Khalil Gibran and Karim Alrawi." Colors of Enchantment, Ed. Sherifa Zuhur American University in Cairo Press, 2010 ISBN 977 424 607 1
14. Mahmoud El Lozy, "Identity and Geography in Karim Alrawi’s Promise Land." Alif: Journal of Contemporary Poetics, American University in Cairo Press, 2000.
15. Susan Carlson, "Collaboration, Identity and Cultural Difference: Alrawi’s Theatre of Engagement." Theatre Journal, May 1993, John Hopkins University Press, ISSN 0192-2882
16. David Williams, "Staging the Dialogics of the Diaspora in Three Joint Stock Plays." ASTR: Performance, Diaspora and the Politics of Home, University of California, Davis, undated.

External links

• Author's website, http://www.karimalrawi.com

• Author's blog, http://www.karimalrawi.com/writer/Writers_Blog/Writers_Blog.html

• Author information at Tradewind Books, http://tradewindbooks.com/author-biography&Name=Karim_Alrawi

• Author information at Windslow Press, http://www.winslowpress.com/girl/author.cfm