Solo/ Choreography, Sound and Text: Diana Sabri
Montage: Dimitris Litsas, Diana Sabri
Voice: Elena Stathatos, Cyrus Farsian, Fadila Monzer, Diana Sabri
Lighting&Technical Management: Kyriakos Makridis
Delfon13Artspace - Athens, Greece
A solo interdisciplinary performance which synoptically presents my thinking process of the I.D.entity research project so far (March,2013) - See ''Research'' Section.
I was compelled to create a relationship with the audience, where they would be observers of an individual who is just beginning to question the order of things -I was particularly interested in performing ‘a process of becoming’. My concern was to raise some existential questions that are developing in the theoretical part of the research. The performance shares a thought process that is concerned with trying to make sense of the world. Questioning and criticizing conventional forms and approaches to knowledge by challenging the ‘objectivity’ of facts that dictate perceptions of the world, from our early development in the educational system to the broader conditioned aspects of our adult lives. Overall, the performance is a journey of trying to find answers and proposes alternatives to challenge our ways of perceiving the world.
A short biography facing a global geography
The performance is a brief accumulation of moments that I strongly remember of how much they formulated my identity and cultivated my thinking at a young age. Remaining resistant to the idea of making a purely auto-biographical performance, I was selective about the past experiences that I chose to perform in order to address the key points of my thinking that had been developing behind the research.
Utilizing my subjective experiences as a vehicle to address the personal and wider concerns that the research contains, was essential to evoke the audience to think,re-question and re-look at the world as though for the very first time through the eyes of Dunia.
A child with a restless curiosity and in search for answers, the performance does not have a conventional narrative or plot. It is a sporadic event of scenes that mark Dunia’s thinking as she is growing up; raising questions that never get answered until the very end, where she realizes that all that ought to be isn’t; that the name her grandfather gave her (which means World in Arabic) is scarred by borders that bleed through the making of wars and nation states; and that her own ethnicity continues to be attacked by fascist statements humiliating her and humanity.
She opens a book to read about her ancestors’ history but only finds empty blank pages that scorn her existence by trying to erase her. She wonders whether there is any equation of rationality that could ever prove what she feels: that it is in our essence to cultivate a peaceful life, that borders are unnatural, religion is a farce and that destiny is in the hands of the people to live a better life.
Dunia learns about Imperialism, the creation of the Zionist state and finds that all she believes in is betrayed by a world that is divided, and the respect for mother nature and for the cultivation of land are deteriorating. She feels that she belongs to the whole world yet she remains rooted in Palestine, as she struggles with the paradox of rejecting and embracing her borders at the same time. Finally, the voice of another little girl appears in Egypt of 2011, chanting the fall of Husni Mubarak. Her dream still lives, as she shares with the audience a map of the world, with its borders gradually being erased by the chants of uprisings in the Arab world and beyond.
Tabula rasa, meaning ‘blank slate’ in Latin,is a term used in the Nature versus Nurture debate in the fields of psychology and philosophy. No Tabula Rasa is a performance that debates life. Who and what are we in essence? How can we ever be born blank and free to make choices in a world without freedom? What can we nurture from our essence consciously? No Tabula Rasa says No to the blank slate but calls upon us to recognize the responsibility of what we nurture and to continue believing in the world we once dreamed of… for those of us who have forgotten or decided to just give up.
