Lifting the veil
A Dutch playwright inspired by 'Vagina Monologues' looks at sexuality a Dutch playwright
By Stacey Kors, Globe Correspondent | October 12, 2007
LENOX - While performing in the Dutch version of Eve Ensler's popular play "The Vagina Monologues," Adelheid Roosen was struck with an idea for her next theater project. "After the third time I did it," she says, "I thought, why doesn't this exist for the [Muslim] woman? This is a wonderful concept for knowing more about her way of loving, her intuition, her instinct, and her sensuality."
Roosen, a celebrated actress, playwright, and director, is known in the Netherlands for her cultural quests. She's traveled the world to study other cultures for her work, and she founded the first female Moroccan theater group in Holland. But a liberal white Dutch woman questioning Muslim women about a subject as intimate as their sexuality - women often from deeply religious societies where females may be oppressed and even concealed from public view - would seem a trickier proposition, especially in the post-9/11 world of strained relations between Islam and the West.
Yet there's something about Roosen's energy and attitude, and her obvious regard for other cultures and values, that seems to have transcended such concerns. As she crisscrossed Holland in 2002, interviewing 70 women of all ages from countries including Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Kuwait, Pakistan, Morocco, Turkey, Iran, and Iraq, "doors went open immediately," says the tall, expressive 49-year-old, "and so much more wide open than the Dutch do. You go to the kitchen and they cook you food, they make tea . . . you could really live the whole day with them. I had tremendous, beautiful conversations."
Out of these conversations came "The Veiled Monologues," which receives its New England premiere at the American Repertory Theatre Tuesday through Oct. 21. A powerful and often surprising look at Muslim women's sex uality and sexual identity, "The Veiled Monologues" has already been performed in three languages since its 2003 premiere and has been staged everywhere from a large theater festival in Ankara to a private gathering in Jordan, a Turkish mosque, and the Hague, in front of the Dutch Parliament.
The play's success lies in its accessible approach to taboo topics. With a couch as the main set piece and the suggestive sounds of a Turkish saz in the background, three Dutch actresses of Muslim upbringing sing, dance, and share stories: humorous recollections of sexual foibles, delicate struggles of young girls anguished over keeping their virginity, disturbing tales of domestic abuse. As one performer speaks, the others sit or recline on the couch, listening and murmuring responses to one another as well as to the audience. The scenario invites the audience, in a sense, to sit on the couch with them, to participate in these very personal experiences.
Another key to the work's appeal is that the monologues are told in a frank yet nonjudgmental fashion, maintaining respect for the Islamic faith and cultural traditions that engendered them. Steering clear of black-and-white morality, as well as the gray areas of politics, "The Veiled Monologues" works to change audiences' perceptions - and misperceptions - by temporarily lifting the veil on complex emotions and beliefs often hidden from the non-Muslim world. The result is a rare glimpse into the kind of strong communities of women that have privately flourished in male-dominated cultures.
Roosen and the cast spent two weeks in August workshopping the play at Shakespeare and Company in Lenox before taking it to New York for its US and English-language debut, in repertory with Roosen's play "Is.Man" at St. Ann's Warehouse.
Sitting in Shakespeare and Company's cafe area before the final workshop of the play, a highly animated Roosen tucks her feet up onto her chair and leans forward intently as she speaks.
"In the book I did of the monologues," Roosen explains, "I wrote a sentence by the Austrian playwright Peter Handke that says, 'The strange woman was so beautiful that I recognized her.' I love the contradiction in this." Roosen springs up from her seat and gesticulates emphatically to punctuate her points. "I thought, yeah, that's what's living in my heart. There is something in people where what is strange you reject, and what is familiar you open the door for immediately. And so what I try to communicate is that when you are curious and interested and not so judgmental, you can see beyond the burka, and see something else which is beautiful in the [Muslim] world."
While audiences may learn about the sexual and cultural identities of Muslim women through watching "The Veiled Monologues," the play's performers say they have discovered much about themselves through sharing the stories.
"We talk so much together about how it is to be a woman in our cultures, Islamic and Christian," says Oya Campelle, who was raised in Istanbul but moved to Holland 30 years ago at the age of 21 to marry a Dutch man. "We discovered that we have so much in common, as women, with each other. And taking the play to America, we've had women come up to us and say, 'I've had similar experiences, I've also had problems in my culture with some of these things, like virginity.' I've also learned how to speak openly about my own sexuality and my sensuality."
Nazmiye Oral is also of Turkish descent but was born and raised in Holland. Like Campelle, she married a Dutch man, but she found herself in the midst of a divorce in her early 30s, about the same time she became involved with "The Veiled Monologues." With Roosen's encouragement, Oral wrote the play's final monologue, "My Golden Sea," about trying to reignite the sensual spark in her relationship - a monologue she performs herself.
"Emotionally it was one of the hardest ones for me to get across," she says, "because writing about something is vulnerable, but with acting you have to show, you have to give, you have to be, which is even more vulnerable."
In presenting her monologue and others, Oral says she rediscovered her capacity for giving, which felt inaccessible to her in the aftermath of her divorce.
"Doing 'The Veiled Monologues,' " I learned that I had a big desire to give - because I think that's one of the beautiful things about humanity, to be able to give. What I'm learning now is to receive, which is almost as important as giving," she says. "You get a lot from the audience. It's nice to realize that everybody's going through the same things. We all know the feelings of inadequacy, longing for love and not having it, not knowing how to be a woman, losing your man - whatever. We all have questions and fears. We're human, and we want to exchange."
Showing posts with label sexuality. Show all posts
Showing posts with label sexuality. Show all posts
Sunday, October 14, 2007
Wednesday, October 03, 2007
Op-Ed: Iran, Sexuality, and Intercultural Dialogue
From the Columbia Spectator
By OMAR SARWAR
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 26, 2007
During his speech on Monday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad parried many of our direct questions concerning his denial of the Holocaust, his desire to destroy the state of Israel, and his government’s pursuit of nuclear technology. However, he spoke clearly, if rather inaccurately, about the issue of homosexuality: “In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon.” His remarks evoked laughter in the audience. But our amusement pointed to a lack of reflection on whether such a response is underpinned by certain cultural assumptions with which we in the West have yet to fully grapple.
Of course, it is plainly untrue that there are no homosexuals in Iran. Though part of a minority, some Iranians view themselves as queer, have advanced the cause of gay rights, and have consequently had to endure the persecution of their government. The Iranian Queer Organization (IRQO) is one manifestation of the efforts of queer Iranians to promote social justice under the banner of international human and gay rights. What we seem to have neglected are the historical significance and cultural specificity of our use of the terms “homosexual” and “queer” in describing same-sex desire and practice. What does it mean to posit that homosexuality has persisted throughout human history? With respect to Iran, do all or most Iranians who experience same-sex desire consider themselves “gay?” Does a history of sexuality in Persia reveal a “gay” identity as we understand it in modern times, one which is at once defended in the name of privacy and publicly expressed through a variety of symbols, images, and accouterments? Our own Professor Joseph Massad would reply in the negative. In his recent book, Desiring Arabs, Massad argues that civilizational worth and sexual desire have been closely interconnected in Orientalist thought, that the category of the “homosexual” is part of the culturally specific vocabulary of international gay rights organizations (the “Gay International”), and that nationalist and Islamist Arab intellectuals have assimilated distinctly European conceptions of the human since the nineteenth century.
Although Massad concentrates on the interface between Europe and the Arab world, his remains a broad commentary on the manner in which a particular penetrative Western discourse has interlaced sexuality, gay rights, human rights, Orientalist convictions, and social Darwinism in confronting the question of same-sex desire and practice in the non-Western world. He avers that “it is the very discourse of the Gay International, which both produces homosexuals, as well as gays and lesbians, where they do not exist.” For Massad, this discourse is oppressive because it brands those who pursue same-sex practices but resist universalist terminology as “homophobic” and because it rigidifies a heterosexual-homosexual binary, a potent tool for state repression.
I mention Massad’s work to underscore the possibility that many Iranians (and many non-Westerners in general) might conceive of sexuality in non-identitarian, non-universalist terms. These conceptions may take a range of forms, some of which betoken a dialectic between religious revivalism and Western norms, particularly in the context of the history of the modern Middle East. A denial of “homosexuality,” then, may indicate not an irrational refusal to accept the fact of same-sex desire and practice but rather a repudiation of a homogenizing albeit culturally distinct discourse on sexuality. I am not suggesting that Ahmadinejad’s curt answer to the question of the persecution of homosexuals evinces such complex considerations. And I personally do not endorse punishing or killing people for their sexual desires and practices irrespective of the historicity and multiplicity of the language employed to articulate these things. Nonetheless, President Ahmadinejad is not the sole representative or arbiter of the aspirations of the Iranian people, with whom we must engage in constructive dialogue on questions of sexuality. It will not suffice to presuppose that Iranians already conduct their sexuality in identitarian, universalist language or that, if they do not, they can somehow be benevolently (or peremptorily) taught how to do so. It is only by maintaining open lines of communication with the Iranians (and other peoples) that we can begin to understand what we share as human beings and what differentiates us. This will be the least we can do if we claim to be more tolerant and compassionate than the present Iranian government.
The author is a history Ph.D. student in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
By OMAR SARWAR
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 26, 2007
During his speech on Monday, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad parried many of our direct questions concerning his denial of the Holocaust, his desire to destroy the state of Israel, and his government’s pursuit of nuclear technology. However, he spoke clearly, if rather inaccurately, about the issue of homosexuality: “In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon.” His remarks evoked laughter in the audience. But our amusement pointed to a lack of reflection on whether such a response is underpinned by certain cultural assumptions with which we in the West have yet to fully grapple.
Of course, it is plainly untrue that there are no homosexuals in Iran. Though part of a minority, some Iranians view themselves as queer, have advanced the cause of gay rights, and have consequently had to endure the persecution of their government. The Iranian Queer Organization (IRQO) is one manifestation of the efforts of queer Iranians to promote social justice under the banner of international human and gay rights. What we seem to have neglected are the historical significance and cultural specificity of our use of the terms “homosexual” and “queer” in describing same-sex desire and practice. What does it mean to posit that homosexuality has persisted throughout human history? With respect to Iran, do all or most Iranians who experience same-sex desire consider themselves “gay?” Does a history of sexuality in Persia reveal a “gay” identity as we understand it in modern times, one which is at once defended in the name of privacy and publicly expressed through a variety of symbols, images, and accouterments? Our own Professor Joseph Massad would reply in the negative. In his recent book, Desiring Arabs, Massad argues that civilizational worth and sexual desire have been closely interconnected in Orientalist thought, that the category of the “homosexual” is part of the culturally specific vocabulary of international gay rights organizations (the “Gay International”), and that nationalist and Islamist Arab intellectuals have assimilated distinctly European conceptions of the human since the nineteenth century.
Although Massad concentrates on the interface between Europe and the Arab world, his remains a broad commentary on the manner in which a particular penetrative Western discourse has interlaced sexuality, gay rights, human rights, Orientalist convictions, and social Darwinism in confronting the question of same-sex desire and practice in the non-Western world. He avers that “it is the very discourse of the Gay International, which both produces homosexuals, as well as gays and lesbians, where they do not exist.” For Massad, this discourse is oppressive because it brands those who pursue same-sex practices but resist universalist terminology as “homophobic” and because it rigidifies a heterosexual-homosexual binary, a potent tool for state repression.
I mention Massad’s work to underscore the possibility that many Iranians (and many non-Westerners in general) might conceive of sexuality in non-identitarian, non-universalist terms. These conceptions may take a range of forms, some of which betoken a dialectic between religious revivalism and Western norms, particularly in the context of the history of the modern Middle East. A denial of “homosexuality,” then, may indicate not an irrational refusal to accept the fact of same-sex desire and practice but rather a repudiation of a homogenizing albeit culturally distinct discourse on sexuality. I am not suggesting that Ahmadinejad’s curt answer to the question of the persecution of homosexuals evinces such complex considerations. And I personally do not endorse punishing or killing people for their sexual desires and practices irrespective of the historicity and multiplicity of the language employed to articulate these things. Nonetheless, President Ahmadinejad is not the sole representative or arbiter of the aspirations of the Iranian people, with whom we must engage in constructive dialogue on questions of sexuality. It will not suffice to presuppose that Iranians already conduct their sexuality in identitarian, universalist language or that, if they do not, they can somehow be benevolently (or peremptorily) taught how to do so. It is only by maintaining open lines of communication with the Iranians (and other peoples) that we can begin to understand what we share as human beings and what differentiates us. This will be the least we can do if we claim to be more tolerant and compassionate than the present Iranian government.
The author is a history Ph.D. student in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
Wednesday, September 26, 2007
Op-Ed by Columbia Student: Iran, Sexuality, and Human Rights
From the Columbia Spectator
Iran, Sexuality, and Human Rights
By Aries De La Cruz
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 24, 2007
Mahmoud Asgari, 16, and Ayaz Marhoni, 18, were two teenagers from the province of Khuzestan, charged with rape and sodomy in a nation where both concepts are frequently conflated by a specious justice system. They were hanged in a public execution in the city of Mashhad on July 19, 2005. Mahmoud and Ayaz were executed for same-sex practices (and deprived of their basic right to exist) as a result of a zealous government that is based not on the principles of reason but rather the tyranny of religion: Iran is a nation that has criminalized such acts since 1979, a violation of which is punishable by torture and death, according to Islamic law.
Mahmoud and Ayaz’s case is simply one of many that occur regularly in Iran (and it happened only a month before Ahmadinejad was elected president). Other such violations are broadly distributed and experienced by all sectors of Iranian society, except for the elites. For instance, the status of women in Iran continues to appalling. Such repression is to be expected from a nation in which every resource is mobilized to suppress dissent, smash same-sex practices, and oppress women.
I begin with Mahmoud and Ayaz because it is their story that compellingly illustrates the human rights violations that are regularly perpetrated by Iran. Because we inherited the knowledge of their persecution, we must do honor to their deaths by working towards a diplomatic yet unwavering solution so that others may enjoy a happier outcome.
Many have invoked rhetoric centered on human rights and freedom. Unfortunately, these values have been co-opted by some of the more extreme conservative and reactionary factions within our campus, who use such language to propel their own agendas. Such discussion undeniably comes from a place of privilege, a discourse that is bound up with the advantages of education and status—it is impossible to speak about the lack of something with which all of us have long been accustomed. To be sure, this level of engagement is neither brave nor courageous, for it is expected of our role as student leaders to endeavor to speak truth to power. However, for those factions that seek to cloak themselves in the language of liberty and human rights while pushing an agenda that will deprive many of such benefits requires as much audacity as one that would deny the occurrence of genocide. Indeed, the appropriation of the experiences of the oppressed in Iran in order to agitate for military escalation is a malicious disservice to those who have suffered under the regime. While it is expedient and useful in moments of supposed crisis to unite and come to consensus on common principles (because historically, no group on this campus operates a monopoly on civil discourse and respectful dialogue), progressives must acknowledge that we stand for the core values of liberalism and freedom—values that broadly and robustly defined, would likely earn the vitriol of both Ahmadinejad and factions on this campus, who separately but mutually advocate torture, military escalation, and the suppression of dissent and sexual practices under the banner of moral and religious zealotry.
I am profoundly disturbed by the notion that Ahmadinejad can visit our campus to enjoy the benefits and comfort of liberal society, knowing the entire time that a controversial speaker in his nation would surely be publicly hanged. Giving Ahmadinejad a soapbox from which to air his provocative rhetoric offends many of us, but the grievous denial of freedom and safety to Iranian citizens who engage in same-sex practices are just as offensive. I am immensely privileged to be able to love others and protest freely, while others in Iran have no such blessings to lose. I stand in solidarity with them in the hope that one day they can have the option to practice these desires openly and without fear for their lives.
Although our identities, values, and cultures are decidedly different from our peers in Iran, I am convinced our stakes in this struggle are one and the same.
The author is a student in the School of General Studies and a board member of Columbia Queer Alliance.
Iran, Sexuality, and Human Rights
By Aries De La Cruz
PUBLISHED SEPTEMBER 24, 2007
Mahmoud Asgari, 16, and Ayaz Marhoni, 18, were two teenagers from the province of Khuzestan, charged with rape and sodomy in a nation where both concepts are frequently conflated by a specious justice system. They were hanged in a public execution in the city of Mashhad on July 19, 2005. Mahmoud and Ayaz were executed for same-sex practices (and deprived of their basic right to exist) as a result of a zealous government that is based not on the principles of reason but rather the tyranny of religion: Iran is a nation that has criminalized such acts since 1979, a violation of which is punishable by torture and death, according to Islamic law.
Mahmoud and Ayaz’s case is simply one of many that occur regularly in Iran (and it happened only a month before Ahmadinejad was elected president). Other such violations are broadly distributed and experienced by all sectors of Iranian society, except for the elites. For instance, the status of women in Iran continues to appalling. Such repression is to be expected from a nation in which every resource is mobilized to suppress dissent, smash same-sex practices, and oppress women.
I begin with Mahmoud and Ayaz because it is their story that compellingly illustrates the human rights violations that are regularly perpetrated by Iran. Because we inherited the knowledge of their persecution, we must do honor to their deaths by working towards a diplomatic yet unwavering solution so that others may enjoy a happier outcome.
Many have invoked rhetoric centered on human rights and freedom. Unfortunately, these values have been co-opted by some of the more extreme conservative and reactionary factions within our campus, who use such language to propel their own agendas. Such discussion undeniably comes from a place of privilege, a discourse that is bound up with the advantages of education and status—it is impossible to speak about the lack of something with which all of us have long been accustomed. To be sure, this level of engagement is neither brave nor courageous, for it is expected of our role as student leaders to endeavor to speak truth to power. However, for those factions that seek to cloak themselves in the language of liberty and human rights while pushing an agenda that will deprive many of such benefits requires as much audacity as one that would deny the occurrence of genocide. Indeed, the appropriation of the experiences of the oppressed in Iran in order to agitate for military escalation is a malicious disservice to those who have suffered under the regime. While it is expedient and useful in moments of supposed crisis to unite and come to consensus on common principles (because historically, no group on this campus operates a monopoly on civil discourse and respectful dialogue), progressives must acknowledge that we stand for the core values of liberalism and freedom—values that broadly and robustly defined, would likely earn the vitriol of both Ahmadinejad and factions on this campus, who separately but mutually advocate torture, military escalation, and the suppression of dissent and sexual practices under the banner of moral and religious zealotry.
I am profoundly disturbed by the notion that Ahmadinejad can visit our campus to enjoy the benefits and comfort of liberal society, knowing the entire time that a controversial speaker in his nation would surely be publicly hanged. Giving Ahmadinejad a soapbox from which to air his provocative rhetoric offends many of us, but the grievous denial of freedom and safety to Iranian citizens who engage in same-sex practices are just as offensive. I am immensely privileged to be able to love others and protest freely, while others in Iran have no such blessings to lose. I stand in solidarity with them in the hope that one day they can have the option to practice these desires openly and without fear for their lives.
Although our identities, values, and cultures are decidedly different from our peers in Iran, I am convinced our stakes in this struggle are one and the same.
The author is a student in the School of General Studies and a board member of Columbia Queer Alliance.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)