Tsk tsk tsk. Over a month without an update. Terrible of me, really. But there’s sometimes a distinction to be made between writing and doing – and the past month has been all about the Doing. First there was the Abu Dhabi Film Festival – which I covered for GN (over at hishamwyne.com). Then worked with the awesome gals at Art in the City for Abu Dhabi Art. From there, rolled right into DIPAF – the Dubai International Performing Arts Festival where I did my first stand up comedy gig and poetry in Urdu the next day. All this merits a blog post of its own – and this will happen. I just need to start stealing pictures from miscellaneous FB profiles for that one. But in the meantime, here’s an article I wrote on the arts scene in Barsha. 

Let’s assume for a second that you’re homing in on Barsha on the back of a giant bird. From afar, you see a cross-section of living and shopping spaces, with apartments and villas rubbing corners with little shops, restaurants, and hypermarkets. The Mall of the Emirates, with its protruding ski slope, slides into view as retail lynchpin.

Hover a bit closer and you realize Barsha is a community humming and bustling in its own right. People mill around, cars honk and there are the inevitable traffic jams. From your perch in the sky, you linger over busy street corners. Just a few turns away, villas sit slouching in the very epitome of languor.

As a strictly amateur thespian, comedian, and general noisemaker, I find the arts scene in Barsha figuring ever more prominently within my schedule. And that’s largely due to two enterprises: DUCTAC and the Jam Jar.

Nestled in the Mall of the Emirates, the DUCTAC theatre is home to an artsy generality of people of all ages – some as tiny as kneecap-biting five or six. It offers lessons in music, comedy, tap dance, improv, writing and Arabic, and there is theatre space for all manner of performances. From little girls dressed in pink tutus to people carrying a menacing array of props and scripts, DUCTAC is home for everyone with even a fibre of interest in the arts. Within DUCTAC operate the indomitable duo of Ali Al Sayed and Mina Liccione, the founders of Dubomedy. Mina is an ex-Broadway tap queen and comedienne, and Ali a world-class purveyor of comedy in his own right. I’m currently dabbling in stand-up comedy classes with them, and thoroughly enjoying the bonhomie and camaraderie.

Then, if you were to gain some altitude, and look across to the other side of the Umm Suqeim road dividing Barsha from Al Quoz, you would see the Jam Jar hidden between rows of identical warehouses. Technically, it’s on the wrong side of the street to be considered Barsha. But its influence and proximity means it deserves honorary mention.

One of the true pioneers of Dubai’s homegrown arts scene, it caters to a wide variety of events- musical performances, theatre, and arts exhibitions. It’s a communal space that’s easily accessible, and the all-girl team is genuinely enthusiastic about arts and culture. The Jam Jar, in some manner or other, has been involved with many of the seminal arts and culture events in Dubai and even Abu Dhabi. I have memories of several happy evenings and afternoons there.

Between the Jam Jar and DUCTAC, Barsha’s denizens can rest assured there will always be artsy endeavors to soothe the soul.

Bold Talks was over a month ago – Feb 11th to be precise. Take a bow, Enida and Tamir, whose brainchild it was. A conference that isn’t afraid to be controversial – but not too controversial. I recall Tamer insisting that Dr. Phil Zimbardo of Stanford Prison experiment fame only take questions non-political in nature. No Bush-bashing, thank you. But such are the safety catches one must deploy while organizing stuff in the UAE – one never knows when someone who’s anyone might take offense at a given meniality. 

 It was a brilliant experience. I was there, mucking around, per norm. A few weeks prior, I’d had this shower epiphany that creativity really only needs the will to overcome fear: the fear of creating something that belongs to you. Of telling your story, while feeling that others may be better qualified to tell it. Of subjecting yourself to feedback, of taking part in popular discourse, of stepping outside your comfort zones.

The troops were rallied. Thank you, Abdullah al Suweidi, Ashraf Ghori, Mohammad Fikree and Akhil Fikree for being such valuable companions.

 Our point was simple: there is no one better qualified tell your story than you. It is only by telling your story through pictures, sound, written and spoken word, or any other medium, that the region can benefit from home grown content. Creativity is simply the act of creating, telling stories using different mediums, generating content, and expressing ideas.

 Eric Schmidt, ex-CEO of Google, has said that less than one percent of the content on the Internet is in Arabic. Consider too the words of sociologist Michael Foucault that knowledge is power. Those who create knowledge have power to negotiate ideas, and influence others. At present juncture, most of our knowledge is being created elsewhere and consumed here. We are recipients, and not creators.

 At Bold 2011, we wanted to demonstrate how easy, fun and spontaneous creativity can be. We wanted to overcome the fear that prevents us from all becoming creators. We wished to demonstrate that collaboration makes creating easier and also more interactive. And subtly present the argument that we should all be doing a lot more than we really are. 

Here’s the edited video of the event courtesy of creative labs, the twofour54 project that funds content creation. There are quite a few glimpses of our demonstration too, as well as a few interesting interviews.

http://www.youtube.com/creativelabme#p/u/4/8sDj1FGfWBA

And what did we do?

 Well, using cues from the audience, including favourite Dubai landmarks and what people thought of them, we created a short video fusing English and Arabic text, voiceovers, live music and animation, all in real time within the allotted twenty minutes. 

 The final product, shown live in a darkened hall, is right here:

http://www.youtube.com/boldtalks#p/a/u/0/JzGciDKOEbE

Bold 2011 was great. Thanks, Enida and Tamer, for putting us up on stage. And thanks, Dr. Bastakiya, for allowing me to temporarily take over the MC mic. Can’t wait for 2012. Maybe we’ll do a demonstration on constructing hovercrafts, or something equally zany. Who’s with me?

Bollywood may be a cacophony of music, sound, laughter, tragedy and bathetic sentiment, but for some it’s not enough. If Bollywood isn’t sufficiently Bollywood for you, you should attend Mahim Junction, a play by writer and director Sohaila Kapur, who happens to be the sister of international film director and producer Shekhar Kapur. Mahim Junction opened in Dubai on Thursday, February 18th 2010 at Dubai Community Theatre and Art Centre.

Mahim Junction, called Yeh Hai Bombay Merey Jan (This is Bombay, My Dear) in a past life, is a tongue in cheek approach to the gaudiness of Bollywood. But Kapur doesn’t taunt Bollywood as much celebrate it; she revels in the glamour, song, dance and joie de verve of Indian cinema.

Mahim Junction‘s plot is straightforward for Bollywoodphiles because Kapur levitates stereotypes to the point of levity. There is the inevitable gold-encrusted, bejewelled villain. Who of course wants ‘groin action’ with the play’s heroine, a virtuous Hindu girl from the slums of Mumbai. Who obviously has a deep virtuous love affair ongoing with a happy go lucky Muslim. That young man doesn’t let life in the slums interfere with his sartorial predilections, which tend towards Colgate white trousers and orange shirts.

The cast is rich and varied, and manages to pay homage to all of Bollywood’s rollicking repertoire. There’s the intelligent inebriated Christian man, literate, staggering, swigging, swaggering and in love with a cross-dressing eunuch prostitute twice his size. There’s the snappy little tea boy from the mould of Gavroche of Les Miserables. And a Harvard graduate who returns home to make a difference but remains comically inept at understanding the machinations of the world around him. An empathetic corrupt cop and his Mini Me sidekick round out the smorgasbord of characters who spend their days dancing to medleys of Bollywood classics in front of you.

Stereotype is not stereotype when it’s satire. And I would love to tell you that the production was snappy, tight and well wrought. But I can’t. All the enthusiasm and the casts’ espirit de corps couldn’t hide issues in the final burnishing.

The cast was brilliantly patchy but also patchily brilliant. The gags, gut-bustingly laugh-aloud for the first thirty minutes took on hues of monotony as they kept coming. And coming, ad infinitum, even ad nauseaum. Eventually, the audience was recognizing the setups and predicting the punch lines before delivery. Kapoor’s satire required an obviousness that is alas all too obvious.

The ending, coming after two solid hours of performance sans interval, was anodyne because of its likelihood. No surprises were allowed to sneak into Kapoor’s symposium.

Mahim Junction has met with acclaim and sold out performances in Edinburgh and other venues. Perhaps it was the jitters and travails of an opening night, or just the fact that Bollywood is in itself a satire of itself and does not require embellishment. But gloriously populated though it might be, Mahim Junction was only a nice place to visit in the first hour. I wouldn’t want to live there.

Sitting perched  up in a mezzanine seat, I was for two glorious hours in the company of the exhalted and the sublime as symphonies by Johann Bach, Antonio Vivaldi and Georg Telemann infused the air.

Vivaldi, Telemann and Bach were composers and virtuosos of the  Baroque period. Baroque celebrates the ecclesiastical in a way that translates the divine to the masses, yet even heathens with an avowed secular bent (such as yours truly) can not help but acknowledge the genius and pristine beauty of the music composed by Vivaldi et al.

The trio of violins accompanied the baritone of the cello to meet the flirtations of the viola, while the clarinet and the flute sang hyms all their own.

The accoustics of the theatre were surprisingly good – the music carried upliftingly without any evident electric amplification. The audience too was on its best behaviour: the performance was probably the  first event in Dubai not punctuated at regular intervals by the incessant plaintive tinkles of mobile devices.

From the dignity of largo to the free-spirited haste of allegro, the orchestra played magnificent compositions masterfully. It was heart-wrenching, it was gladdening, it was almost cathartic and purifying. And I thank them for it. I must also thank @amazingsusan of Twitter fame, aka Susan Macaulay, for allowing me accompany her to what turned out to be a magical evening.