Saeed Salama and the Play 'Habous': When the Director's Experience Transforms into a New Reading of Humanity

Hebron - Afaq News - Today, Saturday, the play "Habous" was presented on the stage of the Children's Happiness Theater in Hebron, produced by the Yes Theater for Youth Communication, with an audience from various segments.

The play was directed by Said Salama and written by Saleh Zamanan. In the theatrical experience of "Habous," the latest text by the writer Saleh Zamanan, the presence of the Palestinian director Said Salama was closer to the second type; there is a director who comes to the text to direct it, and there is a director who enters the text to rediscover it. The play was not just a story about a prisoner and a jailer, nor a collection of scenes that needed visual arrangement, but rather a complex text about the human being when imprisonment transforms from a place to a state, from external bars to a prison that resides in the body, memory, and identity.

Therefore, talking about Said Salama in the play "Habous" cannot be summarized by saying he directed the play; it is more accurate to say that he read it, deconstructed it, and reassembled its language on stage, then took the Yes Theater team to new areas of thinking about character, body, space, rhythm, and the relationship between the actor and the text.

Here, the true expertise of Said Salama emerges:-

From prison to "prisons"

Since the first imprisonment, "Habous" refuses to present prison as a single place.

There is a prison within the human being, a prison created by the gaze of others, a prison created by memory, a prison created by fear, and a prison in which a person can turn into a jailer themselves.

This central idea in the text needed a director who does not deal with imprisonment in a directly realistic manner, but rather seeks its theatrical language.

Thus, the question is no longer

Where is the prison?

When does a person become a prisoner? And who imprisons them? Can a prisoner carry their jailer with them?

These questions are what gave Saeed Salama's experience its directorial depth.

The prisoner and the jailer... a relationship that does not stabilize.

One of the strongest relationships in the text is that between the prisoner and the jailer.

At first, the matter seems clear: there is a prisoner and there is a jailer.

But as the text progresses, the boundaries between the two begin to blur.

The jailer himself is not completely free, and the prisoner is not just confined behind walls.

Here comes one of the most important additions by Said Salama: not to treat the characters as fixed roles, but as moving human conditions.

The actor does not just play a 'prisoner' or a 'jailer'; he plays fear, doubt, memory, power, weakness, and the desire to escape.

This opens up much larger spaces for the actor than direct realistic performance.

The man trapped inside another man

In the first imprisonment, the text goes to a more complex area when it talks about a person trapped inside another person; about someone living within an image or identity or perception created by others.

Here, the idea of imprisonment becomes philosophical.

A person can live in their body, but they are not free in it.

They can carry a name, but they cannot be able to be themselves.

He can live among people, but he lives exiled from his own self.

Here, Saeed Salama's expertise in reading character from within becomes evident.

This type of text cannot be conveyed solely through movement and speech; it requires working on physical presence, glances, distances, rhythm, silence, and internal tension.

This is precisely what makes the director a partner in writing meaning.

Exile... when nostalgia becomes a prison.

In one of the deepest human layers in "Habous", the text reaches exile and nostalgia.

That man who appears in memory, who was lost among the mountains, between olives and almonds, is not just a character in a story.

He is an image of a person uprooted by circumstances, and the place continues to live within him.

And when the text says that the man was suffering from fatigue, cold, and the nostalgia of exile, the word "exile" becomes more than a geographical condition.

It is an existential state.

A person can return to a place, but they cannot always return to themselves.

Here, the importance of the cultural sensitivity that Said Salama brought to the work appears; he does not read exile as mere information in the text, but as a Palestinian, Arab, and human memory that can transform into image, movement, and silence.

Olives and almonds... the geography of memory.

The presence of mountains, olives, and almonds in the world of 'Habous' is not a trivial detail.

These images carry almost all of Palestine: the land, memory, loss, roots, and return.

From here, the director can make the real place and the imagined place overlap.

The character does not just remember a place; they remember who they were when they were in that place.

This is one of the areas where Saeed Salama's cultural and literary expertise can emerge: transforming geography into memory, and memory into a theatrical state.

Pain when it becomes a ritual.

In the world of 'Habous', there is also the presence of the rituals of pain and loss, carrying with it a significance of sorrow, collective ritual, and dealing with pain.

Here, the theater becomes close to anthropology.

The question is no longer just: What does the character say?

But: How does a person grieve? How does society deal with loss? And how do rituals turn into language when words fail?

This is an area that requires a director with a cultural sensibility, not just technical knowledge of theater.

Because dealing with rituals and memory requires respect for the context, while at the same time having the ability to transform it into a theatrical language that the audience understands and interacts with.

The postman, the musician, and the tissue seller.

One of the beauties of the construction of 'Habous' is that it does not confine its world to the prisoner and the jailer.

Other characters and images appear, such as the postman, the musician, and the tissue seller.

These characters seem, at first glance, distant from the prison, but they deeply expand its idea.

The postman is associated with the message and waiting.

Music is associated with sound and memory.

The tissue seller is associated with need, the street, dignity, and the struggle for survival.

Thus, the characters become like different windows onto the world.

Here, the expertise of Said Salama in building the scene appears: how to make the minor characters part of the larger intellectual structure of the work, not just passing characters?

Music and silence.

"Habous" is also a play that requires a directorial ear.

There is music, but there is also silence.

And silence in such a work is not the absence of sound; it is another sound.

A moment of silence between a prisoner and a jailer can say more than a page of dialogue.

The actor's pause before a line about exile can make the line more painful.

A long gaze towards a non-existent place may condense years of memory.

This is the area where the director's experience transforms into language.

When does the actor speak? When does he remain silent? When does he move? When does he stay still? When does his body alone become sufficient?

These questions are the essence of directorial work.

From technique to meaning.

Perhaps the most important thing that can be said about Said Salama is that he does not treat technology as a mere display.

Light, sound, movement, scenography, rhythm, and the distance between characters must all work in favor of meaning.

This is perfectly in line with the nature of 'Habous'.

If the prison becomes just a decoration, the text would lose a significant part of its power.

However, when the prison becomes a feeling in the actor's body, a distance between two people, silence, memory, repetitive movement, and a gaze towards the outside, the audience begins to discover the prison for themselves.

Here lies the director's brilliance.

Saeed Salama and the experiences of generations.

The importance of the experience increases because 'Habous' brings together Mohamed Tayti, Raed Al-Shyoukhi, and Samih Amala; three different experiences and memories within one theatrical space.

- Raed Al-Shyoukhi comes with a long accumulation of Palestinian theatrical experience.

- Mohamed Tayti carries his artistic path and experience in performance.

-Wissam Amleh has a special relationship with the theater; from the child who knew the theater in its beginnings, to the artist who today stands on stage alongside names with their own history.

In this space, Saeed Salama's role was not to make everyone similar.

But to make the differences among them material for the performance.

To place experience before the youth, memory before the present, and experimentation before trial.

This in itself is a great value for any theater troupe.

What did Saeed Salama add to Yes Theater?

Yes Theater has a long history of using theater as a tool for education, communication, and change, and in working with children, youth, and communities, and in drama and learning through the arts.

But artistic institutions do not develop only through the accumulation of their internal experience.

Sometimes, they need an artist who brings their experience from another path, opening a new window.

And this is what Saeed Salama did.

He added a different directorial perspective to the theater, as well as a greater interest in constructing the theatrical image, and raised questions about the body, rhythm, and silence.

He also added a cultural and literary reading of the text, reaffirming that small details can carry big questions.

But he added something else that might be more important than all of that:

The culture of rehearsal.

The culture of discussion.

The culture of experimentation.

The culture that the scene can be recreated.

And that the actor can suggest.

And that the director can listen.

And that the best result does not always come from the first attempt.

The experience that did not turn into authority

Perhaps here lies the most influential traits of Said Salama.

Humility.

The artist who possesses extensive experience can easily enter the rehearsal as the one with the answer.

But Said came with his experience without turning it into closed authority.

There was room for questioning.

For disagreement.

For experimentation.

For reconsideration.

And for listening.

This type of humility is not just a beautiful personal trait; it is **ethics in artistic work**.

A humble director does not mean that he has less presence.

On the contrary, he possesses enough confidence that allows him to give others space.

This space is what enables the whole team to participate in the creation of the work.

"Habous" is not just about the prisoner.

As we approach the end of the play, it becomes clear that the fundamental question is not:

How do we get out of prison?

But: How do we not become the prison ourselves?

How do we not turn the prisoner into the jailer?

How do we not reproduce the pain that we were subjected to?

How can we not imprison others within the images we have created of them?

And how can a person regain their freedom even when they cannot change everything around them?

These questions make the ending, where the text returns to the man lost among the mountains, olives, and almonds, and to the fatigue, cold, and nostalgia of exile, more than just an ending to a story.

It is a return to the human being.

To their memory.

To its fragility.

And to the question that has haunted the play since its inception: Who is the real prisoner?

From directing the play to leaving an impact on the institution.

Therefore, I believe that the value of Said Salama in 'Habous' is not limited to the quality of the final scene.

The most important value is what happened between the beginning of the rehearsals and the end of the performance.

What did the actors learn?

How did their reading of the text change?

How did the team view the body?

How did silence become part of the language?

How did details turn into signs?

How the questions of the Yes Theater expanded regarding what theater can do?

This is the true added value of the great artist.

Not just to leave a performance behind.

But to leave knowledge.

Saeed Salama... more than a director.

In "Habous", many experiences met

The theatrical experience with literature.

Culture with technology.

The body with the word.

Memory with the present.

Different generations together.

Professionalism with humility.

For this reason, Said Salama was not just a director standing behind the scenes giving signals in this experience.

He was part of a journey of discovery.

Discovering a text that is valid for the times.

The discovery of his characters.

The discovery of its apparent and hidden prisons.

The discovery of the theatrical language that can carry this world.

And the discovery of what can happen when a long-experienced artist meets an institution that believes that theater is not just a performance, but a space for learning, change, and rediscovering humanity.

And perhaps for all this, the best thing we can say about Said Salama after 'Habous' is not that he directed a good play.

Indeed, he left something of his experience inside the theater, and he left the team with questions that will remain after the stage of 'Habous' goes dark.

The theatrical work ends when the audience leaves.

However, the true impact of the artist sometimes begins after the performance ends.

Saeed Salama did not just direct 'Habous'; he helped us see imprisonment in a different way, to see theater in a different way, and perhaps to see humanity itself in a different way.