Page 3 - All That Fall

At the desert(2020).
I read the radio play All that Fall by the master, Samuel Beckett, for the first time in October 2019 during a class on directing theatre at New York University Abu Dhabi. The original plan was to stage this radio play using toys as performers instead of humans in a desert in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates (UAE). This site-specific performance of a radio play involved an experimentation with toy theatre in conversation with the body of work of Samuel Beckett. Due to the COVID-10 policies and the transition to virtual learning across the UAE, I adapted this site-specific toy theatre performance of All that Fall to my new environment. In order to stage the play, I used my room (where I have been quarantining) as the site to stage this radio play. My room is no longer mine only. I now share it with my toys. They have their own life. They sleep here, they talk here, they breathe the same air. They represent the twelve characters that tell the story of All that Fall.
Taking over my room Video (2020).
My relationship with All that Fall began in 2019. The first staging of this play was done in the theatre design classroom of my university. I wanted to do an indoor standing of this play using sand. With the help of friends and colleagues, and the guidance and support of my school’s theatre department instructors, sand was brought in. I found toys in my school’s prop room, I asked families in the Faculty and staff buildings to lend me toys. I was obsessed with this idea, and very nervous. I knew that I had to do it, and I wanted it to work. Did it work? I have no idea. I like measuring, but I cannot measure whether this worked or not. Humans brought infrastructure to this desert land in Abu Dhabi, what if the sand now re- appropriated this space and humans appropriated theirs? Where do I live and how is my artistic experiments engaging with this environment?