The Historic Moment at Sultan Al Qasimi Theatre

The book includes topics and readings on the intelligent handling and positive investment of history, viewing history as an inexhaustible reservoir of deep meanings and connotations, answers to ready-made questions for inspiration, and the derivation of messages from which the Ruler of Sharjah crafted an archive of thought and beauty through literary and intellectual value, architectural construction, places, and theatrical narrative.
The author, in the book where he presented works dedicated to reading the style and approach of His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Mohammad Al Qasimi in the theatrical sphere, delves into the plays His Highness matured through contemplating the movement of history and reading its recurrence between the past and present. He quotes His Highness saying: "We can take insightful moments from Arab and Islamic history that were moments of defeat and collapse… We can evoke these moments to restore balance to this nation and elevate it with a vision that reveals and addresses shortcomings." This emphasizes His Highness's vision of hope, as demonstrated through 11 theatrical texts reviewed, read, and analyzed by critics.
The author also discusses important occasions in Emirati theatre, including "Sharjah Theatre Days" and His Highness's support for them, initiating them with a historical work of his own authorship. This sustained the intellectual and aesthetic rooting of historical phenomena specifically in Emirati theatre, considering it a cornerstone of enduring meanings and renewable values. Therefore, His Highness's approach always involves soaring to unlimited horizons and reading the present with projections from the past. Here, the author addresses two important starting points: historical writing and literary writing, and the difference between them.
Regarding this approach, the author states that Sultan Al Qasimi's historical theatre, which draws from history, is not separate from the minute details of events happening in our era and within our societies. It is a theatre that adheres to lived reality and invests historical facts to employ them in dramatic and epic tragic forms that address what is stirring in our lives and around us. Hence, Sultan Al Qasimi's choice of historical theatre is a strategic approach, aiming to influence reality, life, and people specifically, because it is an ethical, literary, and national endeavor in the process of scrutinizing Arab and Islamic history.
Therefore, Sultan Al Qasimi's theatre differs from the traditional image of Arab historical theatre. It does not bring history directly to the present but rather takes the present back to history intertextually, interpreting, approximating, and confronting historical truth. Al Qasimi's theatre does not don the conventional guise of history but liberates and dispatches it, granting it the codes and symbols of the present, making it appear immediate, lively, and interactive with the reader and audience in the theatre. Among the plays the author cites in the book are "Samson the Mighty," "Alexander the Great," "Hulagu's Return," "Reality is an Exact Copy," "Toghurt," "ISIS and Al Ghabra," "The Story of Nimrod," "The Black Stone," "The Book of Allah," "Alya and Issam," and "The Case."