Bou Khaled’s Maaarch: A Satire of Modern Armies in the Zenith of “the War on Terrorism”

BEIRUT - Samer Mazloum

March/April 2004

The Beirut Theater was the venue during the month of February for Maaarch, a play by Lebanese actor and director Issam Bou Khaled.

A group of nine soldiers forming a disciplined and well-trained elitist brigade begins to march. Under the commandment of its determined leadership, the brigade strikes everywhere, kills destroys wins and loses but the important is that it keeps marching. Despite the casualties and the humiliation it suffers, the brigade keeps marching. Human feelings are very absent, common sense is not there either and the most important is to march. At the end of the story, the leadership gets innovative ordering the brigade to march against itself. A slaughter takes place, the soldiers kill each other; even the last survivor breaks his own neck.

The cast is quite special. The play has no text, the characters communicate in an unknown language that sounds like Hebrew, drawing a parallel between the mock elitist brigade and the Israeli army. On the other hand, their leader, who does not appear on stage, is for the audience a voice that sounds like that of many of today’s world leaders.

A satire of modern armies as well as modern politics especially after the so-called “war on terrorism”, the play had in general a positive impact on the audience who found in it a deep message conveyed in an innovative way.

Shawki, a 52-year-old university professor liked the absence of the speech: “what is great about the play is that it has no dialogue. Other so-called directors like to speak and speak and speak…” Commenting on the morale of the story Rima, a 26-year-old engineer approved what the play’s crew wrote in its brochure: “this play is aimed against wars and armies which are still ruling our world today. The true terror lies in the use of those by states without any legal mandate or justification.”

Others had some comments about the cast itself. Kamal a sixty-year old lawyer liked being there but argued that he didn’t feel any progress in the chain of ideas “symbolism in theater is hard because it is easy to put into action. Although I liked watching Maaarch, I didn’t feel the story behind it progressed, it rather ended the same way it started.” Thurayya, 40-year-old housewife, didn’t like some of the play’s passages “I didn’t like the use of footage from the last war on Iraq. Those pictures made me feel very bad and I don’t like them to be used even in satires.” She also added, “Despite all of them being amateurs, some actors did a very good job which distinguished them from the rest of the crew.”

As Lebanese director, Roger Assaf puts it in the play brochure “those soldiers have no identity, no questions, no stories to tell. They are displaying their emptiness. The last fifty years were succession of strikes, attacks, maaarch. The future might even be that armies would win wars against inexistent enemies.”