Zāhir and Bātin: An Interview with David Greig

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Notes

1. This interview was supported by ‘The Representation of Politics and the Politics of Representation in Post-1990 British Drama and Theatre’, a project funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation under grant (FFI2009–07598). I wish to express gratitude to my PhD supervisor, Mireia Aragay, and to Aleks Sierz, Martin Middeke, and Elżbieta Baraniecka for their critical reading of the questions I prepared for this interview. Warm thanks to Julian Johanpour and María José Parra Pérez for explaining to me the meanings of Zāhir and Bātin. Many thanks, of course, to David Greig for kindly agreeing to undertake this interview.

2. This is an aspect of Greig’s work that Marilena Zaroulia addresses in her chapter ‘“Geographies of the Imagination” in David Greig’s Theatre: Mobility, Globalization and European Identities’, in The Theatre of David Greig, ed. by Clare Wallace (London: Bloomsbury, 2013), pp. 178–94.

3. Dan Rebellato, ‘Introduction’ to David Greig’s Plays 1 (London: Methuen, 2002), pp. ix–xxiii, (p. xvii).

4. Chris Hadfield, now retired, was the first Canadian Commander of the International Space Station, and is credited with being the first Canadian citizen to walk in space. When this interview was conducted in March 2013 Hadfield was on his last mission, on board the International Space Station as part of Expedition 35. Hadfield documented his experience of this expedition through posts and photographs shared on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, and Tumblr. Hadfield has recently published two books: An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) and You Are Here: Around the World in 92 Minutes (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014).

5. David Greig, ‘Rough Theatre’, in Cool Britannia? British Political Drama in the 1990s, ed. by Rebecca D’Monté and Graham Saunders (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), pp. 208–21.

6. See, for example, Fragile (2011) for Theatre Uncut and Greig’s curation of ‘New Work from the Arab World: One Day in Spring’ (Traverse Theatre, Edinburgh, and Òran Mór, Glasgow, 2012).

7. Theatre Uncut was launched in 2011 by Hanna Price and Emma Callender. Six writers each wrote a short play in response to the cuts in public spending outlined by the UK Coalition government in Autumn 2010. These plays were then premiered at Southwark Playhouse in May 2011 before a day of action in which they were performed simultaneously by over 80 groups across the UK. Theatre Uncut continues to respond to global political events by commissioning writers to write short plays, the rights to which are then made available for a limited period for anyone, anywhere, to perform. So far Theatre Uncut plays have been performed by over 6,000 people in 25 countries across 4 continents. See http://www.theatreuncut.com/ for more information.

8. See Berthold Schoene, ‘Scottish Theatre as World Theatre’, in the European Society for the Study of English (ESSE) Book of Abstracts, Bogaziçi University, Istanbul, 4–8 September 2012, p. 208.

9. Caridad Svich, ‘Physical Poetry’, PAJ: A Journal of Performance and Art, 29.2 (2007), 51–58 (p. 55).

10. Keith and Vivienne are characters that appear in The Cosmonaut’s Last Message to the Woman He Once Loved in the Soviet Union (1999) and Pyrenees (2005).

11. ‘“AL-Zāhir WA ‘L-Bātin”, two terms of Arabic theological and philosophical discourse, the first, zāhir, meaning “outward, external, exoteric sense”, hence “apparent, manifest sense”, and the second, bātin, its antonym, meaning “hidden, inner, esoteric sense.”’ The Encyclopaedia of Islam, Volume XI, ed. by P. J. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C. E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, and W. P. Heinrichs (Leiden: Brill, 2002), p. 389.

12. Peter Billingham, At the Sharp End: Uncovering the Work of Five Leading Dramatists (London: Methuen, 2007), p. 90.

13. David Greig, ‘Interview: Mark Fisher and David Greig. Suspect Cultures and Home Truths’, in Cosmotopia: Transnational Identities in David Greig’s Theatre, ed. by Anja Müller and Clare Wallace (Prague: Litteraria Pragensia, 2011), pp. 14–31 (pp. 25–26).

14. Photovoltaic solar plants convert solar radiation into direct current electricity. The inverter then converts direct current to alternating current which is distributed to the consumer.

15. See Theodor W. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from a Damaged Life, trans. by E. F. N. Jephcott (London: Verso, 2005).

16. Stephen Greenhorn is a Scottish playwright and screenwriter born in 1964. His plays include The Salt Wound (1994), Passing Places (1997), and Sleeping Around with Abi Morgan, Mark Ravenhill, and Hilary Fannin (1998).