Postcards from the Middle East – Jeddah

Apes and Dames

This is the first of what I hope will be a series of postcards from places in the Middle East where my work takes me.

When you think about working in a foreign country, you do your best to research the important things: social do’s and don’ts, weather, food, transport and so on. If you’re like me, you look at what to do in your spare time as a matter of importance. When I first worked in the region, theatre was the big thing. I’d always enjoyed making a fool of myself on stage, so when I arrived in Jeddah I joined the local theatre group. I was “lucky” enough to be casted in the role of a Gorilla in the 1982 pantomime, where I played opposite the Managing Director of Career Advantage. Jeremy was the Dame. I was required to lope around the stage singing that awful song from the Jungle Book (“ooh ooh ooh, I wanna be like you ooh ooh” and so on)

Thus began a long theatrical career taking in many shows and many roles, most of them badly performed compared to the very talented American and British actors who would come and go from the Jeddah stage. Theatre in Saudi was not without its practical difficulties. In those days the main venue was the British Embassy, which boasted a large stage in the grounds built by an earlier generation of expatriates. Unfortunately the Embassy, which has since moved to Riyadh, stood directly in the flight path to Jeddah Airport. So most performances were punctuated by Lockheed Tristars screaming overhead at low altitude on their final approach. Our directors instructed us to freeze in mid-speech until the stage became audible again. This was fine if you were in mid-speech, but not so fine if you were Mercutio in the process of skewering Tybalt in Shakespeare’s Rome and Juliet.

One of the other delights of the Jeddah theatrical world in the 80s was the Private Evening, which would consist of a play reading or a learned performance of a one-act play in front of an invited audience in someone’s back yard or front room. Everyone would bring a dish, and a good time was had by all. There were also dinner theatre events, where you would have dinner, followed by a full production. Performances would run for several nights, and hundreds of people would attend. Looking back, I wondered how I ever got any work done.

Thirty-odd years on, amateur theatre still flourishes in Jeddah, as it does in other major Saudi cities where there is a significant expatriate population. The days are gone when one could mount a Cecil B DeMille-scale production with a cast of thirty and at least as many backstage helpers. These days the expat population is smaller, so the shows are smaller and the venues more intimate. In March last year on a visit to Jeddah, I went to an excellent production in which the Chairman of the Jeddah British Business Group was required shave his head and emblazon himself with biker tatoos. More recently I was lucky enough to be invited to a performance of three of Alan Bennett’s monologues at the spacious villa of a couple who hold such events regularly.

So if you like theatre, and you’re moving to Jeddah, Riyadh or Dammam, make a beeline for the local theatre group. There will usually be something in the offing, and getting involved will be an excellent way to kick-start your social life.

Steve Royston – January 2010