Zaffé

Zaffé is an exuberant, inclusive celebration, a defiant party, bringing people together in the face of loss, destruction and separation from homelands.  It’s the work (over three years, according to director Stephanie Ghajar’s program notes) of ‘young artists from the Middle East diaspora’ – from Lebanon, Syria and Egypt - responsible for design, music and performance.  (Apologies: the program lists many names, each with impressive credits) but does not tell us who does what.)   

When we enter the big hall (not the usual Arts House performance space) for Zaffé, it’s not quite what we expect.  The publicity asks us to imagine an ‘abandoned building in Beirut… Tangled knots of power cable and battery-operated candles…’  What we find is a Victorian hall with twelve long tables - white cloths, flowers, glassware and floral crockery - with table lamps powered by improvised cables from above.  A bandstand to one side.  Yes, there are flickering battery-operated candles, but the immediate impression is that we’ve wandered into - and are being asked to join - a big wedding party.  We find our seats and women bring spicy cordials to the tables.  Most folks – all eager, cheerful, curious - have come in groups, but we are all encouraged, via cards on our plates, to ‘ask someone’ (i.e. our neighbours) various questions.  Like, ‘What spice would you add to your coffee?’  ‘Have you ever had a visa [application] refused?’  A mix of Middle East culture and conflict.

But once we’re seated and asked those questions and sipped our cordials, there’s a sense that something’s gone wrong (this, one hopes, applies only to opening night) and a rumour goes around around that ‘the cake hasn’t arrived… because of an accident…’  Whatever the reason, things don’t really start for twenty minutes and there’ an apology from the MC that ‘we’re running late – just like at home…’  Then he tells us that this is a wedding – but with no wedding – that is, no one’s getting married, but that’s the (community) spirit of this show.  He sings in Arabic and he’s great – confident, engaging, a big voice.

What follows, however, seems a bit ad hoc – or unplanned – with charming, talented, ironic, funny or touching performers giving us a series of items, entertaining and fun in themselves, but with a feel of a-bit-of-this, a bit-of-that party pieces.  There’s some great singing of a medley of American pop songs with ironic posters suggesting their tunes may not be wholly original.  There’s a video clip on a huge screen of a woman in New York who demonstrates at great speed the right way to make tabouleh.  There’s a funny if cynical stand-up routine – with slides – from another ebullient fellow about how to survive the modern world – with an app called, as I remember, ‘3AMMO’ – the crux of which is that if we think things are bad elsewhere, our turn is coming.  Again on the big screen, a drag queen demonstrates how to belly dance, and we’re invited to get up and follows the moves.  We all do.  It’s fun, even if it goes on way too long. 

The cakes arrive!  As we’re eating them, suddenly there’s a black-out, leaving us in the dark except for the candles – and there’s the real feel of being in a bunker, under bombing…  Beside a flickering flame, a poet softly reads us a lament at being far from home. 

For all its chaotic, random nature, this is the point where Zaffé clicks into place.  The songs, the jokes, the dancing are binding these expats into a community (tonight including us) in response to corruption, fear, death, and exile.  And the aim, the dream if you like, is that the homelands might return one day to what they once were – safe, peaceful, harmonious, and beautiful.  To the beat of a solemn drum, we file out to another space and a Middle Eastern supper.

Michael Brindley      

Images: Zaffé – Stéphanie Ghajar & Collaborators. Photographer: Gregory Lorenzutti.