She may not be one of those “Hey, I recognize her!” performers yet, but her one-woman play ‘Head Over Heels in Saudi Arabia’ that will kick off at the largest international festival in the world, the 2013 Edinburgh Fringe Festival (EFF), will definitely make her rise to fame.
Maisah Sobaihi, a Saudi academic, playwright and performer, is all set to stage her amusing yet enlightening roller coaster ride into the lives of women in Saudi Arabia, whose husbands choose to marry more women.
Sobaihi will be the first Saudi woman to perform at the EFF and is confident that her performance at the festival will help expose a true illustration of Saudi women, as well as portray a common womanly bond expanding past national boundaries.
In her play ‘Head Over Heels in Saudi Arabia,’ Sobaihi puts together two interesting characters in the forefront. Layla, who is ready to get married but tired of waiting for true love, and Maryam, whose husband chooses to marry for the second time.
Sobaihi’s mere charisma in her classic solo comedy at the festival splinters the stereotype of the timid Arab woman, veiled and voiceless.
“Women’s positions continue to change in many ways,” says Sobaihi. “But I think what is unknown to many is that they feel that women were not active and have become active. I think that women have always been active and a very positive force in Saudi society. It’s just that I don’t think they were as visible as they are now. They have developed in many ways, and the most particular way is that they have become more public.”
Sobaihi describes that character Maryam in her play as more upper class of society while Layla is more in touch with the other level of society. Maryam’s husband marries another bride Layla, which results in Maryam flying off the handle at Layla and trying to dig up dirt on her.
Journeying into the lives and challenges women in Saudi Arabia face, Sobaihi’s play strokes on the rights of men in Saudi to espouse four wives and how the preceding wives react.
Brought up partially in the United States and Saudi Arabia, Sobaihi holds a doctorate in English Literature from the University of London, and a Bachelor’s degree from the King Abdul Aziz University in Saudi Arabia, while currently lecturing at a university in Jeddah.
“As the Arab temperament in general, we tend to be more private about our lives so the public has always been a challenge,” said Sobaihi.
A divorced mother of two sons in their 20s, Sobaihi begins her play by narrating her life story and eventually takes into the lives of other women in Saudi Arabia.
“I was very conscious that I didn’t want this play to be about bashing men or bashing anybody at all,” said Sobaihi. “I did stage this play in Jeddah a couple of times, though in a private gathering, and the reactions from Saudi men were positive.”
‘Head over Heels in Saudi Arabia’ educates us that women have an ordinary and widespread view, however secluded they appear in terms of culture, positively in affairs of the mind.
“We have a very private culture. Saudi women don’t really like the spotlight. But we have a responsibility to become more vocal,” explains Sobaihi in a report in Scotland’s Daily Record.
The 2013 Edinburgh Fringe will play host to 2,871 productions starting from the end of July through to August. Sobaihi performs ‘Head Over Heels in Saudi Arabia’ at Spotlites @ The Merchant’s Hall, from Aug. 11-26.
Sobaihi’s 3-minute promo video of her one-woman play promises you that you’ll go head over heels for ‘Head Over Heels in Saudi Arabia.’
Saudi theater artist to shatter stereotypes in Edinburgh fest
Saudi theater artist to shatter stereotypes in Edinburgh fest
Filipinos master disaster readiness, one roll of the dice at a time
- In a library in the Philippines, a dice rattles on the surface of a board before coming to a stop, putting one of its players straight into the path of a powerful typhoon
MANILA: In a library in the Philippines, a dice rattles on the surface of a board before coming to a stop, putting one of its players straight into the path of a powerful typhoon.
The teenagers huddled around the table leap into action, shouting instructions and acting out the correct strategies for just one of the potential catastrophes laid out in the board game called Master of Disaster.
With fewer than half of Filipinos estimated to have undertaken disaster drills or to own a first-aid kit, the game aims to boost lagging preparedness in a country ranked the most disaster-prone on earth for four years running.
“(It) features disasters we’ve been experiencing in real life for the past few months and years,” 17-year-old Ansherina Agasen told AFP, noting that flooding routinely upends life in her hometown of Valenzuela, north of Manila.
Sitting in the arc of intense seismic activity called the “Pacific Ring of Fire,” the Philippines endures daily earthquakes and is hit by an average of 20 typhoons each year.
In November, back-to-back typhoons drove flooding that killed nearly 300 people in the archipelago nation, while a 6.9-magnitude quake in late September toppled buildings and killed 79 people around the city of Cebu.
“We realized that a lot of loss of lives and destruction of property could have been avoided if people knew about basic concepts related to disaster preparedness,” Francis Macatulad, one of the game’s developers, told AFP of its inception.
The Asia Society for Social Improvement and Sustainable Transformation (ASSIST), where Macatulad heads business development, first dreamt up the game in 2013, after Super Typhoon Haiyan ravaged the central Philippines and left thousands dead.
Launched six years later, Master of Disaster has been updated this year to address more events exacerbated by human-driven climate change, such as landslides, drought and heatwaves.
More than 10,000 editions of the game, aimed at players as young as nine years old, have been distributed across the archipelago nation.
“The youth are very essential in creating this disaster resiliency mindset,” Macatulad said.
‘Keeps on getting worse’
While the Philippines has introduced disaster readiness training into its K-12 curriculum, Master of Disaster is providing a jolt of innovation, Bianca Canlas of the Department of Science and Technology (DOST) told AFP.
“It’s important that it’s tactile, something that can be touched and can be seen by the eyes of the youth so they can have engagement with each other,” she said of the game.
Players roll a dice to move their pawns across the board, with each landing spot corresponding to cards containing questions or instructions to act out disaster-specific responses.
When a player is unable to fulfil a task, another can “save” them and receive a “hero token” — tallied at the end to determine a winner.
At least 27,500 deaths and economic losses of $35 billion have been attributed to extreme weather events in the past two decades, according to the 2026 Climate Risk Index.
“It just keeps on getting worse,” Canlas said, noting the lives lost in recent months.
The government is now determining if it will throw its weight behind the distribution of the game, with the sessions in Valenzuela City serving as a pilot to assess whether players find it engaging and informative.
While conceding the evidence was so far anecdotal, ASSIST’s Macatulad said he believed the game was bringing a “significant” improvement in its players’ disaster preparedness knowledge.
“Disaster is not picky. It affects from north to south. So we would like to expand this further,” Macatulad said, adding that poor communities “most vulnerable to the effects of climate change” were the priority.
“Disasters can happen to anyone,” Agasen, the teen, told AFP as the game broke up.
“As a young person, I can share the knowledge I’ve gained... with my classmates at school, with people at home, and those I’ll meet in the future.”
