Osama Ghanam
Syria
Artistic Director, and Professor of Modern Theater
Performing Arts
Oussama Ghanam is a theater director, dramaturge, and translator. He is the founder and artistic director of Damascus Theater Lab (DTL) and a professor at the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts in Damascus. He holds a PhD in Theater Studies from the University of Paris VIII. Since 2011, Oussama has delivered 23 professional, artistic research workshops with topics discussing dramaturgy, acting, and performing in modern and contemporary theater. He has directed “The Last Tape” – Beckett in 2009, “It Happened Tomorrow” – Kroetz, Dario Fo, Mark Ravenhill in 2010, “Homecoming” – Pinter in 2013, “Glass” - Tennessee Williams in 2015, and “Drama” - Sam Shepard in 2018. In 2019, he directed Buchner's “Woyzeck” with the Tunisian National Theater, and in 2021, he directed Shams and Majd, his first play as a playwright. Ghanam has translated several plays from English and French into Arabic (Shepard, Bond, Ravenhill, Sarah Kane, Krimp, Joe Penhal, Heiner Muller, Kroetz, Dario Fo, Buchner, etc) as well as Patrice Pavis' “Dictionary of Performance and Contemporary Theater.”
Osama Ghanam
Syria
Artistic Director, and Professor of Modern Theater
Performing Arts
Oussama Ghanam is a theater director, dramaturge, and translator. He is the founder and artistic director of Damascus Theater Lab (DTL) and a professor at the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts in Damascus. He holds a PhD in Theater Studies from the University of Paris VIII. Since 2011, Oussama has delivered 23 professional, artistic research workshops with topics discussing dramaturgy, acting, and performing in modern and contemporary theater. He has directed “The Last Tape” – Beckett in 2009, “It Happened Tomorrow” – Kroetz, Dario Fo, Mark Ravenhill in 2010, “Homecoming” – Pinter in 2013, “Glass” - Tennessee Williams in 2015, and “Drama” - Sam Shepard in 2018. In 2019, he directed Buchner's “Woyzeck” with the Tunisian National Theater, and in 2021, he directed Shams and Majd, his first play as a playwright. Ghanam has translated several plays from English and French into Arabic (Shepard, Bond, Ravenhill, Sarah Kane, Krimp, Joe Penhal, Heiner Muller, Kroetz, Dario Fo, Buchner, etc) as well as Patrice Pavis' “Dictionary of Performance and Contemporary Theater.”
Juror
Production Awards
2024
Grantee
Exceptional Grants for Supporting Artists & Writers
2020
The Maids
“The Maids” play
The project is to present an adaptation of Jean Genet’s “The Maids” (1947) in Syrian dialect and in a contemporary Damascene context. Genet’s play eloquently depicts the crime of class structure and the contours of the map of poverty. The adaptation will be a stylistic, dramaturgic and performative experiment rich with possibilities for laying bare the individualism in the social media culture we consume from every type of screen and mirror that dictates to us what is beautiful or ugly and what is or is not sinful, and that reduces us to a pathological obsession with the ubiquitous image of the other even in that other’s absence.
The project is to present an adaptation of Jean Genet’s “The Maids” (1947) in Syrian dialect and in a contemporary Damascene context. Genet’s play eloquently depicts the crime of class structure and the contours of the map of poverty. The adaptation will be a stylistic, dramaturgic and performative experiment rich with possibilities for laying bare the individualism in the social media culture we consume from every type of screen and mirror that dictates to us what is beautiful or ugly and what is or is not sinful, and that reduces us to a pathological obsession with the ubiquitous image of the other even in that other’s absence.
Featured Artist
Spring Festival
RedZone
2016
Glass
Damascus in the final year, beautiful, fragile and transparent, like glass. In a small house inhabited by a family of three, four destinies intertwine: the mother who refuses the present in the name of the past, the daughter refuses it in the name of all things fragile, the son refuses it in the name of contemporary cinema. In order to face this ambiguous present, to escape it, to indulge in it, the family invites a “realistic” young man for dinner. Glass is a free adaptation of Tennessee William’s Glass Menagerie.
Juror
Production Awards
Round 02
2015
Juror
Production Awards
Round 01
2014
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