Other Stage Plays

PROPHET IN EXILE by Nadim Sawalha was directed by Corin Redgrave and presented at The Chelsea Centre Theatre.

Cast:
Kahlil Gibran - GERALD KYD
Mary Haskell - BRIONY GLASSCO
Marlene - ANNA CLARKSON
Arthur Spindle - MARK JAX
Stage Manager - NADIM SAWALHA
Karamah - NABIL ELOUAHABI
Hakawati - NABIL SAWAHA
Mother - RHONA DANIL
Young Kahlil - OMAR SAWALHA
Miryanna Gibran - LARA SAWALHA

Kahlil Gibran, the Lebanese poet/painter, emigrated to Boston as a boy, with his family, in 1893. He spent most of his creative life in Greenwich Village, New York, where he died at the age of forty-eight in 1931. His book, ‘The Prophet’, is still selling close to half a million copies a year in America alone. When he died, Gibran had also achieved some fame as an artist, and had painted a great number of canvasses.

Nadim writes: 'Some years ago, when I was working for the BBC Overseas Service, I wrote and produced a documentary programme about Kahlil Gibran, the Lebanese poet/painter. I told the story of how he emigrated as a boy with his family to Boston in 1893. I was left with the feeling afterwards that there was another Kahlil lying under the myth, longing to explode into life, so wrote his story - ‘Prophet in Exile’. I let my imagination loose behind the scenes to investigate the near impossible situations faced by this gifted artist living abroad - why did he leave home, and when he did, what pressures, social and political did he fall under, what twists and turns did he have to take in order to survive in a culture other than his own, what betrayals did he suffer at the hands of his own people? Kahlil was a tight-lipped, secretive man, who never let any of his companions beyond the front gate. I tried to enter through the back door, and come out with my own interpretation of characters and events. I wanted Kahlil’s story to be the story of all Arab artists and intellectuals in exile - to show the suffering, mental and physical, the threats and temptations, the fears, the hopes, the dreams and the yearnings.'