Withdrawal (NHB Modern Plays)

By Mohammad Al Attar

Ahmad and Nour rent a flat so that they can spend time together away from their families, but is having a space to themselves going to solve all their problems?
Withdrawal, by Syrian writer Mohammad Al Attar, is taken from Plays from the Arab World, a collection of five extraordinary plays exploring and reflecting contemporary life across the Near East and North Africa, now available as individual ebooks.
The full collection also includes:


- 603 by Imad Farajin (Palestine)
- Damage by Kamal Khalladi (Morocco)
- The House by Arzé Khodr (Lebanon)
- Egyptian Products by Laila Soliman (Egypt)
In 2007 the Royal Court Theatre's International Department and the British Council embarked on an ambitious project working with twenty-one writers from across the Near East and North Africa. Seven of the resultant plays received rehearsed readings at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in 2008. Plays from the Arab World, introduced by Laila Hourani of the British Council, collects five of these unique new voices, each posing different but equally urgent questions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nick Hern Books
• Release date: Oct 11, 2017
• ISBN: 9781780019550

Mohammad Al Attar

Mohammad Al Attar has been a member of the Theatre Studio Group in Damascus since 2006 and works on a variety of projects as a dramaturg, including productions at the Syrian Opera House.

Book preview

Young Arab Playwrights and the Half-open Door

The idea of working with Arab playwrights to develop their playwriting skills emerged when I attended the British Council showcase at the 2003 Edinburgh Festival Fringe. It was my first close experience of new British theatre. The festival that year featured hit plays like The People Next Door by Henry Adams, Dark Earth by David Harrower and San Diego by David Greig. I was struck by the new Scottish playwrights and their experience, and felt a commonality with the Arab world that I couldn’t quite articulate at the time. Was it the ‘dark earth’ in David Harrower’s play that reminded me of the volcanic black earth that is so characteristic of my husband’s village in Sweida, south of Syria? Or was it the subtle poetry of David Greig’s language that made me see the potential of the Arabic stage using an Arabic language rooted in the street, while maintaining the magic of its mother tongue? Was it the hidden feel of history and its heavy shadow on the present? Or was it the dilemma of neighbouring a strong enemy of the