Sudanese ‘resistance theater’ animates a future without war

This article Sudanese ‘resistance theater’ animates a future without war was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

When a homeland is decimated by war and life must be repeatedly rebuilt anew, how does one find the way back to purpose? 

Since the start of the war in Sudan, Sudanese theater director and artist Rabee Al-Hassan has brought theater to survivors of war and displacement across the country. He uses a kind of participatory theater that he calls “resistance theater,” which gives voice to many issues that remain taboo under oppressive laws and authorities in Sudan. Resistance theater confronts themes of human rights, social justice and equality, as well as despair, fear and post-war trauma. For Al-Hassan, theater also helps participants resist internalizing displacement as an identity, and instead “frees us from it in favor of our true identity.”

Originally from Al Jazirah, one of 18 states in Sudan, Al-Hassan has experienced displacement twice amid the war: first to the state capital of Wad Madani, and later to Port Sudan. When war broke out in Khartoum on the morning of April 15, 2023, Al-Hassan fled. This war “stripped us of our human and professional identities,” he said. 

An estimated one in three people have been displaced since fighting started, and they make up almost 15 percent of all internally displaced persons globally. Nearly 12 million people have been displaced within Sudan alone, with around four million fleeing across the borders. Under prolonged siege, some displacement camps like Al-Hasahisa in Central Darfur lacked medical care, food and water, while others saw people returning to land contaminated by explosives. 

“Most dangerously, it forced us to face questions we were not prepared to face,” Al-Hassan said. “How long will this identity accompany you? Will you be able to be an active and influential member of the society in which you experience oppression?” As a playwright and director before the war, he was faced with a choice like so many others who became displaced or refugees: let the war shape his story with what it took away, or use theater to confront the political, social and psychological issues at the root of conflict in Sudan. 

Al-Hassan himself witnessed summary trials when former President Jaafar Nimeiri imposed Sharia law in Sudan in 1983. Known as the “September laws,” courts were allowed to sentence amputations of hands and feet. Amnesty International reported that there were at least 140 sentences in under two years. The September laws not only remained under Omar al-Bashir, but the death penalty was added for apostasy (renouncing Islam). Through the genocide in Darfur, to the separation of South Sudan, to the present day, it seems no Sudanese family has been “spared from setting up a mourning tent for one of the dead,” Al-Hassan said.

Resistance theater challenges audiences with “their evils, fears and aspirations … and addresses the reasons that led us to kill each other,” Al-Hassan said. “From childhood until now, death has surrounded us.” This means confronting hate speech, violence and mental health, child labor, homelessness, and what it means to build a culture of peace.

Al-Hassan also isn’t afraid to tug at the shadows of patriarchal and misogynist violence.

For decades, Sudanese women have fought for reforms to discriminatory laws, including forced marriage, child marriage and morality police controlling what women can wear and do in public. From colonial British rule to the introduction of Sharia law in the 1980s (including punishment by flogging or being killed by stoning), women’s rights have repeatedly been dragged backwards by conservative governments. The sentencing of two women to death by stoning in February, while others face death sentences based purely on rumor, keeps the September laws alive.

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With discrimination especially violent toward working-class and poor women, gender equality was at the heart of the Sudanese revolution in 2019, as well as within numerous peace agreements. Sudan remains one of the few countries that has still not ratified the African Union’s Maputo Protocol on the Rights of Women in Africa or the 1979 U.N. Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. 

And many continue to live in fear, as rape has been weaponized in the war between the Sudanese army and the Rapid Support Forces, or RSF, paramilitary, accused by Khartoum officials of being financed and armed by the United Arab Emirates. In siege after siege, combatants have abducted and gang raped women. Hala Alkarib, regional director for the Strategic Initiative for Women in the Horn of Africa, testified before the U.N. Security Council in February about systemic gender-based violence. She also highlighted the detention of over 840 women last fall by state forces, who were accused of being RSF collaborators solely based on their ethnicity.

Al-Hassan writes strong women into his scenes, the way they are written into the very fabric of Sudan, and just as they are reflected in Sudanese literature. He finds inspiration in women’s resistance, steadfastness and creative ability to preserve collective memory. In his plays, he draws on characters like the self-assured Nima from the novella “The Wedding of Zein” by legendary Sudanese author Tayeb Salih, who chooses her own love over the preferences of her village. With many women still facing the restrictions on freedom that Salih wrote about in the 1960s, Nima’s choice is revolutionary. 

The script with which he is currently preoccupied, “Hosna Bint Mahmoud, The Last Witness,” is based on Salih’s acclaimed novel “Season of Migration to the North.” Salih’s character of Mahmoud — a rebellious and independent woman who becomes a widow after the death of her first husband — commits murder-suicide to escape a forced and violent marriage with an elderly man. This story of anguish is still resonant as RSF fighters have forced marriages with women and girls to establish greater control over Darfur. “Women’s resistance in reality is subtle and almost invisible, while Hasna’s resistance was a blatant and violent tragedy,” Al-Hassan said. While war in Sudan has left its mark on all, “our mothers, sisters and lovers die a thousand times over.”

He sees real counterparts in the ordinary lives of women carrying households alone, demanding a future without violence for the farthest-flung villages, and organizing at the helms of resistance committees that keep a revolutionary dream of a common and equal Sudan alive. 

An artist will find light in the dark. It was war that united survivors from Khartoum and Wad Madani with artists from Port Sudan. Language itself became a bridge for connection, with performances in languages from Beja, Hausa and Nubian, to Arabic and Tigrinya.  

Al-Hassan and his troupe brought theater to over 50 displacement centers in Wad Madani. But when the RSF invaded Al Jazirah and took over Wad Madani in December 2023, he had to flee once again. In the following year, conflict would displace over a million people from Al Jazirah alone. Flooding and disruption of agricultural livelihoods has kept people struggling to settle throughout the past year. 

“This time, the displacement was difficult and harsh,” Al-Hassan said. “We walked on foot and rode on animals, terrified and frightened, night after night on our way to Port Sudan.” But by this time, he had a sense of clarity from the experiences in Wad Madani. “We did not have the luxury of resting or healing the wounds and sorrows of the second displacement and loss,” he said. The show went on. 

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In discussing his work, Al-Hassan draws parallels to two distinct types of theater: theater for development and forum theater, using elements of both forms in his practice. Drawing on oral history traditions, theater for development uses performance as a tool for social change by exploring political and economic issues, and sensitizing communities to one another’s experiences of trauma, marginalization or stigmatization. 

Forum theater was developed by Brazilian theater artist and political dissident Augusto Boal as one of the expressions of the Theater of the Oppressed that sought personal liberation and decolonization for the poor and working classes. Instead of being treated as spectators, audiences are urged to participate by acting out solutions and desired outcomes for a story. Theater was also brought into common spaces rather than being treated as a commodity kept behind closed doors. 

Some of Al-Hassan’s highest-attended performances were staged at the Lawyers’ Union Theater and the Culture Hall in Wad Madani, and Writers and Artists Union Theater in Port Sudan, but the impacts were most potent in the displacement camps. 

“The more we expand the opportunities for these audiences to participate in our theater, which methodologically relies on interactive theater techniques, the more we achieve resistance and revolution through our theater,” Al-Hassan said. “The times and the historical moment do not allow us to present theater for entertainment and amusement — important as they are.” 

In Wad Madani, performances were a “lifeline” for people in displacement camps, he said, and a way to “break from the monotony of their days.”

Moved by the potential for theater to help survivors of violence heal invisible wounds and overcome the sense of isolation that is seeded by post-war trauma, Al-Hassan wants to “enable as many theater practitioners as possible in all Sudanese cities to reach shelters.” Integrating psychodrama into conflict resolution, like the improvisational “playback theater” where performers act out audience members’ personal stories, has “proven effective in supporting and treating individuals in communities that have suffered from post-war trauma and disasters,” Al-Hassan said.

Isolation is not just a product of the war, but of political repression persisting since Bashir’s regime. Free expression in Sudan is heavily stifled, with journalists and activists routinely detained and murdered. Artists saw cultural institutions and unions targeted and shuttered under Bashir’s reign. Nearly three years of war have again strained artists, as already scarce money and food dwindled. According to Al-Hassan, some face denial of employment opportunities, arbitrary arrest and prosecution if they engage in activities supporting an end to the war. Cultural centers and museums have been damaged by bombing, and many artists lost their lives to shelling or to illness in displacement camps. Many others have chosen to emigrate. 

Though war still rages, Al-Hassan sees the arts and cultural institutions as a vital part of rebuilding Sudan and calls on artists around the world to speak about Sudan, “in order to end the shameful international silence towards what we are suffering.”

“There is no safe Sudan, and we will not be safe unless the war stops,” he said. “We are all suffering loss and fearing death, both spiritual and physical.”

Today, Al-Hassan continues animating Port Sudan with resistance theater. And though he and his family survived the treacherous 600-mile journey from Wad Madani in the heat of fighting, many did not. 

Over 33 million people across Sudan need humanitarian assistance. Over 21 million people in Sudan face acute food insecurity. In Darfur, entire cities are starving or relying on takaaya (community kitchens) for survival. In February, Chad shut its border with Sudan, trapping people in Darfur and limiting the passage of humanitarian aid. 

As another Ramadan has passed without a ceasefire, Sudan is still tossed between oppressors. Yet, even amid war, artists like Al-Hassan reject fear and despair; instead they are amplifying narratives of survival and illuminating humanity during the most horrific of crises.

“This is not just a symbolic and aesthetic salvation, but a real and tangible one that theater can achieve,” Al-Hassan said. 

This article Sudanese ‘resistance theater’ animates a future without war was originally published by Waging Nonviolence.

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Source: https://wagingnonviolence.org/2026/04/sudanese-resistance-theater-animates-future-without-war/