An enlightening theatrical demonstration, dedicated to the world and to the creators of wars on the basis of revenge, vengeance and hate; appealing to stop spilling blood, killings and animosities; and inviting them to the tolerance, reconciliation and compassion; besides calling for a culture of forgiveness, unity and solidarity under the generosity of Islam and its civilized humanitarian teachings. A demonstration in the open air, which is the identity of desert with its spaciousness, extensiveness and clarity of its purified sands along with the moonlight and sunshine.

This is the cultural conscious speaking an eloquent historical language in the play of His Highness Sheikh Dr. Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, Supreme Council Member and Ruler of Sharjah. The play “Da'esh (ISIS) and Al Ghabra'a”, which was released during the second phase of Desert Theatre Festival (DTF), has a semantically suggestive title having a direct meaning liable to be applied to the existing traumatic situations of the Arab world.

This type of play goes directly to the people, sets free itself from the limitation of Italian theatre box, takes inspiration in its scenery from the spirit of desert, its culture and the culture of its people; and this is another component of the theatrical, cultural and historical thought of his Excellency the ruler of Sharjah, in the context of his Excellency’s consistent reliance of a historical novel having a similar or equivalent in reality and also within the framework of a famous quote by his Excellency which says that we should read the history and get benefits from its occurrences. In this play, we can read the principle focus which is willing to deliver the text and presentation to the reader and viewer, rather, to the entire humanity which is killing itself by wars, ignorance, intolerance and prejudice “not from us the one who calls for the prejudice, not from us the one who fights for the prejudice and not from us the one who dies for the prejudice.”

This is the focus of this enlightening theatrical demonstration in the open air. The air of desert which teaches to expand the mind and heart, the language, thought and creation with the stretches of its sand undulating inside the structural aesthetics, identified at the same time with the theatre aesthetics knows as ‘theatre of place’.

Emirati play writers and viewers came to know the experiments of ‘Al Forja Kharij Al Khushba’ and ‘Sitara’ in 1990 when Naji Al Hai, who had got theatre education fed with the Sharjah theatrical days culture and he was only twenty, presented the play “Habbat Raml (Grain of Sand)”, and in 1993 Jamal Matar, a theatrical brother of Naji Al Hai, presented a playwright with title “Jameelah (Beautiful)” in the Al Khan region of Sharjah, besides their other works in open theatre framework.

This early artistic awareness is the cultural nature of Emirati play writers who are spreading today the words of love, tolerance and development in the noble and protected art of play writing under the supervision of Sharjah, the capital of theatre and it’s heightened culture.