Biography of Tarek Hassan

medical doctor highly committed to music and drama from an early age. First came to the UK in 1962 for postgraduate studies in medicine and in music. Became deeply involved with student and University drama at London University and at LSE. Performed with the student drama societies locally, in London and at the Edinburgh Festival of music and drama fringe (1968) his first post verbal plays contratype 1 and contratype 3 were very well received and reviewed by the Scotsman and the Scottish Daily Mail at the time. Student drama in London took up his full-length play "the prison" which they performed at ULU getting an enthusiastic reception. David Cain of the BBC electronic workshop developed the electronic music tape for "the prison" as well as setting to electronic music a dramatic poem composed on the mass by Tarek Hassan. His semi-abstract play "the thing" where he uses verbalised pulses and rhythms instead of intellectual dialogue was received with great success in Durham and in London festivals of student drama. Since marriage to a UK born musician Tarek Hassan has become progressively more aware and well versed in understanding of Western culture as well as of Eastern Islamic culture from where he originates. He is well equipped to bridge and to pin point receptors for mutual understanding across the tragic gulf between East and West and between the West and Islam in general. To someone looking for intellectual dialogue in a theatre play his plays may seem completely incomprehensible, but if the music and the rhythmic and the pulsating is sensed then the powerful impact these semi-abstract symbolic, contemplative and sometimes "musical" Theatre of the absurd plays, come to life. All these plays lend themselves best to live performance and/or to multimedia moving pictures. Since the success of the "matrix" films and themes, it would seem that the Tarek Hassan plays at last have a place in transmitting something to the new human consciousness and to the sorely needed reverence for a new concept of life as a multi dimensional interactive model and not as a preprogrammed mechanized "intellectual" automaton.