The ministry said in a statement: “The Minister of Culture, Hassan Nazim, inaugurated on Saturday the Al-Rasheed Theater, after 18 years of its closure, as part of the activities of the Baghdad International Theater Festival, which started its work.”
For his part, the Minister of Culture said, “The ministry has overcome all the obstacles that faced the previous administrations and made exceptional efforts through its cadres at the ministry’s headquarters and the Cinema and Theater Department in order to achieve this great achievement.”
The theater was opened after a closure of more than 18 years within the activities of the (Baghdad International Theater Festival), in the presence of Arab and foreign delegations, in addition to a number of officials in the ministry and a large audience of artists and intellectuals.
During the events of 2003, the theater was subjected to burning and looting of its contents, and successive governments were unable to rehabilitate it for financial reasons.
Baghdad International Theater Festival
The Baghdad International Theater Festival was launched, with wide Arab and foreign participation, especially from Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, Jordan, the Sultanate of Oman and Italy, where more than 15 Arab and Iraqi theatrical works will be presented.
The Iraqi theater was built in the eighties of the last century, and at that time joined a number of Iraqi theaters, as many considered it a different urban and artistic edifice, before it became the headquarters of the “Cinema and Theater Department”.
The theater contains 528 seats, and its construction was carried out by two companies; French-Swiss, but all of this was subjected to complete burning and destruction after the events of 2003.
Successive Iraqi governments did not take the initiative to restore it until 2013, during the organization of the activities of “Baghdad, the Capital of Arab Culture.” Although the process of restoration and rehabilitation cost the Iraqi state millions of dollars, it did not accomplish anything on the ground, until the advent of the current government. headed by Mustafa Al-Kazemi, where the reconstruction work was accelerated.
In turn, the head of the Iraqi Artists Syndicate, Jabbar Judi, stressed that “the reopening of the theater represents a significant and prominent mark in the history of Iraqi theater, because Al-Rasheed Theater represents the memory of the Iraqi theater, since its establishment in 1980, when the nucleus of the theater was formed by senior professors.”
Jodi added in a statement to “Sky News Arabia”, “With the opening of this theater and artistic edifice, our memory that was lost after 2003 was restored to us,” while he thanked “the Department of Cinema and Theater, other departments, the Ministry of Culture, and Director General Ahmed Hassan Musa.”
He pointed out that “the theater will embrace new works, during the coming period, to be a real breakthrough towards a new horizon for theatrical work in Iraq.”
Before its destruction, Al-Rasheed Theater witnessed dozens of theatrical performances, whether local ones presented by the Iraqi National Act of Representation, or Arab shows that were presented in the eighties and nineties, through Arab theater festivals, and prominent Arab artists from Egypt, Tunisia, Syria, Lebanon, and others stood on its stage.
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