Iraqi director Jawad Al Asadi has finished writing the musical Liali Ahmed bin Majed, about a hero called the "Sea Lion" and his hearty comrades," describing it as “a mixture of reality and fantasy," according to the UAE daily Al Bayan.
“Ahmed bin Majed, nicknamed the 'Sea Lion,' did not leave behind much of his memoirs or details related to his family, neighborhood or seamen. He left only his books, which depicted a lot about his poetry and knowledge of the stars, oceans, travel and sad farewells,” Asadi told the daily.
He added that the script of Liali bin Majed tries to "clarify the beauty of the place, spirits, and travel details based on love, Sufism, repellant travel and the innovation of existential conflicts, customs, holidays, singing and dancing through arousing the beautiful, individual and collective imagination of bin Majed’s world."
"The script of this play keeps in step with the trend toward resurrecting the heritage of the sea and the seamen for this area’s fertility, secrets and spirits.”
The director and writer added that “bin Majed, who remains a bewildering puzzle, has aroused controversy among historians, who have variously described him as a pious and prayerful man and...a drunken traitor for his famous trip with Vasco De Gamma. But when I wrote this script, I avoided being trapped by any of these possibilities, because I wanted to write a text that had nothing to do with these labels in order to arrive at a complex figure.” – Albawaba.com
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