Warrior queen makes her mark

Zenobia’s onstage cast included 130 actors, many of whom were involved in choreographed fight sequences.

With a 130-strong onstage cast, camels, horses, an extensive pyrotechnics display and one of the largest lighting arrays ever utilised in a local production, Zenobia marked a significant milestone in Dubai's emergence as a centre for major events production in the Middle East.

Written by Arab theatre icon Mansour Rahbani, the musical production chronicles the life of the Palymra ‘warrior queen' Zenobia, who ‘conquered' large swathes of Roman-controlled Arab lands in the third century AD.

The first production of its kind to be staged in the desert area earmarked as the Dubai Studio City precinct, Zenobia also represented a major achievement for event organisers Done Events and co-producers Rahbani Productions and the Dubai government.

A specially-designed venue covering 70,000 square metres and boasting a seating capacity of 3,000 was constructed to stage the production. The mammoth task was undertaken by a crew of around 300, with an initial two-week construction schedule extended to three as a result of a myriad of unforeseen challenges that included sandstorms, rain and subsequent equipment failures.

According to Marwan Rahbani, Zenobia director, managing director of Rahbani Productions (and Mansour Rahbani's son), the sheer scale of the production and the challenges presented by the location itself dwarfed anything he had previously been involved in.

"The decision to stage Zenobia at Studio City was taken in a bid to promote both the event and the location as a venue in its own right," he says.

"We inaugurated Dubai Media City in 2001 with the production of Al Mutanabbi, which was the largest production ever staged in the Middle East to that point and was also produced in conjunction with the Dubai government.

"That experience reminded us that regardless of how you plan your show - particularly in an open-air environment - there will always be issues that arise that you simply can't control. This was reiterated ten-fold during pre-production for Zenobia."

Indeed, Rahbani says a "freak sandstorm" hit the Zenobia set during the construction phase, destroying a large number of props and causing severe damage to the assembled stage lights and audio equipment. It even landed two stage construction workers in hospital, one of whom by Rahbani's own admission was still there at the time of press.

"When the sandstorm hit it was as if someone switched hundreds of wind machines on at once," Rahbani explains. "The weather changed in an instant and it was incredibly intense, but it only lasted for around 10 minutes.

"When the weather cleared, we found that two of the major stage arches had fallen down injuring two of our set workers. We also lost a great deal of equipment, including a number of spotlights and sections of the PA system. Luckily, we had factored in failure rates in the planning stages, so we had replacement equipment on standby."

The desert location also created other unforeseen challenges for the Zenobia production team, which was led by Abdo El Husseini.

El Husseini is well-versed in the challenges of staging major events. As performing arts international coordinator at the Doha Asian Games, El Husseini played a key role in producing that event's opening and closing ceremonies, which were among the largest in Asian Games history.

El Husseini says the intensely humid conditions of the desert location wreaked havoc with pre-production and rehearsal schedules for the show.

"We were rehearsing at night and the humidity was intense," he explains. "There was literally water dripping off the equipment, which meant we had to cover everything in protective plastic. We also had to implement extensive measures to ensure the safety of the cast and crew.

"The rigours of rehearsal in this environment also impacted our cast. We had a number of instances of actors collapsing due to the heat."

Despite the cavalcade of challenges, Rahbani is suitably upbeat about the scale of the production team's achievement against the odds.

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