Iraqi theater director Salah El-Kasab dies at 81

BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraqi theater director and researcher Salah El-Kasab, founder of the 'mimesis theater' movement in Iraq, has died at the age of 81, the Iraqi Artists Syndicate announced. Born in Baghdad in 1945, El-Kasab was regarded as one of the most prominent theater directors in the Arab world and taught directing at Baghdad's College of Fine Arts. In the early 1980s, he developed a visual and poetic stage language that moved away from written scripts, with a 1980 adaptation of 'Hamlet' considered among the movement's first major productions. El-Kasab authored several theoretical and applied works on stage design and directing, including 'Mimesis Theater: Between Theory and Practice', 'Memoirs: The Journey of the Man with the Black Umbrella', and 'Quantum Philosophy in Mimesis Theater'. His death prompted an outpouring of grief in Iraqi cultural circles, where he was remembered for reshaping modern Iraqi theater through decades of teaching, writing and directing.