Ramsey Nasr

Ramsey Nasr, *1974 in Rotterdam/Netherlands, is a poet\writer as well as an actor and a director. His mother is Dutch and his father is Palestinian. He lives in Antwerp, Belgium.

In 1995 he left a big impression playing a theatre monologue called De doorspeler, with which he graduated from the theatre school Studio Herman Teirlinck in Antwerp, and which he wrote and directed himself. For this monologue he was awarded the Philip Morris Scholarship, at the International Theatre school festival in Amsterdam.

During the next five years, from 1995 until spring 2000, he was part of one of the leading theatre companies in the Netherlands and Belgium, Het Zuidelijk Toneel. During that period he played some ten different parts, one of it being Romeo in Romeo and Juliet. Besides that he performed an English\Arabic version of De doorspeler, called The Wannaplay, in Palestine (1996) and Jordan (2001, Amman International Theater Festival). The Palestinian cities in which he performed this monodrama included Ramallah, Bethlehem, East-Jerusalem, Salfeet and, inside Israel, Ramleh.

He played main parts in several television and cinema movies, of which Mariken, Magonia, One Man and his Dog and The Enclave are the best known ones.

In 2000 he made his debut as a poet with a volume of poetry called 27 gedichten & Geen lied (27 poems & No song), which was nominated for both the C. Buddingh’ prize 2000 (best poetry debut) and the triennial H.C.Pernath prize. With his second monologue Geen lied (No song) he won the Mary Dresselhuys prize 2000 and the Taalunie Toneelschrijfprijs 2000 (prize for best theatre text), and it got him a nomination for the Louis d’Or 2000, the most important prize for theatre actors in the Netherlands and Belgium.

In 2001 he published his short novel Kapitein Zeiksnor & De Twee Culturen (Captain Dundreary & The Two Cultures).

He wrote and directed the operetta Leven in Hel - de operette (Life in Hell - the operetta), which had it’s opening night at the end of 2001. Spring 2002 he directed Mozart’s opera Il Re Pastore. In that same period his translation\adaptation of Metastasio’s libretto for Il Re Pastore came into print, coupled with his own operetta libretto, the book itself being called Twee Libretto’s (Two Librettos).

In april 2004 he published his second volume of poetry, onhandig bloesemend (awkwardly flowering), which was received very well. Currently he is working on a novel.

Besides that he writes columns and opinion articles in Dutch or Belgian newspapers and magazines, about classical music and art, but also about the Dutch\European relation towards the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. One of his last essays especially, entitled Chairman Balkenende, do you have a dream about Palestine at all? raised a dust in the Netherlands and in Belgium. It was meant as an exhortation to the EU to finally take a stand and have the UN-resolutions concerning Israel and Palestine implemented.

Summer 2003, Nasr wrote a big article in the Dutch newspaper NRC Handelsblad, about modern Palestinian literature, based on what was published in translation so far.

Recently, on January 27th 2005, he was appointed by the city council City Poet of Antwerp, an honorary function for the whole of one year, during which he is expected to write at least six poems about the city of Antwerp. Nasr is Scholar of “Hansischer Goethe-Preis” of Alfred Toepfer Stiftung F.V.S. 2005.