Taleb Al-Dous

Taleb Rasheed Al-Dous is a Qatari playwright and director for theatre, film and television. He has also led writing workshops, bringing a wide imaginative range and a willingness to challenge familiar ideas to his dramatic work.

He was the ninth of fourteen children in a family that included full and half-siblings. During childhood, he lived in one home with his parents, brothers and stepmother. Although money was limited and his parents had received little formal education, they devoted time and effort to raising their children well. The elder siblings often left school during the preparatory or secondary years; his generation had a greater opportunity to continue after the family’s circumstances improved. The household later divided between two homes, but the siblings and both mothers preserved a strong relationship.

His childhood was simple and happy despite the family’s poverty. Because neighbours lived in similar circumstances, he never felt inferior to other children. Eid was the one occasion on which he could choose new clothes and enjoy things that were otherwise beyond reach.

His interest in literature and the arts began at primary school through the school radio. Preparing passages for the morning assembly, under the guidance of an Arabic teacher, led him to read more widely. He drew on the modest school library, especially its stories, accounts of the Prophet’s life and short biographies of the Companions and scholars, because buying books was beyond the family’s means.

His composition improved steadily, and his Arabic teacher soon recognised his ability as a writer.

His acting talent emerged in the fifth grade, when he joined the school radio team. At the same time, he began writing simple stories modelled on material he found in the library and in children’s magazines exchanged among pupils.

He was selected for a school play about the first Muslim migration to Abyssinia and played Harith. Rehearsals took place during the break, but even a small role mattered more to him than playtime. The experience revealed both his aptitude for acting and a lasting attachment to the stage.

His Arabic teacher also discovered his writing ability. After praising one of his compositions before the class, the teacher asked him to read it aloud. He began nervously, but applause from his classmates restored his confidence. He soon spoke in the morning assembly almost every day, offering a reflection or short address. His earliest plays adapted and imitated existing texts, yet the form immediately attracted him and encouraged him to continue.

He constantly tried to reproduce the stories, essays and television sketches that captured his attention. Although those models shaped the narrative and dramatic form of his early work, he gradually added his own perspective. Reading also transformed his childhood games: after encountering figures such as the Companions Khalid ibn Al-Walid and Amr ibn Al-As and the commander Tariq ibn Ziyad, he adopted their names in games of challenge and battle. Their qualities fed his curiosity and enlarged the range of characters he could imagine.

At the beginning of this period, he chose a degree of isolation. The solitude gave his imagination room to develop, allowing experience and fantasy to interact in his creative world.

In the sixth grade, he trained with the school theatre team for a festival organised by the theatre-education programme. His father, however, firmly refused to allow rehearsals after school, and he had to withdraw from the production.

At preparatory school, he concealed theatrical rehearsals from his father by describing them as remedial lessons or sporting activities. His family continued to oppose theatre as a course of study, even after he gained preliminary acceptance from the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts in Egypt. After losing another year, he accepted their preference and studied computer programming. He did not abandon theatre: he borrowed institute syllabuses from friends, read about theatre, drama and cinema, and attended workshops. Books that had once been inaccessible became available as soon as he could afford them.

He wrote his first serious play at preparatory school. The script lacked principles he had not yet learned, but the school’s theatre director, Hilal Fahmy, recognised its promise and staged it with the pupils. Encouraged, he began a second play. Each new text he read altered his standards, so he repeatedly revised the work and spent a full year on it rather than the two days taken by his first attempt.

After completing the script, he showed it to his teacher Imam Mustafa, who praised its story and development but explained weaknesses in conflict and character. The teacher then tore up the pages. When the shocked young writer asked why, Mustafa told him that keeping the old copy would restrict the rewrite: the story and characters already existed, so he should now write the play anew.

He initially took the gesture as rejection, but within two days he began again and returned to Jasra Club a week later with a new version. Before reading it, Mustafa welcomed him with the words, “So, you can be a writer.” Persistence and repeated revision, he explained, were a writer’s first lesson. He admired the new draft despite minor faults and hoped to see it staged. The production did not proceed for reasons that remained unclear, and Taleb stopped writing for a year. He later revised the text once more, entered it in the Clubs Festival and won first place.

After several small television roles, including work at Ajman Studios, reading scripts convinced him that acting alone did not satisfy his ambition. In 1993, he studied numerous television scripts and drafted three episodes of an unfinished project. A friend asked him to write a trilogy in 1997, by which time his reading had given him greater confidence. The result was his first television work, “A Suspended Mother”. In 1998, he began his first long-form drama, “Path of Sins”, spending a year on the script before rewriting it the following year.

After secondary school, he wanted above all to study theatre. The Ministry of Education’s theatre section granted him initial approval to study at his own expense, but his family opposed the plan because theatre was widely dismissed as frivolous, insecure and without a future. He initially persisted before yielding to their wishes. He nevertheless continued to study independently, progressing from Arab and international plays to design, directing, acting, criticism and psychology. That reading influenced his behaviour, writing and culture, although the absence of a formal degree continued to trouble him.

For years, the lack of a degree remained a concern despite his professional success. He later enrolled in a media programme at an Arab university, but found that its material added little to what he had already learned. Fixed examinations and an emphasis on memorisation also conflicted with his working life. He therefore withdrew and used the time to write a television series about the role of media.

After establishing himself in drama, he accepted a new challenge in cinema. The medium’s unfamiliar language and the absence of a regional film industry initially caused uncertainty. An assignment to write a film led him to study cinematic technique and screenwriting in depth. As his understanding grew, cinema also changed the way he wrote television drama.

When local television production declined to roughly one drama a year, he continued writing after the success of his first two works, including the well-received “Path of Sins”. With few opportunities in Qatar, a friend sent a synopsis and three episodes of a new script to a Kuwaiti producer. The producer responded within two weeks and urgently requested “Life Is a Moment”. Only three episodes existed, so news that Hayat Al-Fahd would star gave him both motivation and apprehension. He awaited comments from the producer, director and Al-Fahd after each instalment. By episode twelve, he learned that filming would begin within a week and raced to complete the script; production was already under way when he delivered episode sixteen. The demanding experience proved highly rewarding, and the drama reached audiences beyond Qatar through Dubai TV and MBC.

A decisive professional stage came through MBC, where he worked as a writer and led a writers’ room. The experience turned a hobby into a profession, sharpened his focus and connected him with leading drama practitioners. His record grew to more than thirty theatrical works as writer and director, alongside television dramas including “Path of Sins”, “Life Is a Moment”, “The Bastard”, “The Blood Wedding”, “The Tandel”, “The Last Love Deal”, “One Woman and Another”, “Great Love”, “Al-Aafour” and “Once in a Lifetime”. He also took part in Gulf films and worked with stars including Hayat Al-Fahd, Abdul-Hussein Abdul-Rida, Abdulaziz Jassim, Jaber Naghmoush, Ahmed Al-Jasmi, Abdul-Mohsen Al-Nimr, Hassan Al-Balam and Salma Al-Masry. His theatre writing received several honours, including authorship awards at the Doha Theatre Festival for “Hunger” and “The Blaze”.