Playwright Statement (as written in program notes for a production in Beirut in 1994): Saadallah Wannous on Rituals of Signs and Transformations

When I began to write Rituals of Signs and Transformations I had a story that needed to be developed. But from the moment I began to write the first scene I found that my usual way of writing dissolved. A spring of feelings suddenly welled up inside me. I was amazed, I trembled and my breathing quickened. No... I'm not talking here about inspiration; I'm not one of those who expect or believe in such things. What had erupted inside me was the layers of my obsessions and stored-up feelings. The doors holding back these feelings began to wear away and loosen. It seems that the changes that had been occurring under the surface of my long depression matured and, without any forewarning, overflowed their banks. This is not to say that there was a `coup d'etat' against the play's stance or vision, but the stance and vision were emphasised and broadened.

After that moment, which overwhelmed me internally, my relation with the text was a mixture of mental and physical reactions. The characters began to shed their skins and advance towards their frightful and intoxicatedly truth-telling nakedness. I too was peeling off my skin and diving into my nakedness. In bewilderment and fear I was probing the hidden and repressed mysteries that had lain neglected in the darkness of my soul.

The characters' choices and transformations were not merely actions that I created and harmonised according to a specific scheme; they and I were connected in an electrical field. Although I never lost the ability to distance myself from my characters which the technique of writing demands, I was continually overpowered by a synthesis of distance and unity. This was because in this work I never ceased, not even for moment, to trace the mysteries of these characters and their search for freedom, or to examine deeply my own freedom and my own mysteries.