We had to clarify that bright historical period in the literary and cultural history of Kuwait and introduce our children from the younger generation to the first generation of our countrymen, for whom time was not fair enough to them. In this article, “wisely and from several sources,” I will tell you about the biography of the Artist and the ambassador, Hamad Issa Al-Rajeeb. I’ll start this article with a phrase that I thought about a lot, which Mr. Hamad Al-Rajeeb always repeated in his press interviews, as he used to say: “A person should be completely different and separate from the work and the embodiment of work that he is doing, as our goal and aim is to preserve our heritage, customs, and traditions.” Mr. Hamad Al-Rajeeb was sure of this phrase. When he was a student at the Institute of Musical Arts in Egypt, he was known for his gentle manners and shy nature, which is completely contradictory to the acting role given to him at the time, the role of “Julius Caesar”, that emperor and military commander who waged many wars and battles and was known for his cruelty. This matter aroused the astonishment of others in the classroom at the time, to express at that time that a person, by his nature and attributes, may differ from the embodiment of the work he performs, as a person overcomes all the consequences and gaps to reach his goal, achieve it, and perform the role he desires. This is Hamad Al-Rajeeb, who has an ambitious and purposeful personality, and who was called the comprehensive pioneer of a group of arts and literature, starting from musical composition to theatrical acting and teaching many educational subjects. Mr. Al-Rajeeb was born in 1922 in the Qibla region (Al-Jiblah as pronounced in Kuwaiti Accent) in Kuwait, and he received his first lessons in Mubarakiya School. In 1945, he obtained a foreign mission to complete his studies in Egypt. Hamad Al-Rajeeb studied education, psychology, and performing arts at Cairo University. He began his practical life in the profession of teaching, and that was during his enrollment in Al-Mubarakiya School due to a shortage in the teaching staff. In 1950, he was appointed a teacher at Al-Ahmadiyya School, and soon after, he became the principal of Al-Sabah School. In 1951, he founded the Teachers Club, contributed to the establishment of the Department of Affairs, and became its first director. After playing his role in the teaching profession, he began his career in developing the National Theatre in Kuwait, where he summoned his teacher, Zaki Tulaimat, to research the status of theatres, and as a result, the duo established four theatres then. He continued his achievements in order to develop theatrical art in Kuwait, so he established a special center for theatrical studies, which in turn later developed into an institute for theatrical arts. He also established the Centre for Performing Arts, one of the most important centers specialized in discovering talents, and due to his keenness to preserve Kuwaiti heritage, he established a special center for heritage preservation to collect songs of sailors and poems of Nabati poetry. He then moved to the political corps after he was chosen to be Kuwait’s ambassador in 1966, where he held the position of Kuwait’s ambassador to Egypt for 10 years in a row, in addition to being a permanent representative of Kuwait to the League of Arab States. Then he became Kuwait’s ambassador to Morocco for four consecutive years. In 1980, the Kuwaiti government chose him to become Minister of Housing, and then he was chosen to occupy the position of Minister of Social Affairs in addition to his former position. There are a significant number of plays written by the artist Hamad Al-Rajeeb, for example, “Who is the Offender?” and “The Sheep of Sleepings.” He also directed many plays, including “Salah al-Din al-Ayyubi”, “The Living Dead”, “Qais and Laila” and “The Merchant of Venice”. It has many pieces of music derived from heritage. The creations of artist Hamad Issa Al-Rajeeb ended in 1998, after he passed away in London at the age of seventy-six. This brief article is nothing but a tribute to his leadership and ignites the fuse of knowledge of his creative person in the minds of the younger generations
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