Ali Mirza

Ali Mirza Mahmoud is a Qatari actor, poet, writer, playwright, director and critic, and one of the founders of Qatar Theatre Company, the country’s first officially recognised specialist theatre troupe. He continued writing poetry alongside his theatre work, convinced that literature and performance give voice to society and to shared human concerns.

Born in 1952 into a family of fifteen in Old Al Ghanim, he grew up in a one-room home with a courtyard and kitchen and walked a long distance to school. To help the household and buy Egyptian newspapers and the novels of Naguib Mahfouz, he sold seeds, lemon juice and paper kites, worked as a blacksmith during school holidays and sometimes fished for the family’s lunch.

He attended Khalid bin Al-Walid Primary School and Doha Preparatory School. The Teacher Training College offered no student allowance, and the Religious Institute rejected his application, so he entered the health field and received a higher diploma in health sciences in 1972 from Qatar’s Health Institute under the supervision of the World Health Organization.

As the eldest sibling and the first educated member of his extended family, he assumed responsibility early and was consulted by his father on major decisions. When a younger brother wanted to study theatre, he insisted that he choose economics and commerce to secure his future, even though the brother had acted with him at school. The brother followed that advice and later held a significant public post.

His acting career began in 1968 with the Popular Theatre Company. Training courses in Qatar, Baghdad, Cairo and London expanded his stage practice, while self-directed reading developed the command of Arabic through which he wrote poetry.

Early television drama presented social problems drawn from newspapers such as Al-Uruba and Al-Ahed, then brought in a specialist to discuss them and propose solutions. Programmes went out without editing, so a single error meant repeating an entire scene. Qatar Television’s drama-supervision section became an informal institute, training writers and performers to address substantial social issues.

A small role in the series “Al-Dalou”, playing the nakhuda’s clerk, became a private test of whether he should remain an actor. He performed it with full commitment, gained confidence from the audience’s response and went on to larger roles in Gulf series, historical productions in classical Arabic and local works with Arab actors.

His professional life connected fields that might otherwise seem separate. He worked as a health inspector at the Ministry of Health from graduation until 1976, when the Ministry of Information and Culture transferred him to Qatar Television as a reader of drama scripts and later head of the section. He was also a contributing editor at Al-Ahed magazine under Abdullah Al-Husseini from the early 1970s until it closed.

Theatre did not displace writing. He first published poetry in colloquial Arabic through Al-Ahed, testing how readers would respond. Convinced that dialect was bounded by geography and history, he then strengthened his formal Arabic so that Qatari literature could engage more widely with Arab and Islamic concerns.

His first collection, “Wishes in a Time of Silence”, appeared in colloquial Arabic in 1980, followed by “Daydreams” in 1982, “Mother of All Tragedies” in 2004 and “To Whom It May Concern” in 2011. The last, issued by the Department of Culture and Arts while Doha was Arab Capital of Culture, addressed Arab leaders and citizens and used poetry as a form of literary history.

Recognition came in both theatre and literature. He won Best Actor at the first Doha Theatre Festival competition in 1982, the Golden Phoenix Award for Culture, Arts and Literature in 2013, Best Supporting Theatre Actor in 2014 and the Arab Theatre Actor Award in the United Arab Emirates in 2014.