Disrobing as Theater… and Justification as a Method

As I See

Adel El-Baz

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When the media erupted over what Trous did during a celebration marking the anniversary of the December Revolution, organized by the Sudanese community in Kampala, Uganda, in late December 2025, supporters of the Forces of Freedom and Change (FFC) rushed to produce all manner of justifications to defend his act. One justification, however, particularly disturbed me: the claim that what Trous did was a theatrical performance. It was not. I say this as someone deeply passionate about theater and a screenplay writer myself.

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Action in theater is never random. Even what is known as the “Theatre of the Absurd” is governed by rules. Its pioneer, the Romanian-French playwright Eugène Ionesco, gave it that name because it reflects the absurdity of human existence and the illogical nature of life, as critics have explained (with Waiting for Godot often cited as an example). Yet it remains theater—disciplined by theatrical structure and conventions.

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Others argued that Trous’s behavior resembled what is theatrically referred to as “breaking the fourth wall,” when an actor turns to the audience, comments on events, acknowledges the theatrical illusion, or incorporates the audience into the narrative.

The key point here is that Trous’s act of disrobing was improvised. It therefore falls outside any theatrical framework. One cannot, for example, burst into loud laughter at a funeral and then claim it was “acting.” Context—time and place—must align with the action.

Had Trous been performing in a play and removed his clothing within the framework of a script and a director’s vision, such an act could not be objected to. But in the context in which he did so—during a public celebration—his improvised behavior cannot be classified as a dramatic or theatrical act. Those obsessed with justification would do better to seek other explanations, far removed from the art of theater, so as not to attribute to theater an act that belongs to no art at all.

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What astonishes me about the FFC’s culture of justification is that they seem able to justify anything, no matter how grotesque. Defending what Trous did is trivial compared to their justifications for the crimes of the Janjaweed, who violated the honor of mothers and sisters before the eyes of their families. It is trivial compared to their justifications for acts of genocide committed by the Janjaweed.

When Khamis Abakar—who had signed with them the infamous “Framework Agreement”—was killed, dragged, and his corpse paraded through the streets of Nyala, they fell silent, and some even justified what the Janjaweed had done.

When the Wad Al-Noura massacre occurred, they justified it by claiming the village was armed. They justified the occupation of homes seized by force, the shelling of power stations on the pretext that they charged drones, the occupation of hospitals, looting, and killing. They justified the blatant Emirati aggression witnessed by the entire world, claiming it was “defending its interests,” and the FFC and its circle declined to condemn it.

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They have become addicted to justification, to the point of excusing every crime. Anyone who can justify the rape, killing, and extermination of their own people will find it easy to justify Trous’s “disrobing.”

To Trous I say: disrobe as much as you like. You are performing before people who have stripped themselves of every artistic and national value—people who would not care whether you were completely naked or wearing a tie with no clothes at all.

They shook hands with criminals while the blood of violated women was still flowing, and before the blood of the people of El-Fasher had dried on the streets.

Is your shirt and trousers really the issue?

As I said in another recording after that infamous night of disrobing:
“Is there any stripping worse than what children in the camps are enduring?”

No—nothing is more grotesque than the chorus of justifiers applauding killers who have displaced children and hung women from tree trunks after raping them. As I said…!

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The tragedy goes far beyond an act of “disrobing.” The issue is much deeper. It concerns an entire political culture that has come to treat both minor and major transgressions with the same logic of rationalization and excuse-making. When a national tragedy is reduced to forced interpretations, people lose their ability to distinguish between mistake and crime, slip and hatred, artistic experimentation and moral degradation.

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What deepens the wound is that justification reflects not only a failure of awareness, but a collapse of values within a political current that was supposed to be the most committed to human rights and the dignity of victims. When normalizing genocide, ignoring rape, and finding excuses for killers become routine features of public discourse, then the real catastrophe lies not in Trous’s act alone, but in a political entity that justifies the unjustifiable.

Critiquing this culture of justification, therefore, is not a matter of linguistic indulgence or partisan rivalry. It is an ethical battle in a time when positions are blurred, masks are falling, and Sudanese suffering is being trivialized before the world. Unless a clear standard of right and wrong is restored, every “small disrobing” will remain a façade concealing something far worse: the stripping away of truth, memory, and justice.

So, Trous—disrobe as you wish. This is the age of the distorted naked ones, servants of the Emirati-backed Janjaweed.