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Al-Ahram Weekly 28 Jan. - 3 Feb. 1999 Issue No. 414 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 28 Jan. - 3 Feb. 1999 Issue No. 414
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Focus Economy Opinion Culture Features Living Travel Sports People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters An experiment in freedom
By Nasser Abdel-Moneim *
No nation, whether totalitarian or democratic, lacks any clear cultural strategy. Even fascist regimes and military dictatorships have a certain policy, if only the encouragement of hatred for culture, free thought, art and especially theatre, which represents, among other things, cultural awareness. The close links between Egyptian theatre and Egypt's political, social, economic and cultural experiences have kept it oscillating between success and failure.
Freedom of expression is certainly the key to the theatre's ability to attract large sections of the population. The role of the theatre is essentially to criticise, not to justify, the status quo. This of course means a head-on collision with the regime, and the many organisations which have only one task: to impose as many restrictions as possible to prevent the theatre from expressing independent opinion. Censorship has become a bureaucratic tool to preserve public morals, public order, state security and higher state interests.
This really boils down to religion, politics and sex. Art is the spirit of adventure, a search for the new. The state that seeks to preserve the status quo through censorship has also, strangely enough, adopted experimental theatre and created an annual festival for it. Yet while experimental theatre knows no fixed rules or values and questions everything under the sun, the laws of censorship prevent anything from being questioned! Experimental theatre can reach maturity only if people enjoy true freedom of expression.
*This week's Soapbox speaker is a theatre director.
