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Al-Ahram Weekly 7 - 13 September 2000 Issue No. 498 
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Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Al-Ahram Weekly 7 - 13 September 2000 Issue No. 498
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| Published in Cairo by AL-AHRAM established in 1875 |
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Egypt Region International Economy Opinion Culture Features Travel Living Sports Profile People Time Out Chronicles Cartoons Letters The empty stage
By Youssef Rakha
Awaiting the advent of the 12th Experimental Theatre Festival, cultural commentators throughout the Arab world juggled terminology, with the more interesting among them offering robust, if tentative, analyses of the state of Arab theatre now. Other, forward-looking critics, have contended that, in the electronic age, theatre no longer holds any viable fascination, urging their theatrical compatriots to catch up with the era of l'image.
Al-Wasat columnist Pierre Abi-Saab, in the 28 August issue, stated the most important questions raised by the event with admirable lucidity, employing adjuncts that were all the more effective for being intimately applicable to the current theatrical scene: "Whoever talks about experimentation doubtless means contradicting the norm, looking for horizons beyond which it can be transcended and changed. This is why experimentation cannot be an instance of some conventional, conservative tendency, nor of the tendency to gloss over conflicts and differences by coating unmediated heritage in a thin modernist crust -- theatre as decorative performance that combines folklore with official ceremonies."
To experiment, Abi-Saab proceeds to point out, is to already have a clearly defined theatrical tradition, the limits of which you set out to question and perhaps transgress. The concept of experimental theatre is therefore "very relative in the Arab world," because there has yet to be an Arab tradition of the theatre. Experimental theatre circles will stay restricted, isolated from the mainstream of Arab life and sustained by far-away Western connections -- not necessarily a bad thing, Abi-Saab is quick to point out, since "theatre, even low-brow theatre, cannot possibly be popular in an age when a single television show, broadcast once, reaches millions of viewers in different countries at the same time."
Al-Qahira of 29 August, by contrast, directed its attentions to locally manufactured experimental heroes (CIFET award winning directors like Intisar Abdel-Fattah and Nasser Abdel-Moneim, both of whom will not be participating this year) whose own works, alas, may be said to exemplify Abi-Saab's "tendencies" all too often, hovering over the point of convergence of (unauthentic) folklore with (pompous) official ceremony. For the most part, critics argue, it lacks in depth of vision, genuine cultural and individual specificity. Aside from a detailed list of the 12 Egyptian contributions, Al-Qahira offered an interview with Abdel-Fattah, in which he insists that "the ordinary audience" remains paramount, citing the popularity of the festival itself as evidence of "awareness" and taste, and calling for a post-millennium "holistic view" of theatre that commends "objectivity", "practicality" and "cooperation", without further illuminating any of these terms.
Writing in Al-Hayat of 25 August, on the other hand, Fakhri Saleh displays the increasingly "in" penchant for "images", though he does confirm that "we know how societies which are advanced economically and in terms of the level of civilisation they have reached do not want serious theatre to disappear from their cultural maps, because they know that theatre is the patriarch of all the arts, and a channel through which artistic resources move to other visual media." The implication is that, regardless of popular appeal, Western theatre continues to thrive because it is important -- as opposed to Arab theatre which (apart from the admittedly deplorable commercial shows) is on the point of extinction, because the powers that be have neglected their duty towards it.
For what it is worth, Saleh's view is that of many conservative commentators who, upon encountering "all this experimentation", feel disappointed and let down. The received wisdom -- demystified in Abi-Saab's article -- is that, following in the lead of Egyptian government-supported theatre in the 1960s, the theatrical scene of the entire region went through a major renaissance distinguished by its popularity. When government-supported theatre started to decline -- and no sufficiently serious commercial alternative emerged -- theatre (already an endangered species) experienced a setback and became restricted to the arena of experimentation, in which the techniques of subversion and incoherence further alienated audiences. If only a little good will and faith in the efficacy of tried and tested traditions were available, the Arab stage will be born again.
Yet, as Abi-Saab emphasises, it is not clear how a regressive attitude will ever bring about the desired consequences now. Neither is it clear, alas, how the wheat will ever be separated from the chaff, now that the umbrella of experimentation has already encircled much that is less than desirable. Perhaps the answer lies elsewhere. The stage, and all performance venues with it -- will continue to be empty so long as society as a whole -- commercial, individual and government parties -- fails to invest time and effort. But are they prepared to do so?
