13 - 19 September 2001
Issue No.551
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 13 - 19 September 2001 Issue No.551 |
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Off the record
Nehad Selaiha gives an inside view of CIFET 2001
It is often the case that in CIFET what happens behind the scenes is infinitely more intriguing, instructive and thought-provoking than what you see on the boards. This year's session was no exception.
The gripping off-stage drama started one month before the opening ceremony when the three-member international selection committee, entrusted with the onerous task of deciding which of the dozens of foreign and Arab shows coming to the festival are to take part in the international contest, arrived in Cairo and were instantly spirited away to some mysterious 5- star hideout to sift through more than 47 videos of hopeful, would-be candidates. In previous years, the committee consisted of three European white males, from Britain, France and Spain, all over 60; this year, however, and as a result of pressure from the local press and the community of theatre artists, led by American playwright Caren Malpede, the committee was chaired by a prestigious femmme de theatre from the States -- a vast improvement, though not exactly what one would call "devoutly to be wished," since all three members are still over 60, and all from the western hemisphere. Mind you, neither I, Caren, nor any of our young theatre artists in Egypt care a pin what nationality or creed an artist carries; we are even very much in favour of abolishing the question of "nationality" and religious faith from the festival all together and considering people and troupes as representing themselves and humanity in general rather than countries or ideologies. But, when you have politics, in the widest possible sense of the word, rammed down your throat, particularly in these savage, conflict-ridden days, what can you do except shut your eyes, pinch your nose, jump in and try to swim against the tide.
Whatever criteria the international selection committee used, and doubtless it was honest, objective and technically informed, left a lot of people, Egyptians, foreigners, and myself, profoundly confused as to what this festival was all about and what we mean when we trot out the word experimental. When Cypriot artist Arianna Economou asked me at the small hall of the Opera house, just before the Japanese show started, on what basis shows were chosen for the contest, I did not know what to say. Hers, and many other shows, corresponded to my personal definition of what rates as experimental. In a few words, something which within its cultural context would be considered tentative, groping, questioning, rebellious, and, above all, unsettling, preferably shocking in one way or another. What exacerbated the confusion was the appearance of the Saudi Arabian The Dark Corner on the jury's schedule. Was that a political compromise? And if it was, why was it not extended to other shows from Gulf countries who have some kind of a theatre tradition and who, more to the point, allow women into the theatrical profession?
The second act of our CIFET off-stage drama takes us a little further on to 10 days before the opening and the adventures of the nine-member Egyptian committee, appointed by the Minister of Culture, to choose the two Egyptians entries in the international contest. On the first day of their exhausting mission, they were informed that one of the two female members had officially withdrawn for personal reasons. I cannot pretend I was sorry; it would give our young artists a break from her stuffy, censorious moral views. Nevertheless, when I heard this I could not help remembering my dear friend Velia Papa, the director of the Italian In-Teatro theatre festival, who was supposed to be with us this year but had to stay back in Polverigi to nurse her ailing mother and I thought, God, aren't women always landed with the jobs that nobody else is prepared to do? A couple of days later the committee was reduced to seven since film star Nur El- Sherif, stopped showing up. It baffles me why every year he, delightful as he is and always a pleasure to see, has to be on the committee. He normally shows up for a couple of times and then disappears, due, naturally, to functions of more import to his cinema and television career.
A Trip to Nowhere
The ten-day tour of the state-theatres of Cairo, which encompassed nearly 20 productions from the various governmental theatre organisations, ended on 31 August, in an obscure venue, the Naguib El-Rihani Cultural Palace. A once graceful white villa where the famous comedian and actor briefly lived, bequeathing to it his name after he left it, has now fallen on hard times, deteriorating into a nondescript, rundown building tucked away in a maze of narrow alleys in Hadayeq El-Quba, and hedged all round with a forbidding forest of gray concrete walls. Since all had protested they could never find their way there a ramshackle bus herded them to their destination. The menu mentioned three provincial courses with two 15-minute intervals in between to change the sets. The tiny theatre on the third floor was so pathetically primitive it made you want to cry. The venerable committee had just been to the big hall of the Opera house to watch Walid Aouni's The Life Jacket Under the Seat, which had all the privileges that huge and rich establishment could offer, and now they were sitting in that cramped, neon-lit space gazing at a platform that hardly qualified as a stage and watching all those palpably under-nourished young people struggling with antediluvian bulbs, switches and keys. No wonder none of them took the event seriously. It was just a gesture to the provincial theatre to make those people feel they were there, still on the map.
The first performance, The End of the Journey, was from Upper Egypt -- a deliciously naïve collage of the epic dramas of peasant life by the late poet and playwright Naguib Sorour. The set, costume and lighting were distressingly poor and the acting was atrociously ham. No technical polish here. But the actors themselves, led by a very brave young woman, played with a kind of passionate sincerity. And, viewed in their cultural context, they were definitely experimental. They had dared the strict traditions of their conservative society in the south and put a woman on stage, in the lead, and had even let her hold hands and embrace one of the actors. In Luxor, where these actors came from, their performance would definitely create a stir and be regarded as highly adventurous. Whether by coincidence or design, the second show, from Alexandria, blazoned the word "end" in its title. The End of the Road was nothing but explosive. Technically it was equally primitive; but the two talented actors who wrote the script wove this fact into their show, turning it to an advantage. Featuring two stage-struck youths, looking for an opening in the theatre world, it deftly revealed all the obstacles that beset any young person embarking on a stage career in Egypt today. The fictional setting was Alexandria; but with the auditorium crammed full of frustrated young artists from that beautiful coastal city, reality usurped the place of make- believe and it was not surprising to find emotions running high when the two actors raised the issue of the Cairo Opera House taking over their old and beloved Sayed Darwish theatre. They had hoped it would be their national theatre, that, at last, Alexandria would have a resident theatre company; but now that the Opera organisation has stepped in, they -- the actors of Alexandria -- would be in the street. And The End of the Road spelled the end of their tether. The show ended in a riot with everyone screaming they had a right to exist, to have a place under the sun. Interviewed about this issue by one of the actors in the course of the performance, a member of the committee said it was neither the time or place to discuss such issues and that raising this problem was extraneous to the show and had actually damaged it artistically. Thank you very much, they said, for nothing. When the third performance, Black Mass, by Amiri Baraka (or, Leroy Jones, as he was called before converting to Islam during the Black Civil Rights Movement in the States in the 1960s) started, everyone, actors, audience and selection committee were so emotionally exhausted they could not focus on anything. The actor playing the monster (read white man) created by the black witch- doctor of the tribe, Jacob, a la Dr. Frankenstein, was fittingly and quite grotesquely repulsive, hissing, groaning and barking until he was blue in his stockinged face. I was worried all the time he would suffocate and thought that that company from Damanhour displayed the worst and most pernicious effects of 13 years of CIFET. All they seemed to have learnt from watching foreign shows was that to be experimental you had to flog your actors to death.
It was well after midnight when Black Mass ended. The worn-out, sweat-drenched committee, all vigorous in mind and young at heart, but with the youngest bearing the weight of 56 years on her back, retired to a small room to prepare their verdict. With four of the members belonging and still clinging to the propagandist, ideologically committed, word-based Egyptian theatre of the 1960's, and one member a devout upholder of conservative Islamic morality, it was no wonder the discussion was loud and heated and lasted for nearly four hours. When Meta Phaedra came up for discussion, the head of the committee, playwright Samir Sarhan, discovered he had more than ideological and artistic proclivities to deal with. He had to battle with the incomprehensible but, nevertheless, very obstinate prejudice against any show by an independent theatre group, in this case, Shrapnel, coming from Hanager. Out of the 20 plays they had watched, only three survived the many rounds of voting following interminable discussions. Two of those were by independent theatre groups. El-Ma'bad's A Trip to Nowhere, written and directed by Ahmed El- Attar, and Shrapnel's Meta Phaedra. Against them was Walid Aouni's Life Jacket Under the Seat. Once more, the Opera, with its awesome financial and administrative arsenal was facing the fringe and trying to edge them off the scene. The fervent protests of the young Alexandrian artists seemed to reverberate in the room like background incidental music.
The final verdict was a difficult compromise which sadly sacrificed El-Attar's dramatic bus tour. The Opera's Jacket and Shrapnel's Phaedra were chosen, but with many provisos concerning the latter. A scene had to be removed as well as certain objectionable words. The text had not yet got into the hands of the censor, and it is one of the great achievements of the Hanager director, Hoda Wasfi, that she managed to cajole the censor into allowing it to perform in the festival before passing through his office. Thanks to her it reached the festival audience unadulterated, in all its beautiful, invigorating integrity, establishing an important precedent in the festival's history and scoring a significant victory for freedom of thought and expression in Egypt. For this, Meta Phaedra will be long remembered and cherished by CIFET audiences, theatre lovers and human rights activists in Egypt. It will also be remembered as the one show representing Egypt in the international contest which was allowed only one day and one performance (for the jury) in the whole history of CIFET. But the resourceful young Shrapnel outwitted the authorities and did something almost suicidal, performing three times in succession in the single evening allowed them. And if this is not truly experimental, what is?
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