10 - 16 January 2002
Issue No.568
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 10 - 16 January 2002 Issue No.568 |
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New shoots
Who said new talent was in short supply? Nehad Selaiha spots some budding artists of great promise
Tamer Mahdi is only 25 and making his debut as writer and director in the professional theatre; but you would never guess it to look at him. His large frame and imposing stature, which make him tower above you, together with an air of boundless self-assurance, cool elegance and sophisticated nonchalance give the impression of a seasoned artist of a much maturer age. Strolling round the foyer of the small Salah Abdel-Sabour hall of Al-Tali'a theatre, where his first venture into the state theatre, Who is the Movie's Hero?, is currently on, greeting friends and talking to critics, his placid features and clear brow betray none of the usual symptoms typical of young artists in a similar situation -- no sign of strain, no trace of agitation, worry or nervous tension. On the contrary, he seems to generate an infectious sense of well-being and unruffled serenity. But appearances are often deceptive, and in Mahdi's case, the impression of inner tranquillity he gives off clashes violently with the vision of the world projected in his plays.
His first attempt at drama, Kunna fi Garrah ("We Were In a Jar"...-- a phrase which makes the first part of a popular proverb that continues: 'and now we're "barra", i.e., out'), was written while he was still an undergraduate at the American University in Cairo, studying mechanical engineering ("to secure a living which writing doesn't," as he cynically told me). To his surprise, it won him the 1998 Mohamed Salmawy award for the best text in Arabic by a student at the AUC annual "Famous for 15 Minutes Drama Festiva." Instead of the proverbial jar of the title (where mother rabbits are traditionally supposed to give birth), Mahdi set his 15-minute playlet inside the womb of a woman in labour and the action consisted of the desperate attempts of the twin fetuses, a male and female, to resist being "delivered" by the invisible, alternately bullying and cajoling obstetrician outside. Finally, after a hilarious round of negotiations which pathetically fails, they are dragged out, literally screaming, into the world and the last impression is a poignant one of a paradise lost.
In his next play, Two Birds and One Stone, another 15-minute piece (presented at the same festival in 1999), the situation is reversed. Two young men thrust in a senseless war, at opposite ends, lose their way in the desert and run out of food and water. The prospect of imminent death brings them closer, hatching a new bond of friendship and solidarity which overrides their initial fear and suspicion of each other. Unlike the two fetuses in the earlier play, these long to be delivered and hang on to the rapidly fading hope of rescue. Ironically, however, when they glimpse a hazy figure approaching in the distance and fail to make out whether he is a rescue worker or a soldier from either of the two warring camps, they shoot him down with the one bullet they have left. Rather than risk one of them getting killed by the other's compatriots, they both decide to sacrifice their only chance of survival. The final scene in which they stand together, two lonely human figures clinging to each other and gazing in anguished bewilderment at the ruthless desert around them, is unbearably moving and burns itself into the memory.
From top: Murad Abdallah and Dina Said in Mr Zarzour; scenes from Le Malade Imaginaire and Who's the Movie's Hero?
A similar sense of absurdity and painful constraint imbues A Writer Who Wrote Nothing (also performed in Howard Hall at the AUC in 1999); but the feeling of claustrophobia is considerably lightened here by the funny escapades of the fictional characters who are intent on thwarting their author's intentions. Refusing to be bound by his plans for them, they keep jumping off the pages and materialising to argue with him and propose their own scenarios. Paradoxically, the failure of the writer to produce a complete, final text at the end does not come across as a negation of creativity, but rather as an exhilarating celebration of the infinite possibilities of theatre and the freedom and inventive powers of the artistic imagination.
In his current play, Who is the Movie's Hero?, Mahdi continues working in the modes of the theatre of the absurd (his favourite writer is, predictably, Samuel Beckett), using grotesque humour and concrete theatrical metaphors to spin out his political and existential preoccupations. The play is set in a movie theatre which slowly reveals itself as a kind of prison (à la Sartre's Huis Clos) in which the actors and the audience alike are condemned to watch an eternal film of which they can make no head or tail. No one has seen the beginning of the movie and no one knows when it will end; more sinister still is the fact that none of those present can remember any world outside that darkened place with flickering lights and a leaking roof. Moreover, as soon as anybody begins to make sense of what they are watching, they rush out in terror as if chased by demons. But without understanding, no one can leave; and so, the majority are doomed to stay, feeling stupid and helpless. In their frantic efforts to discover the meaning of the film, they engage in endless squabbles, develop intense rivalries, divide into factions, conspire to dislodge the occupants of the expensive seats and take their places and end up starting a war with paper pellets and rockets. Finally, one spectator shouts: "perhaps we are never meant to understand the film," to which another responds by venting his rage against the imaginary screen while the rest of the spectators, joining in his mood, start shooting their paper rockets at it. Mahdi never tells his audience openly what the inscrutable film is all about; he leaves each person to figure out its meaning for themselves. But whether they take it as a metaphor for the absurdity of the human condition or a scathing political satire on the dehumanising effects of all oppressive forms of government, no one who sees this show can fail to acknowledge its ingenious theatricality and genuine sense of group- acting and audience involvement.
In directing this delightful 30- minute skit, Mahdi abolished the barriers between acting and audience spaces, seating his 30 actors, in ordinary clothes, without make-up, in rows of seats on one side, quite indistinguishable from the other rows occupying the other three sides of the hall. Only one metre separated the audience from the actors on all sides and the extreme closeness generated an intense sense of intimacy -- an overwhelming illusion of actually sharing the same imaginary space with the actors. It was not surprising that on the two occasions I was there, the paper rockets which fell to the floor were picked up by the young people in the audience and sent whizzing across the hall in a spirit of glowing defiance amidst uproarious laughter.
Another two newcomers to the state theatre are Murad Abdalla and Dina Said. Both star in Said Soliman's Mr Zarzour (Al-Salam theatre) -- a musical adaptation of Youssef Idris's 1960's ground-breaking play, Al-Farafir (Underlings), in which the eternal master- servant conflict is translated into a competition between the arts of the East and West. Though heavily derivative -- almost a pale copy of Intisar Abdel-Fattah's memorable 1986 Darabukka, minus Abdel- Fattah's stunning musical inventiveness and inspired manipulation of ancient and popular ritual -- Mr Zarzour has provided Murad Abdallah with plenty of scope to display his versatility as actor, dancer, clown and musician. Born into the National Egyptian Circus, to one of its founding masters, he seems to have imbibed from early childhood all the basic arts of performance together with the knack of holding an audience spellbound. His studies of French literature at Cairo University have given him polish and sophistication, but without eroding that feel of warm earthiness, racy humour, dangerous audacity and bawdy defiance typical of the authentic circus clown. To watch him fencing with the graceful, elegant Dina Said (a student of Greek and Latin at the same university) to the tunes of Hisham Gabr's vibrant musical score was such a joyful treat, such a heart-warming experience, it swept me along, making me forget all the drawbacks of the show.
Of the new crop of young talents I have spotted lately, I cannot fail to mention director Amr Qabil who, with his recently founded Hamsa (Whisper) independent theatre group, managed to scoop the award for best performance in Arabic of a Moliere play, in the recent Moliere Festival held by the French Cultural Centre in Cairo, with their production of Le Malade Imaginaire. Performed like a cartoon strip, with interludes by two clowns and plenty of topical allusions in the style of burlesque, bringing Moliere closer to us than we could have possibly thought, that production was the real debut of this young and brave new free group and held a lot of promise for the future. With so much youthful theatrical effervescence around, it would be a sin to feel gloomy.
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