Freeing the spirit
Youssef Rakha goes to Minya
Unlike comparable cities north or south of the metropolis Minya has acquired a place in alternative cultural circles. A less than glamorous city, and for years the locus of sectarian strife, the site sometimes sounds paradoxically like a mecca of the arts. Events that happen in Cairo and Alexandria now also happen in Minya; and younger artists, filmmakers, theatre figures seem to be going to or coming back from Minya more often than one would expect. People may be talking about Minya in general, but what they really mean is the Minya Jesuits Association, the small-scale organisation to which Minya's growing status as a cultural venue is due.
Occupying part of a complex that also serves as a school and administrative offices of the nation-wide Jesuits institution, located towards the south of the city proper about ten-minutes' walk away from the river bank, the 20-member association resumed its enthusiasm for the arts following a period of relative demise in the mid-1990s.
"We've always had a variety of activities going," Adel Makram, the member currently responsible for the arts programme, points out. "We have a programme for disabled children, we hold events in the surrounding villages and we cater to the community in several other ways. In 1994 or 1995 it was the feeling that our activities were in danger of ceasing that brought us together on a more focussed basis. Our principal priority is that the association should keep going irrespective of the people who manage it, and so we go out of our way to make ourselves dispensable."
Owned by the Jesuits the land and the buildings used by the association, for example, will continue to be available in the case of the current members disbanding.
"If it belonged to us," Makram explains, "it would go straight to the government and our successors would have no access to it," an occurrence that sounds quite likely. "Dedication notwithstanding -- and even when funding is forthcoming -- it is not always possible to have enough interested people who can afford the time and the effort." Current cultural activities, for one aspect of the association's work, depend on the availability and willingness of "artists and specialists" like the ones working there now. In fact it was largely due to a chance meeting with theatre director Hassan El-Geretly, Makram recounts, that the current programme came into being.
"In 1995 one of us met Hassan El-Geretly on the train and casually, with no particular intention, they started talking about art and development, the possible convergence between what El-Warsha Theatre was doing and what we were trying to do at the time -- provide the school children of the neighbourhood with an alternative forum in which to express their creativity and find out about the arts during holidays -- for two days during the school year and three days during the summer. You have to understand that we do not know enough about art to do such a thing independently, so initially the work was undertaken in collaboration with El-Warsha."
Now that the association has gained several years' experience in the arts and a following among local parents it functions independently of the troupe. "However El-Geretly continues to be on our board as a consultant. If you were to submit a proposal for working with us, for example, he would have to approve it before it was implemented -- but he would be doing so in the capacity of an independent consultant, not as the director of El-Warsha."
Starting in 1996 local children have sampled a broad variety of activities: theatre, animation filmmaking, the plastic arts. Starting with a single group the children were subsequently divided into four groups based not on their age or accomplishment but on the time of their joining in the activities: the initial group was labelled A, while late-comers fell into groups B and C. This year, for example, group A is undertaking a filmmaking workshop, group B is staging an adaptation of a Saadallah Wannous play and group C is experimenting with clay sculpture and drawing.
"It wouldn't make sense to put somebody who has just joined the activities in group A," Makram explains, "because they haven't had any acting experience or developed a concept of moving pictures: stages that group A children went through during the theatre and animation workshops in previous years. I remember some group A members being tiny when they arrived. Now they are graduating from secondary school."
The oldest group A children agree. "It may be hard to understand if you haven't been here the whole time, if you haven't had the whole experience," one girl, a secondary two student and former graduate of the adjoining Jesuits School, insists. "But there are things we would never have known if not for these workshops. Other from school we have only television and our parents to learn from, so there's no way of knowing, say, that films have directors, that the director is a very important person and that he does what he does. Or how to draw a tomato that speaks," a feature of The Revolution of Vegetables, the animation film to which she contributed, which figures in a documentary about the association's activities by Hani Khalifa.
"We really learned a lot and saw things we would not have seen. We don't even have access to books about these things. And it's a chance to be creative, to have fun while we express ourselves. We come up with all kinds of things. They have to do with our life, sometimes, yes. But the main thing is that the workshops are giving us the chance to give them a shape, and a good shape."
This is evident in the sense of involvement with which many children approach their creations, whether negative or positive. A seven-year old group C boy, on his first day at the association, was particularly concerned about his clay tortoise. "When this is all over I will have it to keep, of course. No," he retorted when told, in jest, that it would be the property of the association. "It is mine. I will have it and I will sell it. If it isn't sold I'll keep it in the house." An older boy who has been demoted to group B on his return following a year's break was dismissed from the association when it became evident that he had deliberately switched off the electric connections of the theatre lights on the day of the performance after a workshop in which he failed to get the part he felt he deserved. Others fight or rejoice about this or that aspect of the workshop, some have determined to become filmmakers on growing up. Many spend hours persistently asking questions.
"I wasn't too enthusiastic about coming to Minya when I was first approached about it," filmmaker Ahmed Maher, the teacher of the filmmaking workshop, points out. "I came once and I wasn't very happy with my experience, and I was about to apologise when Adel urged me to try coming back -- just one more time to see. Well, the second time round it began to feel well worth my while. I think there was a bit of a communication problem to start with, but I was surprised with the level of knowledge the children had. They have watched 'the making' of so many movies, it seems, so they are asking very complicated questions. And they came up with interesting scripts which they will shoot with a video camera. They're very intelligent, and they have such an interest in everything that goes on around them. They think of themselves as artists, which could be very important for their future."
Children from the two other groups are participating in Maher's workshop as actors, and group C children have created the masks to be used in the staging of group B's play.
"There is as much interchange as possible," Makram points out. "We try to keep it all informal."
Working with association coordinators -- dedicated mentors with an understanding of the children's social and cultural background -- the teachers, mostly from Cairo, come and go. The first participants will soon be going to university, to be replaced by younger group B children, who will in turn be replaced by younger candidates. In line with Makram's sense of priority, what remains is the essential notion informing the endeavour -- that creativity and self expression can be employed as a means to development, a concept that should encompass not only the material quality of life but the life of the mind and of the emotions.
"This is not about teaching children art," Makram insists. "Rather, it's about using art as a way to enrich their lives and free their spirits."
