Costume dramas
Cross-fertilising theatre design: Sonali Pahwa encounters templates for a variety of Hamlets
The Artistic Creativity Centre at the Opera House grounds has opened its Ramadan season with an intriguing exhibit of designs for sets and costumes for Hamlet by art students. This foray by plastic artists into the theatre, organised by theatre director and Creativity Centre administrator, Khaled Galal, reveals the fertile possibilities of training artists outside institutions which have divided up the arts. Within the studio model adopted by the centre, art students contribute to the theatre and aspiring actors are trained in singing. One looks forward to further boundary-crossing experiments at the Centre, which includes a modern dance school and video and film facilities.
The Hamlet exhibit juxtaposes models of stage sets with paintings which suggest how these might appear when used in performance, with lights and actors moving through them. The latter exercise is a well-chosen test for the ambitious designs. The grid or maze designs which were striking as small-scale models appeared overwhelming when figures were brought into the picture. Conversely, some of the more modest models allowed for a wide range of effects through lighting, and the paintings revealed their richer possibilities as theatre sets. Among the most innovative designs was a simple structure of two hinged swinging gates, arranged vertically, which could divide the stage in different ways and allude to different kinds of imprisonment. Smaller, more intimate sets featured cloistered spaces for Hamlet's solitary musings. The predominance of sets conceived for a conventional stage reflects the general preference of the artists for large- scale architecture. But given that much of Egypt's most innovative theatre is performed on small, unconventional stages, it would be interesting to see more ideas developed for smaller performance spaces.
The choice of Hamlet as the theme of the exhibit seems rather obvious at first glance, but designing a set for the play undoubtedly presents a challenge. A narrative which moves between a palace, graveyard and pond, not to mention the claustrophic inner life of the protagonist, offers a range of possibilities to the stage designer. However, judging by their statements in the pamphlet, it seems that the young artists participating in this exhibit were absorbed almost exclusively by Hamlet's tortured inner life and his inability to escape his demons. Some of the models consequently seem one-dimensional in presenting the set as a maze or a cage. This brings up the question of what constitutes an effective collaboration between dramatic and plastic artists. The creditable efforts of these young artists would have been more fruitful still if they had worked closely with theatre directors. They could then have focussed on producing a set intended primarily as the stage for a play rather than a model for display. But this collaboration is in the works, notes Khaled Galal, as the Centre intends eventually to stage performances of Hamlet using the sets designed in this workshop. The conceptualisation of the set will no doubt be refined in the process.
A smaller section of the exhibit was devoted to costume design. There were no models in this section, but only drawings and paintings. Most of the costumes were conventionally Elizabethan with the exception of Marcelle Nassif's figures partially wrapped in white bandages, bearing a passing resemblance to mummies. This notable example aside, the costume exhibit reveals more clearly than the set designs that the active participation of theatre artists in the project is needed to give the artistic endeavours a more cohesive conceptual focus. Without the defining vision of a final production the artists sometimes seem to lack inspiration.
Galal does not underestimate the challenge of asking the students to tackle such a formidable text, but rather revels in the potential for learning through such challenging projects.
"We choose the most difficult forms to train our students," he says, "such as Sufi poetry, which uses complex language, challenging songs, and a text like Hamlet."
The training to which he refers has resulted in other items on the Creativity Centre's Ramadan programme: readings of poems in praise of the Prophet and choral performances of popular Egyptian songs. Aside from providing traditional seasonal entertainment, the poetry and singing workshops train actors to enunciate and to develop their singing voices. "These are not skills which actors are usually taught," notes Galal. "But we want to train complete actors who speak, for instance, good classical as well as colloquial Arabic."
Galal has enlisted the cooperation of the artists Nagy Shakir, Nevine Raafat and Omniya Yahya in training students for the present venture. In upcoming projects participants in the Creativity Centre's training programme in theatre will work with a Danish troupe in December and the French director Gerard Gelas in February. There will also be performances of King Lear in different genres. The focus will remain on learning through cross-fertilisation between genres and traditions.
