Nehad Selaiha takes a break from the third National theatre festival to report on the fourth pantomime festival at Al-Saqia Though four new productions from the fringe were scheduled on the first two days of the Egyptian National Theatre Festival I have had to miss them all, and I live to regret it. One of them was a highly recommended tongue-in-cheek parody of Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet from Ein Shams university which I was very keen to see since I simply adore such farcical burlesques of the bard, particularly when staged by students; another was the theatre Institute's production of Michel de Gheldrode's grotesque and highly theatrical Escurial which I hear was quite creditable; the third was Mahmoud El-Toukhi's Hikayet Sha'b Kwayes (The Story of a Good People) -- a fanciful play about a king who wakes up one day to find his kingdom deserted and all his people fled -- performed by the enthusiastic and touchingly persevering Egyptian Telecommunications Company's troupe in Alexandria; and the fourth, Atyaf Hikaya (Shades of a Tale), was a collective, fresh reworking of the folk legend of the faithful, long-suffering Na'saa and her sick husband Ayyoub (or Job) by the reputable troupe of the cultural palace in Assyout. Why did I miss them? Call it theatrical greed: the 2-day annual meeting of young mummers Al-Saqia coincided with the first two days of the National Festival and I was loath to miss it. I have followed this event since it was first launched by El-Sawy's Cultural Centre in 2005 and have always found it rewarding. Besides, not to have turned up would have disappointed many pantomimists and meant that I did not take them seriously as theatre makers. It would have confirmed their suspicion that in cultivating this much-neglected art they were simply wasting their time. I went to Al-Saqia full of hope, but, much to my chagrin, this 4th pantomime festival was a disappointment, and if you remember what I wrote about the last one, a quite unexpected one. Not only has the number of productions shrunk from last year's 15 to this year's 12, but the general standard has also taken a disturbing downward curve. Technically there was a marked shortage of variety in styles and finesse in execution, and more often than not the ideas were stale or half-baked. Barring Al-Kanz (The Treasure) by Al-Malameh (Features) troupe, which won the first LE.3000 cash prize, one found no exciting flights of the imagination, little technical inventiveness, and even less humour. Conceived, directed and performed by Mustafa Huzayen, with Mohamed Ashraf, a delightfully vivacious and highly talented child performer, as co-actor, it featured two clownish tramps who stumble upon an old wooden chest which they hope contains a treasure. When finally, after a series of rough-and-tumble antics, they manage to open it, they discover it contains nothing but a single balloon and a radio set. Though disappointed, they turn on the radio and the stage fills with music. As they begin to dance, dozens of coloured balloons descend from the flies to float around them, as if conjured up by the music, or by some invisible jinni that had been trapped in the box. For a while, they bob and bounce in this sea of colour before, suddenly, without their noticing it, a gigantic mass of balloons stuck together in the shape of a monstrous creature appears upstage and begins to advance slowly and menacingly towards them. The following sequence mimes a thrilling, frantic chase with many near misses and hair's- breadth escapes. Finally, the balloon monster seems to give up, kneels down and literally explodes, with all the balloons bursting one after the other, while the two tramps stare in jubilant amazement, wildly embracing and jumping up and down. None of the other performances, including the two that got the second (LE.2000) and third (LE.1000) cash prizes, came anywhere near The Treasure in terms of subtlety, metaphoric power, humour and visual inventiveness. Intizar (Waiting), another two-hander by a troupe called Lahazat (Moments), devised, directed and acted by Walid Atef with co-performer Mai Salem, was an obvious and somewhat tame variation on the theme of waiting as cynically viewed and popularized by Beckett's Waiting for Godot. Only Godot was here a bus. Two young strangers, a man and a woman, arrive at a bus stop and sit on a bench waiting for buses to take them to different destinations. The buses, though invisible, do arrive, as we judge by the sounds we hear and the movement of the two young people as they rush towards them; they do not stop, however, and just whiz by. As the buses come and go, without ever stopping, the waiting continues and time flows on. In rapid sequences we see the young couple courting, getting married, having a child, turning the bench into a home and getting older. Never, however, does either of them ever lose hope of one day catching the desired bus. The 10-minute performance ends with them holding hands and dashing in different directions, trying to catch imaginary buses and missing them. Al-Qayd (The Shackle) by a new troupe which calls itself La-w Battalna Nihlam (If We Stop Dreaming) was even less original in conception and quite literal in gesture and bodily movement. Worse still, while masquerading as a feminist denunciation of oppressive patriarchal authority, it ends by flagrantly consolidating this authority and knocking the very bottom out of any feminist protest. For most of the show, a father (Islam Sameeh Yusef) acts as jailor to his frail, angelic daughter (Noraan Khalid), terrorizing her and ruthlessly forestalling all her attempts to break free. When she achieves freedom at the end, it is, unfortunately and quite shamelessly, as a gift from patriarchy. In the very last sequence, the father abruptly changes course and, as if softened by his daughter's tears and pleas, opens the door for her and the piece ends with the two locked in a repulsively sentimental embrace. The message to the many veiled young women in the audience was: don't rebel; if you cry hard enough, plead long enough and act sweet and innocent, authority will eventually relent and allow you some freedom. I don't doubt that Mohamed Zohair who thought up and directed this piece meant well and believed he was being progressive and doing women a favour by championing their cause. Personally, I found his efforts terribly misguided and ideologically disgusting. And to think that he was once a student of mine and that I actually taught him a course on feminism. This I find unbearably mortifying. My only consolation was that Rania Rif'at, also my student once, took up the same theme and projected it from a genuinely feminist perspective. Though brief, only six minutes long, and quite simple, showing a young woman dressed and strung up like a marionette and finally breaking free after a long struggle, her Marionette put across a powerful stage image and an honest, hopeful message for women. Equally feminist, though less openly and directly, was Samaa' Ibrahim's Mateegi Nil'ab (Let's Play) in which she took over such time-consecrated male figures as Father Christmas, bus drivers, circus clowns, conjurors and football players and made them her own. Her performance was a zestful, colourful, solo pageant which left many in the audience with whistles to blow and keep as souvenirs. While Samaa was named best actress, Rania got the award for best scenography on account of a shadow-play sequence by way of a prologue and a metal hoop dressed with paper dolls that hung above her head in Marionette. Sadly, both prizes, though welcome as morale- boosters and signs of recognition, carry no cash value. And so were the prizes that went to Amr El-Amrousi and Mohamed Abdallah as best and second best actors respectively. El-Amrousi's Kilmitein Abrak min Mitein (Two Words Can Do More than Two Hundred) showed a protester carrying slogans defending Islam and the veil and trying alternately to argue or push his way into conference halls and being rudely rebuffed. Abdallah's Nuzha (Picnic), on the other hand, seemed more ideologically innocuous and romantically oriented, contrasting the peace, beauty and harmony one feels in a garden, in the arms of mother nature, so to speak, with the ugliness, roughness, deafening noise and roaring traffic on Cairo's crowded streets. Ahmed Fu'ad's Hayya Nukafeh Al-Tallawuth Al-Sam'y (Let's Fight Auditory Pollution) offered an even more jarring treatment of the same theme. Indeed, one prominent feature of this festival was the extremely painful loudness of the musical soundtracks that accompanied the performances. Wisam Medani's Akher Nuqtet Wusuul fi Mu'anat Ahad Mutasalliqi Al-Gibal (The Last Point of Endurance in the Struggle of a Mountain Climber) was meant as a political metaphor for the struggle of the Palestinians; but though blissfully quiet and relatively less nerve- racking, it was unfortunately performed in near total darkness with a few barely legible posters carrying slogans. Alaa' Hassan's Game Over (the English words are used in the title), performed by his Chalet troupe, boasted an army of actors numbering 18 who represented two competing teams in a succession of rowdy games. The two remaining performances were Osama Hassan's Rayeh Gaay (Back and Forth) and Mohamed El-Se'eidi's Al-Muwaten (Citizen) 82 and, quite honestly, I can tell you nothing about them. Though I am sure I saw them and was wide-awake when I did so, it is as if they had been completely blotted out of my memory. Nothing remains, not a flicker, a stray tune or a gesture. I suppose this comes from cramming too many shows in two days, especially when preceded and succeeded by feverish bouts of intensive play-consumption. Or could it be that my once infallible memory for theatre is finally showing signs of aging? Fourth Pantomime Festival at El-Sawy Cultural Centre (El-Saqia), Zamalek, Cairo, 6-7 July.
