The Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theater (CIFET) is celebrating its 21st birthday this month. Founded by the Egyptian Ministry of Culture in 1990 to impart some fresh blood into the ailing Egyptian theater; the festival has managed to accomplish more than that. The Experimental Festival opened new channels for experimentation, creating a space for Egyptian artists and audiences to connect with international theater, while encouraging Egyptian and Arab artists to explore new means to present their work. The opening ceremony of the festival, which took place on Saturday at the Cairo Opera House's Main Hall, kicked off with a short speech from the head of the viewing and selection committee, Martha Coigney, the honorary president of the International Theater Institute. Describing the festival as a "Cairo miracle, she said that this annual event "transformed theater in the Arab world and beyond. Twenty-one years of gatherings gave artists a sense of belonging to a world wider than the confinements of the boundaries of their own countries. Egyptian Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni emphasized the importance of communication in his speech. "The festival has managed over its many editions to deepen the idea of dialogue and of accepting the other and to create a space that allows for the free play of passions and the imagination, he said. Hosni introduced a new tradition to consolidate communication and openness in a new form. "Every year the festival will ask a world-known member of the theatrical clan to deliver at the opening ceremony a message that crystallizes his/her philosophy, vision and understanding of experimentation, Hosni announced. "Such a message, we hope, will have wider international repercussions and provoke discussion on a larger scale. Renowned theater academic and artist Richard Schechner gave the first of these keynote addresses. One of the founders of the Performance Studies department of the Tisch School of the Arts, New York University, Schechner championed "performance art to break the traditional boundaries of theater. Instead of preventing a distilled message about his philosophy and vision, Schechner gave an elaborate explanation of the avant-garde form throughout the past 100 years, listing five categories: historical avant-garde, a forward-looking avant-garde, a tradition seeking avant-garde, an intercultural avant-garde, and a current and always changing avant-garde. The long winded explanation of what each of the five categories entails was more fitting for an undergraduate seminar than a gathering of artists and critics in an opening ceremony. The detailed list bored most audiences who stopped listening and missed his remarkable illustration of performance artist Guillermo Gomez-Pena who lives between two cultures with two identities as a Mexican and American. Schechner asserted that Gomez-Pena's complex art enacts the idea that within almost every nation, there is people who feel they do not "belong, who live multiple cultural lives. "The nation as a category is dissolving, he said, "on the other hand, some intercultural theater makers celebrate this diversity. The keynote address started with a question about the role of theater in the time of crisis, listing several war zones such as Darfour, Gaza, Iraq, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and referred to the state of the natural resources of the planet. But Schechner did not engage with his own hypothesis. He got lost in his maze of definitions, choosing not to responded to his own question of what could theater do in times of crises. What saved the evening was the Polish opening performance "Don Quixote by Teatr Nowy Zabrzu (The New Theater in Zabrazu). Based on Miguel Cervantes' novel "Don Quixote de la Mancha, director Krzysztof Prus took the liberty to change the setting of the story. The Polish Don Quixote is a theater mechanist, in green overalls, working backstage in a puppet theater with his assistant Sancho. Choosing the theater world as a setting for the Don Quixote tale proved to be perfect, moving fluidly between illusion and reality and blurring the boundaries between the two. "Suspension of disbelief is the name of the game of theater; each audience member goes to the theater to be deceived into believing that what they see is reality. Moved by that "reality they are inspired to think differently about their own realities, and to change it if they can. The world that Don Quixote inhabited backstage is abundant with visions of love and chivalry. Instead of a wooden sword, Don Quixote's armed with a vacuum cleaner, and a dream. Sadly, he gets abused in the cycle of oppression driven by the power hierarchy: the director oppresses the actors and the actors take advantage of the mechanist Don Quixote's, yet he does not let go of his dream. Playing with the theatricals was very effective in the theater within theater technique, turning mundane warm-up exercises for performers into ritualized ceremonies. Skillful lighting created two spaces, smoothly shifting the actions between backstage and onstage, sometimes allowing one world to be seen through the other, raising more questions about the power of theater and its impact on people's lives. The 21st edition of the festival faces similar questions: with more than 20 performances in the official competition (11 European, three African, seven Asian, and two South American, in addition to two Egyptian entries), will be it able to touch lives, or is it just another Don Quixote, with a wooden sword and a vacuum cleaner? CIFET runs until Oct. 20. Performances are staged daily in the following Cairo venues: Al-Ayem, Al-Salam, Al-Tali'ah, Al-Arayes, Metropol Theater, Miami Theater, Al-Ghad, Cairo Opera House' small and open air theaters, Artistic Creativity Center and Al-Gomhouria. For more information, visit: www.cdfeg.org/English/exptheater/indexe.htm
