CAIRO - Although the Cairo-based el-Fan Theatre crisis started about two years ago, it has turned serious in 2010, when the Ministry of Interior closed the theatre, which is owned by veteran Egyptian director Galal el-Sharkawy. The police sealed the doors of the old theatre only a few days after el-Sharkawy's latest play Donia Aragouzat (World of Puppets), a political drama, opened. The police claimed they shut down the theatre because it wasn't secure and lacked a good fire-fighting system. El-Sharkawy and his cast tried their best to stop this decision but they failed; they then stood outside the theatre in protest. The director expressed his opposition to what had happened to his theatre in all the local newspapers saying, "I won't leave my theatre, if they want to demolish it, let them demolish me as well”. Eventually after much more real-life drama, el-Fan Theatre opened again last month. El-Sharkawy then announced that he has five new plays planned there in the near future. On a positive note, the Technical House for Theatre (affiliated to the Ministry of Culture) has produced some very good performances this year. "At the beginning of the year, few people went to the theatre because of the swine flu, which they were afraid of contracting in a relatively small, enclosed space. But, by the summer, the audiences had started to increase remarkably, as the virus had disappeared," says Adel Hassan, an art critic, director and the head of the Media Department in the Technical House for Theatre. Meanwhile, the National Theatre Troupe performed Khalti Safia wel Dair (My Aunt Safia and the Monastery) early in the year. The play is adapted from a novel by the Egyptian writer Bahaa Taher of the same name tackling relations between Egypt's Muslims and Christians. The play was directed by Mohamed Morsi, who also directed another play late this year entitled Hekmet el-Qroud (The Wisdom of the Monkeys), one of ten performances put on in el-Talia'a Theatre. The Modern Theatre has also produced four plays, one of them being Habak Awadeen Tamer, which attracted huge audiences and made a lot of money at the box office. The play, written by Sameh Mahran and directed by Galal Ousman, tells the story of Habak (played by Egyptian actor Mohamed Reyad), whose father dies, leaving him penniless. Habak fails to marry Mohra, his beloved, because he's so poor. He goes to the cemetery and cries at his father's grave. Then a devil appears to him and offers him money for killing the taxpayers. Habak realises that, if he kills all the taxpayers, there'll be no-one left alive in his village. So he refuses and tries to find another way to make some money. The Comedy Theatre has only produced two plays this year: El-Nas Betheb Keda (People Like it that Way), written by Ahmed el-Sayyed and Akram Moustafa and directed by Essam el-Sayyed; and Moulid Sedi el-Morieb, written by Youssef Ouf and directed by Mohamed Abu Dawoud. "This year we have also tried extending the season for the plays. We used to perform for a maximum of three months, but some plays have run for five or six months," adds Hassan. The National Theatre for Heritage Performances has produced six plays, one of them being Doaa el-Karawan (The Nightingale Prayer), adapted by Rasha Abdel-Moneim from the novel by legendary Egyptian author Taha Hussein. The play was directed by Karima Bedar, who has modernised the novel that deals with the country's heritage. Seven plays have been produced by the Youth Theatre this year. Earlier this month, there was a great turnout for the Egyptian play Chaise Longue, an improvisation directed by yound Egyptian director Mohamed el-Sagheer. The play was the result of a workshop entitled ‘Youth Dream' and all the cast were amateurs. The plays created a new fantasy world, set in a mental hospital where everyone is psychologically ill. El-Sagheer, the director, has claimed many Best Director awards from festivals in Egypt. "What is astonishing this year is that the young directors have won the awards, while the people love their plays," Hassan comments. This year has also witnessed the birth of two new festivals: the ‘Festival of Laughter' and the ‘Youth Festival' (Towards a Theatre of the Poor). Although the Technical House for Theatre funded the Laughter Festival to the tune of about LE20,000 for each of the six performances, the festival wasn't very successful, because the performances were mediocre, while the Youth Festival was more successful and more popular, although its budget was a little smaller.
