Last week I told you all about the founder of the No-Budget Theatre Festival in Alexandria, director Gamal Yaqoot, and about his motives for establishing it (see ‘How like a phoenix', the Weekly, Issue No. 1150, 30 May, 2013). This week, I promised to talk about the festival itself and the performances it offered. But before I do, I'd like to say something about what has been happening on the cultural scene since the last limited cabinet reshuffle (on 7 May), which entrusted the portfolio of culture to Alaa Abdel Aziz, a member of the Cinema Institute of dubious academic standing and strong, pronounced Islamist loyalties. The appointment whipped up a violent wave of angry protests against which the new minister retaliated with equal vehemence, and within 3 weeks the confrontation quickly spiraled into a full-fledged conflict, creating a crisis that has confirmed the worst fears as to what the current ruling regime intends to do to culture and the arts in Egypt. Rather than build and reform, destroy and deform have been the two guiding principles of this newly appointed minister. His first bright idea upon assuming the post targeted the successful and highly popular ‘Family Library' project started by the General Egyptian Book Organisation (GEBO) in 1994 to encourage people to read by making the best classics in Arabic and world literature and books in every imaginable branch of knowledge available to the public at comfortably affordable prices. He sought to hijack this project – the brainchild of the late Samir Sarhan, the head of GEBO from 1985 to 2004 – and change its name (and eventually its original conception and ultimate goals, perhaps), rechristening it the ‘Revolution Library'. It was obvious to everybody that this ‘inspired' idea was prompted by no nobler reason than the minister's desire to curry favour with his new masters at the ruling Freedom and Justice Party of the Muslim Brotherhood who brought him to power. By attributing to their regime the few really solid cultural achievements of the previous one, he thought, rather naively, to consolidate their spurious claim that the revolution has been solely their work. It did not work. Ahmed Migahed, the head of GEBO, refused to falsify history and change the name of the Family Library. Feeling thwarted at the dismal failure of his ridiculously puerile conspiracy, the new minister seemed to go wild and started lashing out right and left. It was ‘out' to anyone who dared oppose him. On 12 May he sacked Migahed. On 28 May he ousted Salah El-Mileegui, the head of the Plastic Arts Sector, because he opened the Sector's annual exhibition on schedule, refusing to put it off at the request of the minister who said he wanted to examine the complaints of some artists whose works were rejected by the exhibition's prestigious selection committee and review its policies and procedures. To throw doubt on the credibility and judgment of this committee, and others like it, would have been a dangerous precedent that would erode the independence of all the ministry's sectors and allow the current minister of culture and his future successors to poke their noses where least wanted and play off artists against each other for their own benefits or for political ends. That power and the desire to dictate what gets publicly shown and what does not – in plainer words, the desire to control and censor artistic products and cultural activities – was the real purpose of the new minister, rather than any care for fairness or probity, soon became incontrovertibly clear. On the same day that he got rid of El-Mileegui, he visited Abdel Naser Hassan, the head of The Egyptian National Library and Archives, in his office and asked him to quietly resign. When Hassan refused, the minister sacked him. On that same day too, he removed the head of the Opera House, the brilliant administrator and internationally renowned flutist Inas Abdel Dayem. In the cases of Hassan and Abdel Dayem, there were no publicized incidents like the embarrassing fight with Migahed over the name of the Family Library, or with El-Mileegui over opening the exhibition that could serve as convenient (if dreadfully lame) excuses to justify the minister's actions outwardly at least. Nor could the minister produce any complaints against either party's administrative management or cultural policies. Indeed, in the absence of any evidence of administrative or financial mismanagement against any of heads of the above mentioned sectors, and judging by the angry reactions against their removal among their personnel and intellectuals in general, these 4 sackings seem at best a willful, arbitrary massacre of powerful cultural figures by an authoritarian, power-hungry minister. At worst, they can be read as the first part of an evil scenario to control Egyptian culture and steer it in the direction of an intolerant, conservative, authoritarian ideology by getting rid of all effective, enlightened cultural leaders and replacing them with faithful disciples of the Brotherhood and its Salafi allies. No wonder that on the following day after Abdel Dayem, El-Mileegui and Hassan were removed, Sa'id Tawfiq, the Secretary General of the Supreme Council for Culture, tendered his resignation in protest against what he openly called “the relentless Islamizing of the ministry of culture through the appointment of members or supporters of the Muslim Brothers in key positions for which they are not qualified” (Al-Akhbar daily, 30 May, 2013, p. 2). Tawfiq's resignation triggered massive resignations by prominent writers and artists from the Council's various committees. And was it a coincidence that on that same ominous 29 May a representative of Al-Noor Salafi Party at the notorious Shura Council by the name of Gamal Hamid launched a wrathful harangue on the evils of ballet, describing it as an obscene, depraved practice that propagates vice and immorality among the people? And guess where he said this? He said it at the meeting of the Culture, Information and Tourism Committee of the Shura Council, of which he is a member, assuring everybody that ‘he was not against art; only against nudity disguised as art' (Al-Akhbar daily, 29 May, 2013, p. 2). Mr. Hamid's statements have given rise to strong, disconcerting rumours that the Shura Council is seriously contemplating the closing down of the Ballet Institute at the Academy of Arts, the disbanding of the National Ballet Company and the liquidation of the Opera House by subsuming the rest if its companies under the umbrella of the Folk and Musical Theatre Sector. If this happens, it is goodbye to classical opera, classical music, classical ballet and modern dance theatre. They will be banned in favour of Islamic performing arts – mainly all-male Mawlawi or Dervish whirling dances, concerts of religious hymns and chants in praise of the Prophet and his family and comrades, or melodramatic musicals about the rise and spread of Islam. And we will be lucky if we even get these. If this kind of benighted Islamist ideology predominates, I doubt that any kind of performance art will survive. What kind of a Shura Council is this? And what kind of satanic designs on Egyptian culture is it contemplating? The turbulent events of the last few weeks and the ongoing, fateful struggle to preserve the tolerant, multiple, creative, enlightened and essentially liberal identity of Egyptian culture confer an added value on the No-Budget Theatre initiative, defining it as a forceful, enduring form of resistance and giving it a definite political edge. In the present dismal situation, when Egyptian culture is facing a war of attrition and is fighting for survival, this festival renews our faith and tells us that even if the forces of darkness take over the ministry of culture and all its arms and organs, if they impose the most rigorous kinds of censorship and withhold all funds and facilities from artists and call them immoral and depraved, there will always be people determined to make art and risk everything to create it. ‘Theatre is a necessity' was the slogan of the recently held 3-day National Conference on Egyptian Theatre, organized by the Theatre Committee of the Supreme Council for Culture. It opened on 27 May in the absence of the new minister of culture. In fact, the organizers of the conference, planned long before the appointment of the new minister, insisted in a widely publicized fiery statement that he keep away, threatening to suspend all proceedings if he did not, and took the precaution of cancelling the opening ceremony that was to take place at the small hall of the Opera house to embarrass him into keeping away. But ‘theatre is a necessity' is an old slogan. It has long been the slogan of the independent theatre troupes since they launched their first Free Theatre Festival in 1990. The No-Budget Theatre initiative, thought up by Gamal Yaqoot in Alexandria in 2008, is a product of this movement and, like innumerable similar projects, has translated this slogan into real action and concrete theatrical experience. Over many months, Yaqoot and a handful of experienced actors, writers, directors and critics watched more than 100 independent productions that the ministry of culture could not claim any credit for, and out of these they selected 7 for the 5th No-Budget Theatre Festival which opened at Beiram El-Tonsi Theatre in Alexandria on 14 May, 2013, ending on the 18th. In this festival one got, besides a lot of aesthetic pleasure and intellectual provocation, lessons in austerity and perseverance, in passionate dedication and artistic ingenuity and resourcefulness. Every performance was an antidote to depression, stimulating hope and confidence. That with little financial support from Yaqoot's independent Creation Group, artists like Rifaat Abdel ‘Aleem and ‘Isam Omar could muster enough creative imagination and artistic human resources to produce such wonderfully stirring, visually haunting and poignantly relevant versions of Fernando Arrabal's Fando and Lis and José Sanchís Sinisterra's Ay Carmela! is quite amazing, and also humbling and infinitely reassuring. With a set consisting of dry tree leaves and rags, and a bicycle, a suitcase and a primitive drum for props in the case of Fando and Lis, and 6 clothed dummies with light bulbs for heads, 4 standing on stage and 2 dangling from the flies, and a handbag, a rope and 2 umbrellas in Carmela, the directors of the 2 plays, Rifaat Abdel ‘Aleem and ‘Isam Omar respectively, translated their chosen texts into intellectually vibrant and aesthetically captivating subtle warnings against authoritarian power and the evil it can wreak on artists and ordinary people alike. Bohemia, written by Ihab Gaber and directed by Ibrahim Hassan, though somewhat derivative and structurally flawed where the text is concerned, was visually magnificent, offering a series of breathtaking stage images with a few white drapes and painted panels executed by the Sarkha (Scream) troupe. Nisreen Nur's Tartashet Shams (Splatters of Sunshine), another original text, reviewed female representation in Arab history and folklore and was inventively directed by Ahmed Fathi with papier-mâché boats, trees and little houses. Shakhabit (Squiggles), collectively written and staged by the only Cairene troupe in the festival – the Leilet ‘Ard (Evening Performance) troupe – offered a series of hilarious, scathingly satirical sketches featuring the current president of Egypt and the military. Mohamed El-Kalza and Yasir El-Wakil's 30 Fiqrayer – an adaptation of Mustafa Saad's masterpiece 30 February, which merges the ‘Febrayer' (February) in the original title with the Arabic word ‘Faqr' (poverty) to coin the new word Fiqrayer, meaning the poor month of February – transformed the 1980s text into a comically bitter reflection on the Egyptian revolution. And José Triana's Night of the Assassins, directed by Islam Wassouf, exposed the evils of patriarchy and authoritarianism with nothing more than a table, three chairs and a clothes line stretched across the stage. One of the consistently wonderful things about these shows was the lighting: I discovered that Ibrahim El-Forn, one of the top lighting designers in Egypt, volunteered to assist in this ‘poor theatre' festival, providing most of the shows with exquisite lighting designs that cost nothing in terms of money but are priceless in terms of creativity. Such artists – professional and amateur – are undefeatable. So, do thy worst, Mr. Abdel Aziz.
