It is hard to pigeonhole Nora Amin, founding director of La Musica Dance Company, whose latest show was an Ibsen adaptation, Enemy of the People. Yet the many-faced artist has played various roles in her 20-year-long career: a stage director, a choreographer and a dancer as well as a creative writer. Attending a Nora Amin show is a heavy meal whose effects will remain with you for a long time. After returning from an extended tour in, among other places, Libya, Denmark and Norway, I spent two hours with Amin at a small café in Zamalek, not only discussing her work but also reminiscing about the 1990s when we were friends and fellow feminist writers. “We have performed the play in many governorates outside Cairo, including Alexandria and Minya, as well as outside Egypt — in Bangladesh and India. I worked on the original text of the play, wrote different dialogues, creating different versions and possibilities,” she said in an enthusiastic tone. “In Denmark, it was curious to perform the political show under such circumstances. The show was very successful at provoking discussion about the truth of the situation in Egypt, whether it was a coup or a new wave of revolution, and what kind of democracy Egyptians are looking for.” In Ibsen's 1881 original, the protagonist Thomas Stockman, criticises ballot-only democracy. “We performed in Arabic with English subtitles on a screen and live music, a rock band, which brought all the actors' energy to the stage. Actually at the beginning, it was a bit shocking to the audience because they are not used to such rough sounds in the theatre, but then they came to realise that this is exactly what we have experienced since 2011, gunfire, bomb blasts and all this. The show was very well-received by the Danish audience and elsewhere, too, especially that it involved a kind of criticism of democracy in Islamic countries. Originally, it is a play of five acts; I made it into a one-act play, with stress on the fourth act, which is rich with Stockman's dialogue and where he tries to convey his ideas to the citizens of the town, who become the spectators of the show. Hence the spectators are part of the show; they are welcome to interact, so it is an interactive show. This is the crucial point for me,” she stressed. “I do not want to create theatre with a passive audience. And at this moment I don't think Egyptian spectators can be passive any longer. The play is performed in an open space; therefore I created a musical play which depends on time and tempo, as a unique experience,” she said. For Amin, Ibsen is not just a playwright, he is rather a muse. “I've been interested in Ibsen since I was a child, because my mother, Mona Abu Senna, a comparative drama professor, used to tell me his plays as bed time stories,” she recalled. “She told me the story of The Dolls' House, when I was around 11. I dreamt of playing and directing the play, especially that I was named Nora after the main character. Many years later, in my 20s, I was taking a directing course at the AUC, and the drama professor asked us to direct a scene from a play as part of an exam. I felt it would be fantastic to direct the whole play, but then the dream slept in my mind again. However, at a time when everybody thinks of Ibsen's plays as verbal ones, I managed to make my version of The Dolls' House as a dance show in 2009. For me, it was not about the original play, but those strange existential questions of freedom, and how you can have your autonomy as an individual in love or marriage, where choice ends and responsibility starts. It's about political choices. For me, Ibsen was revived...” Do you find any similarity between you and the leading popular dancer Farida Fahmi? “Sure, she managed to make a drastic change back in the 1960s, when dancing was still unusual. Her father also came from an academic background. She opened the door for many females to take this option,” she said. “However, this does not mean that choosing dance as a career for a woman has become less taboo, just that more women now have the strength to do it. I think part of my fascination with dance is because of her. I used to watch the Reda Group performances backstage, because my family is very close to Farida's.” Amin is also fascinated with autobiographical theatre: “Yes, I transformed The Second Death of the Man of the Watches, my own autobiographical novel, into a play. I also directed a show based on the autobiography of Saleh Saad, the father of my daughter who died in the notorious Beni Sweif theatre fire in 2005.” More recently Amin become more interested in street theatre, and established the National Project for the Theatre of the Oppressed. “This has been my main focus since 2011, when The Enemy of the People showed up, and it fit so well with the interaction format I proposed. The play was shown mostly in open spaces, to ensure audience participation. We have developed a national network of 500 performers from different governorates. A Facebook page entitled “The National Egyptian Project for the Theatre of the Oppressed” was established to attract more artists. I personally trained all these young artists,” she proudly said. The National Project has expanded this year to form the first Arab Network for the Theatre of the Oppressed. This year, Nora, along with her team of trainers, has managed to form units of theatre performers and activists in a number of Arab countries, including Morocco and Lebanon, to insert this new theatre model. A number of plays were performed in Lebanon, the themes of which revolve around the oppressors and the oppressed; a play on sexual harassment was one of these pioneering performances. And have you ever thought of writing your own autobiography, as an actress and choreographer? “Yes, of course; I have seriously thought of writing about the journey of my company and many other theatre companies during the revolution period from 2011 until now, including the street performances we presented. It is an essential part of my life. I am going to write it from a personal perspective; how we learn about ourselves, our identity, the limits of our capabilities, the challenges and hardships. I have never thought that I was capable of performing in the street in the middle of direct death threats by the Muslim Brotherhood; the moments when everyone wants to run away, and I insist that we should stay and resume our show. In Libya, we performed Enemy of the People last September. It was a full-house every night, very successful. One night we had a natural disaster — wind and lightening brought down the tent. It became a matter of life or death, a dramatic moment when we tried to escape death and save our audience as well...” So, now that you've landed on stage, have you deserted the world of literature? “I am normally against classification. Before Death, my latest novel, was published only three years ago. Actually I am somewhat unfamiliar with publishing as a medium — whenever I write something new, I think it would be better to show it on stage. When you publish your experience in a book, you never know what happens to it. I think this is the influence of theatre on me as a vivid medium. And I really need to see the reaction of readers. I actually write poetic scripts that are added to this play or that. And I have translated many plays that were never published in book form. I dream of setting up a visual library to include our performances, to be available for everyone to watch. I hope this would be achieved next year, which will be La Musica's 15th anniversary. I also hope we could perform some of our old shows,” she added. No dreams of cinema? “I have participated in a number of films, and I directed my own dance film, entitled Intersections of Beauty and Fear, in 2009. It is snapshots of experiences and stories told by women from different parts of the world whom I met during my career as a dancer. It tells a lot about the different kinds of violence women face from their partners, and it also illustrates how women sometimes become the victims of their own consciousness when they decide to give in to the oppressor,” she said, staring into the distance. And what is your greatest suffering as an independent artist? “The biggest problem,” she says, “is to survive financially. Choosing to be an independent artist is surely a very difficult choice, a choice which is very hard to sustain,” she nodded. “We have seen very successful actors who died very poor and sick, without due care from the government and this has always frightened me. Moreover, the society still partly views the artist as a vagabond. For a true artist, acting is not just a job; it should affect the way you live, the way you think. Sometimes there is a kind of interaction between the artist's principles and what they create and this is the difference between an artist and a banker, for instance. For me, to survive humanly, it is a question of identity, which conflicts with the way some conservative and fundamentalist trends in society view art, as a luxury; and this happens for political or economic reasons. It is our destiny to meet such challenges every couple of years. I haven't suffered from censorship, though. I travelled all over the world and throughout Egypt. I danced and taught workshops, and have not encountered any resistance or dislike against my shows, even in Upper Egypt. It's happened many times that I've had to be away from home for a couple of months, moving from Alexandria to Sohag to Minya.” To what extent do you believe you delivered your message to Egyptian women, though? “I am satisfied with the things I am doing, content, because I have the chance to do it and support from my colleagues, friends and spectators, all of which has encouraged me to create what I have imagined. I feel free. I am happy that I am still able to pursue my dreams, this is actually a privilege. In retrospect, I see I've come a long way, come through many adventures and learning experiences. Then I feel alive.”
