Nehad Selaiha declares the First Egyptian National Theatre Festival an enormous success For years, theatre people in Egypt have been clamouring for an annual festival with a contest and prizes along the lines of the National Film Festival. In 1995, the theatre committee at the Supreme Council for Culture strongly pushed for the idea and drew a detailed plan which the minister of culture approved. At the very last minute, however, when after months of heated discussions and hectic deliberations the dream seemed about to come true, the project was suddenly cancelled. It was a terrible blow, all the more mortifying because the person who had dealt it was no other than the head of the state-theatre organisation at the time. He had anxiously watched the direction of the voting and when he sensed that most of the awards would go to the so-called commercial theatre, he promptly put a spanner in the works. He was an influential intellectual and journalist and, more to the point, had the ear of the minister. To go ahead with the festival, he protested, would completely demolish the credibility of the official theatrical establishment and turn its primary raison d'être -- namely to safeguard artistic quality and the intellectual integrity of theatre against the ravages of commercialism -- into a joke. At that time, the rivalry between the state-theatre and private companies was at its fiercest and the former, lacking a clear vision, imagination and mobility, and burdened with a vast, unwieldy bureaucracy which consumed most of its budget and often led to make-shift, haphazard artistic decisions, was feeling increasingly threatened. Paradoxically, while the state-theatre apparatus was growing more and more money-minded and box-office-oriented, churning out shabby vaudevilles and sloppy, feeble-minded comedies in a vulgar bid to draw audiences, some of the long-established and most popular private companies, namely, Galal El-Sharqawi's Studio Al-Fann (Art Studio), Mohamed Subhi's and Lenin El-Ramli's Studio Al-Mumathel (The Actor's Studio) and Samir Khafagi's Al-Fannaneen Al-Mutahideen (United Artists), were becoming more artistically meticulous and intellectually demanding. To this period we owe such unforgettable gems as El-Sharqawi's costly, multi-media tragi-comedy, Inqilab (Coup d'état), Al-Mutahideen's pungent and deliciously witty political satire Al-Za'im (The Leader), starring the company's leading actor, mega-star Adel Imam, and the two El-Ramli-Subhi smash hits, Wighat Nazar (Point of View) and Bil 'Arabi Al-Faseeh (In Plain Arabic). 'Serious theatre', it seemed at the time, had finally migrated to the private sector. No wonder the strongest candidate for the best production award in this aborted festival was Point of View. The failure of the state-theatre to match the quality produced by private companies was in part due to its stuffy, supercilious attitude towards the fringe and stodgy resistance to incorporating any of its artists among its ranks. It stuck tenaciously, mulishly, to the outdated, crippling view of theatre as consisting of a set of binary oppositions (public/ private, 'serious'/ commercial, professional/amateur, metropolitan / regional), refusing to admit there was a possible third way or any chance for reconciliation and cooperation between the opposites. It thus failed to attract fresh blood, isolated itself from new trends and movements on the scene and was singularly blind to the vast resources of theatrical talent available on the fringe, particularly in the burgeoning independent theatre movement which cut across all the old, stiff divisions and publicly proposed itself as a viable alternative, a third way, through its first Free Theatre Festival in 1990. Ashraf Zaki, who took office as head of the state-theatre organisation last year and is also currently the elected secretary-general of the Actors Union, was one of the founders of that first Free Theatre Festival and among the staunchest supporters of the movement -- a fact which, to my mind, goes a long way towards explaining why a national theatre festival was possible this year. Dynamic and relatively young, the youngest head of the organisation since the 1970s, with a thoroughly open mind, no deep-seated prejudices and a capacity for creative thinking and taking calculated risks, Zaki is determined to bring about a theatrical revival similar to that of the 'Golden Sixties' and believes that the only way to go about it is by uniting the efforts of all theatre-makers, of all generations and denominations, and exploring new forms of active cooperation with the private sector, the fringe, other governmental and non-governmental organisations and educational establishments. This healthy, enlightened attitude has informed his decisions since he took office, leading him to become deeply involved on the side of the victims of the Beni Sweif fire (many of them amateurs with no Union membership) and their families, to open the doors of his theatres to fringe productions and to host at one of these venues the first Women's Theatre Festival held by the Cultural Palaces Organisation last month. In the opening ceremony of that event, Zaki's generous support was gratefully and volubly acknowledged by Ahmed Nawwar, the head of that organisation. It needed Zaki's determination and persuasive powers to revive the idea of a national theatre festival and convince the minister of culture of its validity and importance. The initial announcement was greeted with a lot of excitement and enthusiasm, with many artists and critics declaring it was about time and that such an event was long overdue. Within a few days, however, the festival turned into a fractious, hotly debated issue. In the old project, the word 'national' was interpreted as referring to metropolitan, mainstream, professional theatre whether government or privately funded. But for Zaki, to be truly 'national', the festival had to accommodate all artists and all shades of theatre. He wanted a festival that would showcase the best in Egyptian theatre in the past two years, regardless of who made it or which body sponsored it -- a festival that would bring together all theatre- makers and allow them to compete for the awards on an equal footing. While many critics described this new conception as idealistic and quite impracticable, some of the big names in professional theatre thought it was quite offensive. "How do you expect a professional, with a long-standing reputation, an illustrious name and hordes of fans to compete for a prize with nondescript amateurs?" was a familiar refrain. "It would be so undignified," or "so unfair to the poor amateurs," it would usually go on to say. The fact that in the past two years some theatre productions featured stars made the question more urgent and problematic. In the presence of such well-seasoned, experienced performers -- like Hussein Fahmi and Izzat El-'Alayli in the National Theatre's revival of Lenin El-Ramli's 1980s' hit Ahlan Ya Bakawat (Welcome Gentlemen), Salah El-Saadani and singer Mohamed Munir in Saadallah Wannus's Al-Malik Huwa Al-Malik (The King is the King), another revival of a 1980s' hit, Nur El-Sherif in the National theatre production of Alfred Farag's Al-Amira wa Al-Sa'look (The Princess and the Vagabond), Raghda in Hikaya Lam Tarwiha Scheherazade (A Story Never Told by Scheherazade), Aida Abdel-Aziz in Al-Hanager's haunting production of Saadallah Wannus's Ahlam Shaqiyya (Anguished Dreams), Magda El-Khatib in the powerful melodrama Akrahak (I Hate You), not to mention Adel Imam in Al-Mutahideen's Bodyguard, or the many star-studded casts of some private companies' productions -- what chance do younger artists have of winning anything? Or, to put it another way, how can any jury adjudicate in a competition where the parties are so obviously unequal? To these questions Zaki had only one answer: Those who are afraid to compete should stay away from the contest and play on the fringe. If budding artists feel sufficiently confident to compete with established colleagues, who are we to tell them "don't"; it is a risk and a challenge and even if they win nothing, they will benefit from the experience, gain a degree of publicity, a measure of exposure, and may be some of the glamour of the stars will rub off on them. The experience could be also sobering for the stars and help to keep them on their toes. To control the size of the contest and keep it within manageable limits, Zaki, as head of the festival, together with Khalid Galal, its manager, decided that the number of productions submitted by any theatre company (private or public), cultural organisation (governmental or otherwise), or cultural institution (e.g., the Theatre Institute, the Universities Union) should not exceed four. Independent or amateur groups who have no legal umbrella and are not members of any recognised artistic affiliation (such as the Egyptian Society for Theatre Amateurs, or the recently established Independent Groups Centre for Theatre Studies and Research) would have to be reviewed by a selection committee of theatre critics and academics. Such measures notwithstanding, the nine-member jury (headed by veteran actor/director Saad Ardash, with director/playwright and former head of the state-theatre organisation, Hani Metawe', stage- designer and ex-dean of the Theatre Institute, Samir Ahmed, theatre actor and film star, Mahmoud Yassin, former ballerina and dean of the Ballet Institute, Magda Izz, composer Rageh Dawood, writer, critic and journalist, Louis Grace, dramatist Yusri El-Guindi, plus yours truly as members) was landed with 37 productions and an exhausting daily schedule which started at 4 in the afternoon and invariably ended well after midnight. Watching four to five productions a day, some of them running into three and a half hours, and moving across Cairo in the crazy summer traffic, in the oppressive July heat, was no joke; on the fourth day, we all looked wilted and washed out. But trudging between theatres until the small hours was the least of our troubles. Zaki's ambition plan to bring all theatre people together, though commendable in spirit, had turned the job of the jury into a terrible ordeal, a painful dilemma and a well-nigh impossible task. What saved the day was the gracious decision of Hussein Fahmi, Izzat El-'Alayli and Salah El-Saadani not to compete for the best male performance award "in order to make room for the younger generation and give them a better chance of winning", as they put it in their letters to the jury. In the same spirit, and with the same motive, the jury insisted that besides the three special jury awards of LE5000 each of which the festival statute mentions, another three new prizes, each worth LE10,000, for best "rising" actor, actress and director should be added. Joint awards, though admittedly not popular, was a further solution and helped the jury across some hurdles. Predictably, not everyone was pleased and a few were positively disgruntled. On the whole, however, the awards seemed to go down well with the young, enthusiastic audience who filled every inch of Al-Gomhoriya Theatre on the final night and, for once, turned that cold, sedate, and somewhat forbidding establishment into something like a football pitch. Readers who would like to know more about the shows in the festival can check my articles in the Culture section of the Weekly over the past two years. There, I promise, they will find detailed reviews of all the productions mentioned in the wards list and of some of the ones that failed to get any. Vietnam 2, for instance, the only commercial theatre production in the festival, was extensively covered in March 2005 in an article entitled "Beware the Ides of March" and only two weeks ago, in the 13 July issue of this paper, my "Ibsen in Egypt" dealt in detail with both A Doll's House which won three prizes, totalling LE35,000, and The Wild Duck which gleaned nothing save some lukewarm applause. Happy hunting, and if you need any help, contact me through the Weekly. Awards: Best Production: (an honorary award with no money value): Ahlan Ya Bakawat (Welcome Gentlemen), the National Theatre. Best Actor: Tawfiq Abdel-Hamid for his performance in Ragul Al-Qal'a (Man of the Citadel), Al-Ghad Theatre. Best Actress: went jointly to Aida Abdel-Aziz for her performance in Al-Hanager's Ahlam Shaqiyya (Anguished Dreams), and Magda El-Khatib in Akrahak (I Hate You), a production of Al-Masrah Al-Hadith (the state Modern Theatre company). Best Director: also jointly to Murad Munir for Al-Malik Huwa Al-Malik (The King is the King) at Al-Masrah Al-Hadith, and Nasir Abdel-Mon'im for Ragul Al-Qal'a. Best Playwright: Abul-'Ela El-Salamouni for Ragul Al-Qal'a. Best Supporting Actor: Ashraf Tulba in Ragul Al-Qal'a. Best Supporting Actress: Salwa Mohamed Ali in Ahlam Shaqiyya. Best Rising Actor: jointly to Mohamed Abdel-Mu'izz and Yehya Mahmoud in Hakawi Al-Haramlek (Stories of the Harem) by Al-Misaharati independent group, sponsored by Al-Hanager. Best Rising Actress: Iman Imam in A Doll's House, a Cultural Palaces production from Alexandria. Best Rising Director: jointly to Gamal Yaqoot for A Doll's House and Hisham Atwa for Caligula at Al-Tali'a (avant- garde) Theatre. Best Scenography: Subhi El-Sayed for A Doll's House. Best Music: Hamdi Ra'ouf for Al-Malik Huwa Al-Malik. Best Choreography: Atef Awad for Lis Baghdad (The Thief of Baghdad) by the state Folk Arts company at the Balloon Theatre. The Three Special Jury Awards went collectively to the artistic teams of: Ana Dilwaqti Mayet (I Am Dead Now), by Al-Sa'aa (Hour) independent group, sponsored by Al-Hanager; Hikayet Wahid Saleh (The Story of a Good Man), a Youth Theatre production; and Variations on Lear, a Creativity Centre project offering three different readings of King Lear by young directors.
