By Mursi Saad El-Din Shakespeare is everywhere. The whole world seems to be always celebrating something or other of his. Recently, the Bibliotheca Alexandrina organised a seminar to celebrate Shakespeare's birthday at which Mohamed Enani delivered a paper about his translations of Shakespeare's plays. I believe he has, so far, translated about eight of the plays in verse and prose. It is worth mentioning here that in the 1960's the Arab League started a project for the translation of Shakespeare's works. The translations were undertaken by such leading figures as Mohamed Awad Mohamed, Mohamed Fathi and Amina El-Said. Here in Egypt we have had a long tradition of engaging Shakespeare's work. We still remember the star George Abyad playing Othello and, more recently, Yehia El-Fakharani playing King Lear. This year something different is afoot. The Royal Shakespeare Company started a one year programme to present all Shakespeare's plays. Companies from different countries were invited to assist the RSC team present all of Shakespeare from King Lear down to the last sonnet. One of the companies is the Baxter Theatre Centre in Cape Town which will present its production of Hamlet after a successful season in South Africa. In an interview in the London Times, the play's director Janet Stuzman says that she was "touched beyond speech" that they have asked her rather than someone "really fabulous". She was married to Trevor Nunn, a well-known Shakespeare director, who has recently presented Hamlet. To her, Hamlet is "a very old hat". So, she says, "[a]ll I can do is bring a new young man to bring his ineffable original freshness to bear on an old part. That's all I can do. I'm not a magician." Stuzman is also known for her multiracial Othello at the Market Theatre in Johannesburg in 1987. When she was asked by Andrew Billen whether that production had helped to hasten the end of apartheid she answered, "I am not sure that theatre ever changes politics, but it does reflect unease and crisis. I think the South African black experience gave that particular play a sort of horrendous edge." What it did change, she adds, "was the apprehension of white actors in England that it was no longer possible to put on boot polish and play Othello." This year's "greatest show on earth" will see the production of Shakespeare's 37 plays, plus the poems. All together there will be 50 separate productions in Stratford by April 2007. There will be a Japanese Titus Andronicus, an Indian Midsummer Night's Dream, a German Othello, an Iraqi Richard III and a Polish Macbeth. But Stuzman is not the only woman director at the event. There are a number of other women who seem to be eager to break the monopoly of male directors. Besides Stuzman there is Nancy Mecklar, who will direct Romeo and Juliet, and Marianna Elliot and Josie Bourke who will direct Much Ado About Nothing. The Arts Supplement of the Daily Telegraph published an interview by Dominic Cavendish, with these three directors. The questions vary, from their opinion of the festival, their first encounter with Shakespeare, their favourite female characters, and, perhaps the most important, the question "Does it feel as if there's a solidarity between you because you're all women?" The answer was that "It feels like a breath of fresh air. Directors tend to be the most competitive race in the world, but we are pretty collaborative, a close-knit group. We often call each other up and ask each other's advice." One last word, or rather a question. Why isn't Egypt participating in this festival? Having enjoyed El-Fakharani's King Lear, I would emphatically ask for its inclusion in the festival, if it is not already too late.
