Nehad Selaiha wonders at the stamina and courage of dramatist Lenin El-Ramli In the beautiful garden of the Gezira Arts Centre in Zamalek there is a small wooden structure which looks like an ornate rectangular box, vaguely Islamic in style, but with its front and two sides gutted out. This long, narrow, and extremely low, roofed-in strip of a platform, with its plain back wall and decorative top, is sometimes used by amateur and independent theatre groups, desperate for a free performance space, to stage simple, extremely low- budget, and technically undemanding spectacles, usually hiring their own sound and lighting equipment. On such occasions, rows of ordinary chairs are ranged on the lawn facing this rough, makeshift stage to accommodate the audience. Given the evenness of the ground, such a seating arrangement can be very frustrating, making it virtually impossible for anyone not sitting in the front row to get a proper view of the stage. This is not to mention the wind blowing the sound haywire in every direction except that of the audience. Wandering listlessly on the outer fringe of the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre one evening two weeks ago, the last thing I expected was to find a playwright of the stature, calibre and popularity of Lenin El-Ramli working in such an unpropitious theatrical space. But there he was, humbly and cheerfully directing a group of amateurs, whom he had personally trained, in a new play of his, getting no fee as writer or director, and even paying money out of his own pocket towards the production. As he greeted me in his quiet, unassuming way, apologising for the primitive conditions of the production, the quality of the lighting and the costumes, I felt a surge of bitterness and anger at the way this country treats its most gifted and hardworking artists. I found myself remembering his long record of hits in both the state and private theatres, his many daring film and television scripts and scores of delightfully satirical articles, and cynically thinking that had he sought a distinguished governmental post, a regular job as a big journalist in some prestigious newspaper or magazine, or joined academia, as most intellectuals, writers and artists of his generation have done, and he was perfectly capable of doing -- had he bent his principles a little, tamed his wildly liberal spirit a bit, or allowed himself some compromises where his independence and artistic integrity were concerned, he would not be working now, after a prolific career which spans 35 years, in conditions which many a fledgling author and director would run a mile to shun. El-Ramli, however, is a very exceptional case. Professional to the bone and a master craftsman, he has retained the overwhelming passion for theatre that young amateurs have. For him the making of drama, whatever the medium, is not simply the exercise of a God-given talent, a way to earn a living, an investment in a career, or a road to fame, power and fortune; it is first and foremost an existential drive, a lifeline without which he cannot survive. He was lucky to realise this early on in life, while still a student at the Theatre Institute. By the time he finished his studies in 1970, he was certain there was nothing in life he wanted to do other than write drama and make theatre. He felt it was the only world where he could live and breathe, as he told me once in the mid- 1980s, and ever since he has pursued his singularly rich comic muse with single-minded dedication, unabated enthusiasm and unflagging faith. In his progress, El-Ramli has weathered may setbacks and disappointments; the dismantling of the Actors Studio Ensemble which he set up in 1980 with actor and director Mohamed Sobhi -- a project in which he invested 13 of the most artistically active and prolific years of his life, producing such memorable popular and critical smash-hits as Point of View and In Plain Arabic -- followed by the financial collapse of his solo Fardous theatre project, which left him in debt, were enough to plunge anyone into a deep, debilitating depression. But throughout, most galling of all, I believe, was the puzzling, persistent resistance of the official literary circle in Egypt, the self-, or government-appointed arbitrators of literary value, to accept him as a serious dramatist of substantial value and far-reaching influence. His early 10-year apprenticeship in the commercial theatre, before he established the Actors Studio, together with his tenacious desire to reach the masses as well as the elite, taking Shakespeare as his model in this respect, and his persistent use of the comic mode (in many inventive transformations and emotional hues) to satirically, often iconoclastically, question the established, inherited frame of values which governs Arab thinking, and treat the most serious and deeply controversial topical issues, seemed to work against him. It was altogether too much to take by an inherently conservative and timid group of literati; and their best and safest defence line was to dismiss El-Ramli as a flippant, sharp-tongued entertainer who could be used sometimes to liven up the turgid atmosphere in the National and other state theatres, like the clown in a Shakespearean tragedy, but should never be given the lead or taken seriously. Choosing to work and create theatre outside the establishment, in a highly politicised and rigidly controlled cultural structure which meted out rewards and punishment according to its own power interests, meant for El-Ramli being left out in the cold, with no literary or financial support. Had he belonged to an earlier generation, and set out on his career in the 1950s or '60s, writing political and social satires in colloquial Arabic, in the same sardonically rebellious comic form he champions, or under a veiled, historical guise, proffering telling parables as No'man Ashour, Saadeddin Wahba, Alfred Farag and their generation did, things would have been different. More likely than not, he would have been dragged to prison, properly chastised, then, if he survived and did not choose to emigrate as Alfred Farag did, would have been rewarded with a distinguished literary position from which he could wield political authority. This was the cultural practice in the oppressive Nasserite era, and it has left us, the next generation, with a terrible, oppressive heritage. El-Ramli and his generation, however, embarked on their creative career in the aftermath of the great collapse of the 1952 national dream -- after the disastrous 1967 defeat. Both his parents, Fathi El-Ramli and Soad Zohair, were fervent socialists, hence his name. His fate, however, was to grow among the ashes of their dream, and their disillusionment taught him to search for the truth in the dust and not among the clouds, to distrust heady dreams and put his trust in reason and natural common sense. Given what he has been through, Lenin should have quitted a long time ago. What kept him going was a quasi-religious humility where theatre was concerned, a kind of a sense of mission. It did not matter that far lesser writers were given much fatter contracts or better spaces and production conditions and more proficient actors than him. For him, the play was the thing; and to stage the play, he was prepared to go any lengths. I watched him directing a play in the open courtyard of the French Cultural Council with amateurs; directing amateurs in the open-air theatre of the Opera House in a savagely ironic, intertextual engagement with Aristophanes' Lysistrata across the gap of centuries, where the scene was Baghdad and the time immediately before the American invasion; then saw him this summer negotiating for a space at the gallery of Al-Hanager for a performance of his highly provocative and deeply irking Spring of Life. Lenin is of that rare kind of the thespian breed who will make theatre wherever they can, in whatever conditions; all failing, he will lead his actors and perform on a street corner. And he will always find an audience, and will always delight, amuse, provoke and change that audience. Take off the Masks, despite its miserable production conditions, was a testimony of such power, the power of a true believer in the value and potency of theatre. Cast in the form of an Arabian Nights tale, with a cute, quizzical narrator acting as Sheherezade, and casting the audience in the role of Shahrayar, the play tells the story of a people who one morning fall a prey to a couple of imposters who delude them into believing that wearing the attractive masks they brought from a neighbouring country would make them into better, happier and more pious people and secure them paradise. The initial doubt and suspicion soon give way to curiosity and the attraction of the novel and unfamiliar. And as more and more people succumb to the religiously-coated commercial talk of the peddlers, the fear of being different, of being a minority and ostracised, of not being 'with it', or being viciously attacked as 'abnormal', immoral and social renegades, drives the last few sane ones among those people to conform. As the country turns into a forest of masks, individual looks and identities are eroded. The masks provide the citizens with a spurious sense of security, since no one can detect who is doing what under which mask, and the end result is a lot of moral atrocities covering all aspects of life, ranging from the political to the sexual. This farcical masquerade ends on a tragic note, however, as the masked ruler of those disguised people is himself spirited away and supplanted by the ruler of the enemy wearing his mask, as the romantic heroine is reduced to an adulteress and is murdered by the spouse forced upon her under a mask, and as her lover, the hero, Aladdin, finally discovers that the masks have crept under the skin of the people wearing them. It is now too late to take off the masks, he realises; and this seems the pessimistic message of the play. But tragic, almost nihilistic, as the end of the play was, the road to it was crafted with such delightful artistry and quirky humour that one did not feel quite as hopeless as one should have done at the end of the show. To have been able to use that space in such a versatile fashion, turning shortcomings into advantages, and to have been able to bring out of those amateurs so much passion and humour was a great credit to El-Ramli as director and theatre- maker. As I left the garden, I felt as if the whole world was made up of masks and I could almost see them bristling among trees all along the Nile, on the way to my car in the park of the Opera house. Why then did I feel my face and body more vibrant, more authentically mine than ever?
