By Mursi Saad El-Din Last week Egypt, along with other countries, celebrated World Theatre Day. On this occasion I found myself rummaging through my small collection of the magazine Drama, the English quarterly theatre review. Going through it brought back memories of what I consider to be the golden days of British theatre. That was the period which started immediately after the end of World War II, in 1945. It may seem strange that inspite of the wholesale destruction of London and the ruins and rubbles, it was then that theatre reached its zenith. I was at that time a young government official working as secretary of the newly- established Egyptian Institute in London. The institute was the brain child of Dr Taha Hussein, who was then advisor at the Ministry of Education. After the war's interruption of nearly all theatrical activities, the end of the conflagration brought in a rush of plays, written by the best playwrights from both sides of the Atlantic and performed by the best actors and actresses. One thing which characterised that period was the way American film stars came to London to appear in such plays as A Street Car Named Desire, Cat on A Hot Tin Roof and Death of A Salesman, besides, of course, Shakespeare's performed by such stars as Laurence Olivier and others. Those were, certainly, the heydays of British theatre and it was, for me, a period of learning and nurturing a love for this art. In a nostalgic state of reverie I began to leaf through the Drama back issues, supported by the wonderful book The Theatre Essays of Arthur Miller, edited and with an introduction by Robert A Morten, and a foreword by Arthur Miller himself. The book contains some of Miller's introductions to his plays, a habit he seems to have shared with Bernard Shaw. In one of Drama 's issues, I came across "Message for World Theatre Day 1973". Here I will quote some of Luccino Visconti's words, which I found quite revealing and inspiring: "It seems to me," he writes, "that henceforth in theatre, from a profound process of evolution is born a demand for truth [...] that can uplift it to the value of witness at a level comparable with that of the great ages." During those years the theatre seemed to be in the background, due to technological developments. Indeed it had become marginal to the point of near disappearance, due to the massive attack of the mass media. But, as Visconti says, "then, having questioned itself on the reality and its truth, it finished by finding itself again. It emerged from the eclipse to rediscover its real identity -- which is to be the place where human values and relationships confront each other." The theatre, in my opinion, records and expresses the changes in man's behaviour and the aspects of his daily life while, at the same time, it stimulates man's aspiration to surpass himself. It shows, or should show, life at its deepest, its most dangerous, tragic and mysterious. Visconti writes "To- day, the other mass media with which the theatre used, wrongly, to think it had to compete, have, to a great extent, taken over all that is entertainment, diversion, escape. This might have looked as a loss for theatre. But on the contrary," proceeds Visconti, "it has been enriched. It has drawn its strength from it. Relieved of its lesser tasks, the theatre has begun to tackle great subjects of vital importance again."
