Nehad Selaiha celebrates the first Euro-Mediterran ean Creative Forum for Independent Theatre Groups at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina Great idea to get independent theatre groups from Europe, Egypt and the Arab world, closet them together in a certain space and give them a week to pool their experiences, exchange ideas and ponder present problems and future challenges. Admittedly the idea is not new. For some years now the Jordanian Fawanees Theatre, in collaboration with the Egyptian Al- Warsha, have been arranging an annual event along the same line and have managed to create a valuable forum for intellectual and artistic dialogue, and even political confrontation. Last year Nora Amin picked up the thread and organised, with the help of some foreign cultural agencies -- mainly the Royal Netherlands Cultural Fund, Prohelvetia, the Goethe Institute, the AUC and the British Council -- the Jadayel Festival in downtown Cairo. In the wake of it Mahmoud Abu Doma, the director of the theatre programme at Bibliotheca Alexandrina, hosted a number of productions by Egyptian independent theatre groups for a week. The event was so successful that he thought of developing it into a kind of international encounter. Talk of snowballing. But it also makes sense as intercultural dialogue and cooperation have been articles of faith for the majority of these groups since their inception, back in the 1980s. Many of them would not have seen the light of day without the support of foreign, mainly European, cultural centres. Through these centres they got not only financial support, meagre in most cases, but, more importantly, respect, a sympathetic ear, a space to work, a form of protection, opportunities for training and developing skills, and the enthusiastic encouragement of many guest European artists and critics. When brilliant director Ahmed El-Attar and his Temple group could not get a foothold in CIFET one year, an article by British critic, Alex Sierz, in a British newspaper (a copy of which was published in the Weekly at the time), was a true vindication and proved instrumental in convincing the people in power over here that he was not a figure to be ignored where theatre, especially experimental theatre, was concerned. Two years later, he was invited by the official, state-run, Al-Tali'a to present a show under their name and became a candidate for nomination in the festival's international contest. The same thing happened to Intisar Abdel- Fattah, Mohamed Abul-Seoud, Hani El- Mettenawy, Abeer Ali and Hani Ghanem -- all founders of independent theatre groups and pioneers of the Free Theatre Movement in Egypt. Doma himself could not have launched his Alternative Theatre group in Alexandria, long before he became associated with the Bibliotheca Alexandrina, without the support of the Swedish and Goethe institutes in Alexandria and, of course, the Jesuit Cultural Centre. Though he keeps his group and work as director well away from the Library, and conscientiously separates his work as director and creative artist from his job as theatre programmer, he is profoundly aware of the value of cultural exchange and keenly cognizant of the problems of his fellow free theatre champions and anxious to help them. He was there in 1990, at the launching of the first Free Theatre Festival, performing with his Alternative Theatre group his little jewel of a play, The Castaways, at the Open Air Theatre of the Opera House. In preparation for this forum he attended two independent theatre festivals in Slovenia and Romania last year, sent an open invitation on the Bibliotheca's website and watched nearly 24 videos from prospective participants. The budget was small; this was going to be an all-Library-sponsored thing, paid for from the funds allocated to his theatre programme. Slightly over LE100,000 was all he had. The festival would be small-scale in terms of the number of shows and accommodation would be clean and comfortable but far from sumptuous, he thought. He could not hope to compete with CIFET's 5-star hotel accommodation, but the guests' rooms would be central, within walking distance of everything, with room-service facilities at affordable prices. Instinctively, or maybe from experience, he knew how independent groups, most of them financially struggling, with an acute economic sense and a predilection for frugality and thrift, would feel uncomfortable being housed at the Sheraton or Palestine. They would feel unaccountably guilty and would always be thinking of how the money paid for their accommodation could have been put to better use in their work. It would also put them in a false position and make them feel so poor; a cup of coffee in these posh places costs so much. I remember how Mary Elias, a Palestinian critic and professor of theatre living in Syria, complained to me once about being housed at the Cairo Sheraton. "Theatre people don't have so much money," she said. She felt awed and browbeaten somehow. "It is so humiliating not to be able to invite the young journalist interviewing you to a cup of coffee because it costs the earth here [at the Sheraton]," she moaned. No danger of that when Doma is around. She had also complained about the food. "A modest per deim would solve the problem," she had added. Doma's guests were not forced to put up with hotel food and meal times. He guaranteed they would have decent rooms and a good breakfast. For the rest of the meals and local transportation, every guest was given LE100. Put money in their purses and let them eat and drink what they like was his motto. He would have liked to give more but there it was; the budget was limited. Curiously, everybody was happy to have this freedom. Some members of the Egyptian groups managed to have a good time and even save some of the money for other uses or future projects. No one felt sinful about the Library squandering tax- payers' money on them or putting more money into feeding the guests than in supporting the arts. The logistics perfectly fitted the psychology of the struggle for independence. And what better timing to choose than the end of a year and the dawning of a new one? The first four days were taken up with getting settled in, getting to know each other, the Library and the city. There were also two interesting morning lecture-demonstrations -- one on "Theatre and Personal Experience", by Dr Angela Waldegg, a seasoned Austrian independent theatre fighter who founded her company in 1975 and is still finding it rough and seeking the solidarity of younger generations from different climes, and another, "Dance Theatre: Scenes from Sweden", by Marika Hedemyr, on the development of this art in her country, with plenty of videotaped material. For the young and robust, the keen and assiduous, Doma also provided an intensive two-day workshop on "Improvisation: Spontaneous and Creative Acting" conducted by the same Dr Waldegg. Both the lectures and workshop were well attended, with the Egyptian contingent of independent groups always taking the lead and proving the most avid. It was heartwarming to see them every morning trooping to the Library, some deep in earnest conversation, some laughing, dancing and clowning along the corniche. In the evening everyone, young and old, artist or critic, would be at the Library, in the Great or Middle Hall, watching a show or two. For the first four days it was all dance and I admit I started getting restive. Everyone was asking Doma if this was a modern dance festival. "Wait," he said, "there will be plenty of 'talking' theatre later." And he was up to his word. The festival opened at the Great Hall with Laundry News, by an Egyptian independent group called Stones. It was the first time I had heard the name, and I do get around. Who were they? When did they start? And how come I never heard about them before? The title of their show was tantalizing -- humorous, audacious and tongue-in-cheek. I looked forward to their show but unfortunately missed it. I couldn't make the 2 o'clock fast train and had to take the next at 7pm. By the time I got to Alexandria everything had finished. You cannot imagine my frustration. It was not until the following morning that the Stones mystery was dispelled. I met them all at breakfast, all dancers in Walid Aouni's Opera Dance Theatre Company. Their show had had a three-day run at Al-Gomhouriya Theatre just before the festival and I remembered Aouni calling to invite me. What have they got to do with 'independence'? It is part of Aouni's policy to encourage his dancers to air their choreographic talents and he has already launched Mohamed Shafiq on an international choreographic career and helped others in his company to stage a lovely piece called The Wardrobe. The close professional association of all the members of Stones with the Opera House raised many question marks, calling their independent tag into question and making it seem somewhat dubious. They are all very good dancers and charming people. But you cannot have it both ways -- be a member of the largest and richest theatrical establishment in Egypt and pose at the same time as independent. The four subsequent performances had no such puzzling clouds hanging over them and you could enjoy them, or otherwise, with a clear conscience. The Griffon Dance Company's Tupper from Greece, which featured a fridge, a cooker and a toilet and grappled with the tensions of family life, rendering them through a varied kinetic vocabulary drawn from daily life, automation and the animal world; Ana Trojnar's Solo Dance Company's Flight from Slovenia -- a sequence of four dances, drawing on different dance traditions and cultural heritages and connected with readings from Tagore's Songs of Suffering, with a lonely candle in a metal tray, exquisite fabrics, and a lapful of sand which the reader, Maja Gal Tromar, let trickle out of her hand to the floor presumably to indicate the passage of time; Karim El-Tonsi's Still Here...A Tribute to Saffo Bertoni (his grandmother who brought him up and who died a few months ago) -- an agonised, somewhat confused piece which dwells on the themes of absence and presence, loss and grief, and of which the most moving sequence was the first in which the empty wicker chairs and the heaps of clothes to be got rid of touched a deep chord in everyone's heart; and Roberto Casarotto's Sidra -- an ascetic, quasi-mystical piece, with a bare table, a red apple and a lone dancer (plenty of room for interpretation and haunting symbols -- all four spectacles, whether you liked them or not, and whatever your aesthetic or intellectual reservations, were worth inviting. They were modest, brief shows, yes; but in each of them there was a flicker, something genuine and deeply felt, a kind of striving, of reaching out to capture a fugitive idea, a haunting image, some inscrutable meaning. They were not finished, polished, spectacular works, ready to be displayed in the shop-window of the festival as is the case in Avignon, Edinburgh, Zurich, or any international theatre market. But for people for whom theatre is life, who understand that performance is no longer simply a profession, a profitable career, a form of entertainment, but a way of life which helps deconstruct ideology, power structures and liberate the individual, even at the cost of pitching him or her in a process of ceaseless struggle for relative understanding and a modicum of integrity and dignity, those performances meant something and had relevance. On New Year's eve everyone was looking forward to Antonin Novotny's What is White Dog's Shit Really Meant to be For. It sounded like a wonderful farewell message to 2003 with all the shit it had unearthed. Antonin, however, missed his flight (Czech airlines are notorious for lousy practical jokes); we never got to know what the white dog's shit really meant and it became for everybody a kind or irking mystery -- as if the whole future of humanity and everyone's luck in the new year depended on it. But I, at least, could console myself with the prospect of watching Roberto's piece which I had missed on the first day. Then, New Year's Eve, a concert with Niveen Allouba and Reda El-Wakil, with Sherif Mohieddin conducting. Afterwards, a party at the Greek Club opposite the Castle of Qaitbay. Not everybody went to that party -- some preferred to welcome the new year in a more romantic, less costly vein, with bottles of wine on the sea shore or in some old restaurant or tavern in the popular quarters of Alexandria. The following day, however, on 1 January, 2004, everyone was there at 1pm at the round table in B 1 to really get talking. Mediating the discussion and doing a good job translating was actress and critic Maysa Zaki. It was there that I discovered that Dr Waldegg was about to lose her space in Austria which she has struggled to keep since 1975. The upshot was that regardless of whether you came from the first or third world, if you choose independence the problems are the same. A game of cops and robbers is how Nadir Omran of the Jordanian Fawanees Group designated the relationship between independent groups and the power structures in any society or culture. Future prospects seemed grim, everyone concurred, in view of the deplorable swing to the right worldwide. Such depressing meditations could not, however, quell the spirit of positive camaraderie that was building up in the room. The pursuit of independence may not lead anywhere and could not by definition rest still and smugly expect laurels. But there are countless rewards on the road and showers of priceless gifts that you could not trade for money on any market. That evening the Pygmalion Theatre from Romania seemed to have designed its adaptation of Kafka's The Castle to tell us just this: that in the midst of despair artists and people can still display and affirm the beauty of life, the glory of human creativity and the value of sharing. Out of the absurd, nightmarish situation of waiting, in the shadow of Kafka's imaginary castle, the Pygmalion actors distilled the essence of black humour, mixed religion and philosophy with buffoonery, and proved that the only brand of wisdom that can help us right now has to be wrenched out of the art of clowning and all manners of fabrication. The last two days, 2 and 3 January, brought the festival guests into contact with Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed. Geo Britto, the "Joker" or emissary of that wonderful popular think-tank in Brazil, did another intensive two-day workshop for the benefit of anyone interested in using theatre for empowering the underdogs and remedying social and political ills. Then there was Editta Braun from Austria, with her Zwei Sonnen -- an anguished, heart- wrenching, lyrical portrayal of the complex relationship of mothers and daughters, rendered with finesse, humour and a bit of visual gimmickry into the bargain, and roping in the issues of time and aging through projections of old family album photographs. This is a recipe that never fails. When Braun brought it to CIFET in 2001, it ran away with the best director award. Nemer Salamun (an expatriate Syrian living in Spain) and his Teatro del Especreador's The Supreme Lord of the Rubbish: The Alexandria Container proved worthy of its name; it managed to metaphorically stink and bore and offend everybody. Salamun's trade is humour, particularly political humour and he has, in his improvisational itineraries through the Arab world, forgotten to update himself on the latest jokes. To tell a sophisticated Alexandrian and Cairene audience that his quips and jibes are so daring they could get them all arrested is testimony to little beyond vapid ignorance. He is not up on the latest joke: the form of democracy in the Arab world which says let them yap all they like but make sure they do nothing. All Salamun's yapping and his rubbish bin were stale and pallid. But The Maska Productions' Faces from the Sand from Slovenia was worth staying over till the end. Taking its inspiration from J L Borges's The Circular Ruins it unfolded -- through dance, mime and verbal monologues -- like a miasmic dream, made more lurid for the audience by the fact that at one point one of the two actresses appeared with a completely uncovered bosom. This proved that the festival shows had not been censored beforehand. What a bonus. The girl, wrapped round the waist, with a bare bosom, looking like a mermaid trying to break free of her semi-aquatic status to join our world, was a memorable image that we carried away as we left Alexandria.
