With the party over, Nehad Selaiha reflects on this year's CIFET and its cross-cultural currents The Rope, Japan In his compelling book Man Looking for Words (Theater Instituut Nederland), in which he records insights gleaned over 40 years working in theatre, Dutch director and visual artist Ritsaert Ten Cate (founder of the Mickery Theatre in a small farmhouse outside Amsterdam in 1965, then the Amsterdam School of Advanced Research in Theatre and Dance Studies, known as DasArts, in 1993, and honoured this year by CIFET for his "contribution to the development of avant-garde theatre in Europe and The Netherlands") dedicates a whole chapter to theatre festivals. Beginning with the question "Festivals: who needs 'em'?" which he confesses is increasingly discussed these days in Europe by producers, funders, ministries of culture, the press (always in a deprecating vein) and even festival-makers, he embarks on a sincere investigation of the validity of the festival format, its various manifestations, its usefulness, and to whom?, tracing the evolution and eventual corruption of the concept in the light of his own experience of scores of festivals attended over 33 years, beginning in 1958. Initially, theatre festivals coincided with an era of social activity and change and responded to real needs, he notes; they "provided sanctuary for informal debate, for exchange of ideas and reactions which interested me more than the determination that one performance had won and another had lost". Over the years, however, the raison d'etre for theatre festivals has perceptibly changed; the concept has been gradually commercialised, providing showcases for what is considered the best available on the international scene at any time, thus becoming "a major steering mechanism in the art market," or has been taken over by governments and manipulated for the promotion of a certain image and/or other political ends. When asked by Ten Cate if she thought festivals were needed or necessary these days, an American student answered: "Festivals are good for travel agents who can offer package deals with the festival being part of the attraction. The tourist gets more value for his money this way." And she wasn't being flippant. But even when festivals are non-profit and designated as "feasts for the people" or as occasions for cultural interaction and exchange, in "a move toward multiculturalism", they will only be tolerated "so long as they can be experienced as parties: safe and secure," and seem to Ten Cate "to be inspired more by pragmatic reasoning, political opportunism and the availability of funding than by any involvement of the heart... when only a movement from the heart will make multicultural integration work." Ten Cate concludes in an impassioned tone that "it is this involvement of the heart, the mind and the soul which will make great festivals. When the terms of success or failure are gauged on this, rather than on intellectual or outsider's terms: this is where our future, and our new ways will be found. To come to terms with where things might go, and how we can achieve a movement rather than a monument, we must honestly ask, look, feel, discuss...and above all listen to what goes on around us." For the majority of Egyptian critics, a substantial proportion of the CIFET audience, and, indeed, many of the guest and local artists participating in it, Ten Cate's recipe for "great festivals" will seem vague, loose and embarrassingly, if not ridiculously romantic; what makes good, let alone great festivals, they would counter argue, as indeed they have done insistently over the past 14 years of CIFET's life, are ample funds to host world-famous companies and productions and equip our theatres to meet their technical needs, as well as better translation facilities, management and meticulous organisation. What the critics and the festival's audience have chronically craved is what Ten Cate sarcastically describes as "the soothing and satisfying security of having witnessed... acknowledged great art." While this craving for the internationally acclaimed is understandable -- very few Egyptians, including critics, can afford to make the pilgrimage to the shrines of high art to see for themselves what they read about in books, specialised periodicals or the newspapers -- it, as well as the contest (with the fetid, poisonous atmosphere and all the internecine feuds and bad blood it generates) have tended to make us lose sight of some coincidental fringe benefits which, though few, elusive and materially unquantifiable, have slowly accumulated over the years, behind the scenes -- in cafes, hotel lobbies, restaurants and theatre foyers -- giving the festival, in my view, its real value and validation. Ten Cate describes some festivals as "blatantly superficial non-events... jammed with cheap stuffing to puff out what had no rationalisation to begin with" and CIFET has often been attacked by its most virulent critics in very much the same abusive terms. It hosts far too many shows, and far too many of them are dull and cliché-ridden, pompously pretentious or vapidly bizarre, they keep saying. There is some truth in this; but such generalisations tend to deliberately turn a blind eye to the few vigorous, questioning, wholesomely disruptive or vibrant, truly exhilarating and technically innovative shows the festival hosts every year. This year, Sulayman Al-Bassam's The Hamlet Summit, Kris Niklison's Neverland and Ola Mafaalni's The Merchant of Venice were examples of this category of exceptional productions. The first cleverly rewrites the text, foregrounding the cynical political level sardonically embedded in Shakespeare's play, and transposes the kingdom of Denmark in space and time to the turbulent and beleaguered Middle East of the present, to investigate the relationship between the political tyranny, decadence and corruption of Arab military dictatorships, which make their countries an easy prey to Western greed and exploitation, the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land, spearheaded by religious fanaticism, and the resurgence of Islamic fundamentalism and Jihad as a reaction against internal and external oppression, mounting frustration, a sense of disillusionment with the old order of things and an excruciating feeling of political helplessness and futility. In his director's note, Al-Bassam (born to an English mother and a Kuwaiti father) elucidates the vision that prompted this passionately angry, poignantly moving and exquisitely written and staged piece. "We are living in an age of political charades, where the emphasis on spin, public opinion focus groups and the so- called transparency of government hides a callous agenda of economic and political barbarism. In the recent scramble to unite world opinion behind America's war on terrorism," he goes on to explain, "the slogan mentality that pitches good against evil, crusade against Jihad, presents us with a world split into two halves, each baying for the other's blood." The second, Neverland, is an irresistible compound of magic, human grace, and sheer animal energy conjured up by Niklison and four other wizardly performers. It weds together the arts of dance, story-telling, stand-up comedy and the circus, as well as video projections and cartoon films, and blends humour with gentle pathos, technical sophistication with endearing naivete, and skillful staging effects with a pervasive illusion of complete spontaneity. Like Kris's earlier one-woman show, which won her the best actress award at a previous CIFET, this one is highly personal, stringing out her memories, anxieties, dreams and fears, which she directly confides to the audience, and interspersed with hilarious anecdotes and colourful visual images composed of movement and light of breath-taking beauty. The focus in her earlier show was on sexual identity and how the way we are made to dress by society from birth arbitrarily defines it and imposes gender-specific roles, spaces and physical and psychological patterns of behaviour. This time she chose a lighter theme: the dream of happiness and the fulfillment of impossible dreams. As she chattily shares with us the troubles, frustrations and adventures she had prepared this show with her actors in the jungle in Brazil, she impresses upon us that it is only in the wondrous neverland of art that the impossible can happen and happiness can be found. Thanks to her clever and warm interaction with the audience by the end of the show we all feel that she and her actors are old friends. So when a cake with lighted candles is brought in and we are told it is her birthday (it was also her birthday the night before and when I saw the show in Holland in June), we all join in the party. The performers embrace the spectators and all join in a dance. It is to the credit of the show and a proof of its intrinsic power that despite the many technical disasters, including several brief power failures, which it suffered on the night the jury was there, taking away some of the magic (and making me, who had seen it in its full glory, literally sick), it still worked wonderfully, thrilling and delighting the audience and infecting them with its irrepressible energy. It seems to me that Kris has found the secret formula for making theatre into a communal celebration -- a formula much talked about and long sought after by Arab dramatists, directors and theatre theoreticians, but rarely achieved. In contrast, Mafaalani's Merchant derives its power from an almost puritanical shunning of any manifestation of vitality, warmth or colour and an extreme economy in movement. Sidestepping the racial issue (the word Jew is never mentioned in the dialogue and Shylock is simply an alien of sorts), Mafaalani presents Western capitalist society as a cold, coarse and money- obsessed world, dimly lit and enveloped in clouds of cigarette smoke, like a dark cavern where the sun never shines and no flower can survive. The inhabitants of this shadowy, desolate world seem to have been depleted of all physical energy by the pursuit of money; except for Portia, who moves lethargically about in high heels and a revealing evening dress, baring her black-stockinged legs in a mechanical gesture of seduction as she enacts the caskets episode and a few other scenes, and Jessica and Lorenzo when they woodenly parody the romantic balcony scene against what looks like a gigantic metal cage or the iron skeleton of a skyscraper (which, with a card-table in front of it, make up the whole of the set), all the characters Mafaalani kept from the original text seemed chained to the gambling table for most of the performance, speaking their lines and acting their scenes around it as they dealt out the cards or slouched in their seats, and only leaving it briefly (and reluctantly, it seemed) when the dramatic logic of the action made it absolutely necessary that they do. I cannot say I enjoyed this show -- enjoyment is a word one can hardly use in connection with it; but it was stark, powerful and convincing and I found the vague ironical visual suggestion of black and white fifties American gangster movies perversely amusing. The Hamlet Summit, Neverland and The Merchant of Venice represented different countries in the contest and display diverse artistic temperaments and approaches to theatre. But their creators do have one thing in common: all are expatriates, bestriding two different cultures and communicating in two languages at least. Al- Bassam is an Anglo-Kuwaiti, speaks English and Arabic, works and lives in Britain while maintaining close contacts with Kuwait; Niklison is an Argentine, speaks Spanish, Dutch and English, lives and works in Holland and frequently tours; and Mafaalani is a Syrian, brought up in Germany, living and working now in Holland and speaks German, Dutch and English, but little Arabic. Eugenio Barba -- an Italian who studied in Poland with Grotowski, lived in Norway for a while then founded the famous Odin Teatret in Denmark and married an Englishwoman -- always tells his students that for an artist to find his/her own true path and discover their unique creativity, they have to step out of their own cultures, at least for a time, and cross over to another or others. Though it sounds paradoxical, this gives them a better understanding of their mother culture by forcing them to view it from a different perspective. For many of our young artists (whose lively presence, curiosity and enthusiasm make the festival worthwhile for me) who value the festival as a way to achieve a movement, rather than a monument, and who ask, look, feel, discuss and listen to what goes on around them, as Ten Cate advises, this lesson of voluntary alienation as a route to a more profound understanding of themselves, their culture and their art, to a deeper engagement with the world and a genuine sense of belonging in it, was one of the valuable side benefits of this year's CIFET. Another was an informal meeting between representatives of six independent theatre troupes and a group of sympathetic theatre experts and professionals from Europe, masterminded by Professor Mike Kolk, from Amsterdam university and one of the guest speakers at the central seminar. A close friend of Ten Cate, she shares his belief that "only a movement from the heart" can bring artists together and make cultural interaction -- the declared goal of the festival -- work. And as if to consolidate the alienation lesson indirectly transmitted by the three shows I mentioned, along with her came Karen Johnson (member of the jury) -- an English director working in various parts of Europe, married to a Dutch man and living in Holland; Ginka Tscholakowa-Henle (the head of the jury) -- a Bulgarian playwright, director, translator, and documentary film-maker and widow of the late German playwright Heiner Muller, living in Germany where she runs the Heiner Muller foundation, and doing work in other parts of Europe as well; there was also the artistic director of the Dutch Dogtroep theatre which specialises in site-specific productions. It was a warm, friendly, constructive meeting in which the young artists unburdened their hearts to their sympathetic listeners and spoke freely of their needs and handicaps. Out of this a project was born, a course in arts management -- what the young artists said they mostly needed -- to start this October at the Embassy of The Netherlands and charging no fees. With such encouraging side benefits forthcoming and that modicum of real theatre which yields knowledge beyond what is seen on the boards, not to mention the new friends and contacts anyone who cares to take the trouble makes before, after and in between performances, one can try to ignore the negative aspects of CIFET, however glaring -- the contest and all its problems, the furious or heart-rending complaints of artists about the allocation of unsuitable venues, the dirt and layers of solidified dust they have to put up with, the lack of technical equipment, and the ineptness and maddening indifference of theatre technicians and stagehands. Whatever its faults or what its critics say, CIFET remains worthwhile, certainly for young artists and theatre lovers.
