Nehad Selaiha is shown how tolerance can become a positive curse at Rawabet It takes a lot of creative thinking, artistic talent, imagination and dedicated hard work to come up with a little theatrical gem like Alouly Hena (They Said it was here), which performed at Rawabet earlier this month. Few can imagine the amount of careful planning and patient, systematic training that went into producing this 55-minute performance. Behind it are 4 intensive workshops conducted over 4 years by the Cairo Acting School (CAS), founded by Nora Amin and Hany El-Mettenawy -- 2 of the most gifted pioneers of the independent theatre movement in Egypt -- with the purpose of expanding and honing the skills of professional actors. Sponsored by the Dutch Cultural Centre and Al-Hanager Arts Centre, and in collaboration with Dutch artists Guido Kleene, Jochem Stavenuiter and Karina Holla, the workshops concentrated on theatrical research in mime and physical theatre, exploring the broad spectrum of contemporary mime and training in classical mime and silent improvisation as well. At the end of the fourth workshop, CAS and its Dutch collaborators felt confident enough to show the public the result of their work. And what a glorious result it proved to be. With 8 wonderful actors -- Amr Abed, Hamdy El-Tounsy, Ibrahim Salah, Karim Kasem, Maryam Saleh, Mayy Salem and Mustafa El-Munoufy, together with Hany El-Metennawy -- directed by Guido Kleene and Jochem Stavenuiter, and a collectively improvised witty and intriguing performance script, CAS treated us to a hilariously funny, profoundly reflective, visually fresh and powerfully poetic mime performance that one will not easily forget. When the lights come up on the empty performance space which sports nothing in the way of décor except a white sheet at the back and a few chairs, the 8 actors, dressed in white medical coats, line up before us, assuming a confident pose, and look at us in a way that suggests they are about to show us something. The performance that follows takes the form of a clinical psychological experiment conducted right before us, in which the doctors take turns at playing guinea pigs. It consists of some of the group taking off their coats in turn to be subjected by the others, who keep theirs on, to a variety of stressful situations in public or social spaces that involve physical contact with strangers. Tolerance, a key word in any liberal discussion of 'difference' and one that has gained popular currency in the Egyptian media since the recent eruption of sectarian tension and violence, is the focus of this scientific experiment, but is here freshly projected and interpreted in purely physical terms as 'touching'. The experiment seems designed to put physical tolerance of the 'other' to the test and gauge its limits, or, in the words of the programme sheet, to 'investigate the thin line between accepting differences and shooting each other's brains out.' Proxemics, or the study of the relations of human bodies in social, intimate, public or private spaces and their social and psychological significance and implications, provides the operative strategy here. In the short, successive scenes, the comedy is triggered by the attempt of the characters to tolerate the unsolicited, unwelcome touch of persons next to them but failing to do so and forced into angry, frustrated silence by politeness, shyness, uncertainty or fear of creating a scandal. The pain and conflict experienced in such dilemmas is expressed in eloquent body language, through movement, poses and gestures, as well as facial expression, with the help of masks, wigs, some chairs and a few words. In a series of short scenes, individuals are shown crushed together in public transportation and forced to tolerate extremes of physical proximity with strangers, which often give rise to angry suspicions. In one of these, an unveiled girl sits squeezed between two long bearded Salafis and it is only by taking off her wig and wearing it as a beard that she can get rid of her embarrassment and feel at home and accepted in that public space. Another scene hilariously enacts the dilemma of a tailor who is pathetically at a loss how to take the measurements of a particularly suspicious male client for a pair of trousers without touching the upper parts of his legs on the inside. There are also scenes where comedy becomes cruel and positively bleak, as in the one where a young couple watching a funny video is joined by the father of the boy. Squeezing himself onto the sofa next to the girl, and pretending to join in the hearty laughter, the said father illicitly subjects the girl to far from fatherly caresses behind his son's back, disguising his behavior as a spontaneous expression of bonhomie and good cheer. As the father and son continue to laugh, the girl exhibits painful signs of being in a terrible dilemma as to how to behave. Indignantly resenting this aggression, she is nevertheless forced to tolerate it out of regard for her boy friend's feelings and for the rules of social decorum. This kind of tolerance is shown as thoroughly destructive; the scene ends with the boyfriend sitting dejectedly alone, having been, naturally, deserted by his girlfriend. But nowhere does comedy become so black, almost shading off into tragedy, as in the scene where a row of people with grotesque, identical masks, wearing an expression of shock and terror, sit facing us, groping blindly around with their hands for someone to touch, but at the same time violently flinching at being themselves touched. One by one, these individuals are forcibly dragged away into the darkness at the back of the screen where they disappear. The expression on the identical masks, together with the eloquent body language of the actors as they feel their number decreasing and apprehensively await their turn, communicate a mounting feeling of terror, as if they are about to be dragged to death or some horrible torture chamber. The terror reaches a frenzied pitch as Maryam Saleh, weeping and trembling violently, goes into hysterical convulsions that take a long time to control. This was a truly memorable scene which moved the topic of tolerance from the social to an existential, tragic sphere, showing us the worst thing humans are forced to tolerate, namely death, our death and that of others. Do what they may, the pathetic row of blind, masked characters cannot evade it. By the end of the experiment, we become convinced that, barring death, a little bit of intolerance may not be a bad thing after all, is, indeed, necessary to protect one's physical integrity and personal space. When the experiment ends, the doctors themselves become ironically the victims of the kind of 'bad tolerance' they have been demonstrating to us; facing a colleague who has taken it into her head to sing a stupid song in a cracked, hoarse voice and who, furthermore, urges their approval with silent looks, they are forced by social courtesy or, may be hypocrisy, and against all common sense, to tolerate, even applaud and join in the atrocious croaking. The medics' white coats that had seemed like protective shields that gave them power of control over people and situations are finally revealed to be no such things and we are led to conclude that even the most cloistered and presumably securest of public spaces, such as clinics, research centers and laboratories, are not proof against this kind of 'bad tolerance'. The final song, which gives the show its title -- Alouly Hena (They Said It's Here) -- seems thoroughly absurd and ridiculous since it never reveals what 'It' refers to, or where 'here' is located. If you take 'it' to refer to the central topic of bad tolerance, it follows that 'here' is practically everywhere. I left the show thinking that in crowded cities like Cairo, people who are used to being squeezed together in offices, buses, or homes are likely to display much more tolerance of physical proximity with strangers than Europeans would, provided they are of the same sex of course. If they aren't, then you can be sure they will not silently and politely put up with it as the people in Alouly Hena. Was there something not quite Egyptian about the show?
