Nehad Selaiha ponders recent and past attack on theatre and draws hope from present activities For months now, the so called 'Arab Spring' has been looking more and more like a harsh season of scorching, blinding sandstorms and thick clouds of poisonous vapours, blowing upon green valleys from the arid wastes of neighbouring, benighted deserts. On Sunday, 25 March, I received an email in French from L'équipe de Dream City in Tunis. In English it reads: " Attention!! Our artists are in danger. What is our Tunisia heading for? Today, 25 March 2012, an event entitled 'The people in defence of theatre' was mobbed by extremists. Contrary to the claims of extremists, the National Association of the Institutes of Dramatic Arts had procured the permission of the ministry of interior to hold this artistic event in the Avenue Habib Bourguiba in Tunis. " More disturbing still was artist Leena Ben Mhenni's testimony. In it she said: " I was standing with the other artists in front of the municipal theatre when the police began to threaten to leave us at the mercy of the extremists. Some extremists succeeded in breaking through the police cordons and assaulted us. While some of us, including myself, were able to flee the area, those who sought refuge inside the theatre were attacked by groups of extremists who wanted to force the doors. The police let the situation degenerate for mysterious reasons. " In Egypt, however, it was not the Salafis, abundant and powerful as they are, but the security forces themselves who, acting on orders, forced their way into the theatre of the Ismailia Cultural Palace on 5 April, smashed the seats and carried out unauthorized modification to the interior with the stated aim of creating a makeshift courtroom for the trial of the perpetrators of the Port Said Stadium massacre!! Caught between two such barbaric forces, what hope can theatre have? Nor is theatre the only threatened art in the 'Arab Spring' at present. Some weeks ago, Asran Mansour, a Salafi lawyer, brought legal action against famous actor Adel Imam for deriding religion and insulting Islam in his movies. Imam was sentenced (in absentia) to 3 months imprisonment. He appealed, and the case is still pending. Meanwhile, other Salafis have banded together to push for axing any and all love scenes in Egyptian movies past and present. First on the chopping-block is Al-Khataya (Sins), a 43- year-old black-and-white film that has been showing on national TV and satellite channels for decades. Indeed, the film is even thought by some to be so utterly irredeemable, on account of its many love scenes between Abdel Halim Hafiz and Nadia Lutfi, that they call to ban it altogether. Such attacks on artists and art products were quite familiar during Mubarak's reign, and more often than not the regime sought to appease fundamentalists by cracking down on intellectuals and banning movies and books deemed un- Islamic. Adel Imam's 3-months jail sentence seems positively benevolent compared to the verdict passed on film director Inas El-Degheidi when tried on a similar charge in 2002 on account of her daring movie, The Memoirs of a Teenage Girl. In her case, the judge ruled that "the accused director be publicly flogged in accordance with the provisions of Shari'a (Islamic Law)" -- an unprecedented sentence in the history of the Egyptian judiciary. Indeed, since the 1990s, a series of Fatwas (religious rulings) repeatedly denounced the art of acting as 'a source of seduction', 'an invitation to promiscuity and corruption', 'exposing the spectator to certain harm', and a 'basic factor in the moral disintegration' of societies. (Do you hear an echo of the Puritans' attacks on theatre in 17th Century England there?). Of such ridiculous Fatwas, my favourite is the one issued in September- October, 2007. In it, the 'Ulamas of Al-Azhar objected to scenes of marriage in Egyptian television serials, arguing that such fictional marriages become automatically lawful so that an actress who is married in real life and impersonates a character being contracted in marriage will have automatically committed polygamy in the eyes of God and society and should be punished accordingly. In the same spirit, a non-official Islamic institution called 'The Fatwa Centre of the Shari'a Cooperative Society of the Advocates of the Quran and the Sunna' called for a ban on the representation of all kinds of personal relations in dramatic works, claiming that such scenes help to disseminate a culture of 'obscenity and depravity' (all examples are quoted from Abdel Khaliq Farouq's Intihak Al-Hoqooq Al-Thaqafiyya fi Misr (Violation of Cultural Rights in Egypt), Yafa Studies and Research Centre, Cairo, 2006, pp. 108, 7071). When people rose up in Tunisia and Egypt in January and February last year, the rallying call was 'freedom'. In both countries, however, freedom is fast becoming a fugitive dream. But the battle is not over yet; the fight continues. In Tunisia, the Observatoire Tunisien de la Culture et de la Citoyennete, an independent watchdog organization established in September, 2011 to safeguard the rights of citizens and the freedom of cultural and artistic practice against any transgressions by religious or political forces, has issued a strong-worded statement condemning this recent mobbing of artists by religious extremists in the capital. Rather than an isolated incident, the attack is seen as part of a methodical, systematic plan to erode civil rights and the cultural achievements of the Tunisian people. The statement demands that the government guarantee individual and public freedoms, that it should legally pursue and punish anyone who violates them, regardless of political calculations and considerations, and that the cultural rights of citizens should be constitutionally secured. It calls upon all true Tunisians, all artistic organizations and all civil and cultural societies to stand together against religious terrorism and protect the Tunisian open cultural model and way of life. Nations blighted with religious extremism, it concludes, are invariably doomed to civil strife, chaos and destruction. On 7 April, the Arab Society of Theatre Critics, based in Cairo, also issued a statement condemning both the attack on Tunisian artists and the more recent vandalizing of the theatre in Ismailia, viewing both as proof that the revolution in both countries has done nothing to stem the rising tide of religious bigotry and fanaticism. The statement vehemently protests against the exclusion of intellectuals and artists from all national decision- making processes, particularly the constitution-drafting committee, and warns against the marginalization of culture and the arts. Statements, however, are never enough, and anger, protests and condemnations have to be translated into public action by artists among the people. And this is what happened in Alexandria. On 27 March, two days after the religious extremists' attack on Tunisian artists, an event called 'Lazim Masrah' (Theater is a MUST) , was launched by a team of young cultural and artistic activists at several sites in the city (the French Cultural Centre, Saint Gabriel School, Aloola Coffee shop in Mahatet Masr, the central railway station, and El-Raml tram station), lasting until 4 April. In a circular email, the organizers describe it as 'An Arab Festivity that stresses the role of theater as an everyday life necessity in any civilization and an active being that interacts with all political and social events and not a marginal art that only blossoms in times of peace and welfare.' 'This vision,' they go on to say, 'was stimulated by keen observation of the Arab theatrical scene during 2011- 2012, the two years that witnessed the Arab revolutions, and also witnessed many theatrical ventures that challenged the idea of "safe art" and interacted with popular movements. The movement of Arab theatre artists went side by side with political and social movements in the Arab world, crossing barriers of communication and at some points predicting the development in the socio-political scene.' Besides a screening of Carlos Saura's film, Salome, and 2 concerts (by the Shaware'na, meaning 'our streets', Band and The Choir Project, conducted by Salam Yousry), the event included 2 performances of the Hala troupe's The Last Days of Om Dina, a farcical, political satire, based on actors' improvisations and directed by Mohamed Abdel-Fattah, the founder of this street theatre troupe; 2 performances of Laila Soliman's No Time for Art (an interactive theatre performance honouring the martyrs of the Revolution and documenting police brutality and military violence against civilians), first seen in Rawabet, Cairo, in June 2011; a new play called Bi-basata Keda (As Simple as That), directed by Reem Hatem; and 3 mid-day street performances, featuring a play called A Red Tomato and a number of productions of the "Egyptian-Theater-of- the-Oppressed- Project" workshop, directed by Nora Amin. There were also 2 roundtables at the end: one on "Theater as a Necessity", moderated by artist Hala Omran, and the other, a foundational meeting to create a free and independent Arab theatre cooperative network. On 29 March, while 'Theatre is a MUST' was in full swing in Alexandria, 2 more theatrical events opened simultaneously in Cairo: The Egyptian Society of Theatre Amateurs' 10th Arab theatre festival and the Arab/international D-CAF (Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival). Both are still running and I will hopefully tell you about them next week, and may be about a 5-day world drama festival which opens tomorrow, Sunday, the 8th. For the present, suffice it to say that events like these constitute the most effective resistance to all forms of fanaticism and the surest way to defend theatre and keep it alive.
