Nehad Selaiha winds up her coverage of the 2009 CIFET On 19 October, the last evening before the final ceremony, the Ukrainian Lviv Theatre Voskresinnia gave this year's CIFET a rousing and, literally, scintillating farewell. Performed in the open air, in the car park of the Opera House facing the building of the Supreme Council for Culture, and accompanied by traditional, Ukrainian folk tunes (bewitchingly similar to oriental music), with two metal constructions blazing with real flames, several devices emitting sheets of sparks, or showers of sparkling confetti at intervals, wheelbarrows carrying lighted candles that soon exploded into floating balls of fire, and a dozen burning torches, recklessly waved by actors mounted on stilts, clad in red and black flowing robes and looking like figures out of a fairy tale, Gloria was the nearest thing to an exhilarating circus number cum a strange and boisterous fire- worshipping pagan ritual. With so much real fire around, and the memory of the Beni Sweif holocaust (which robbed us of many wonderful theatre people) still green in the memory of most of those present, one drew huge comfort from the sight of the two fire engines prominently placed on the edge of the performance area. "Playing with fire" would literally describe the Ukrainian Gloria, and as such, it was a fitting epilogue to a festival that openly embraces 'experimentation' -- an activity that, in a certain sense and certain circumstances, could metaphorically prove as dangerous as 'playing with fire.' That Gloria did not win an award was a great disappointment to many -- particularly to those who thought that it had transformed a familiar street, circus, or fairground performance -- the act of the fire-eater or fire-acrobat -- into an absorbing, enchanting and memory-jogging collective experience, with a plethora of nebulous historical and cultural echoes. However, and though the Ukrainian Gloria was not singular in this respect (a number of other productions were thought eminently deserving of awards), the international jury's decisions this year were generally regarded as fair and have raised comparatively fewer objections and less controversy than in former editions. I have already reported to you, last week, on the Polish Façade, which, to my mind, was the best show in this festival. But since I missed the South Korean Macbeth, which scooped the Best Performance Award, I cannot reasonably quarrel with the judgment of the jurors who gave this fascinating Polish entry the award for Best Scenography. Last week I also extensively enthused about the Mexican House of Bernarda Alba -- a visually austere and intensely passionate performance of Garcia Lorca's famous play, staged on a long table, with the audience ranged on both sides, which I thought deserved the Best Director Award. It, however, got the one for Best Ensemble Performance instead. Better than nothing, you would say; only, in this case, the award had disastrous consequences. Normally, the honour of performing in the closing ceremony goes to the best performance; when this proves unfeasible, as it sometimes does due to the departure of the troupe, which is what happened this year, this honour automatically devolves on any of the other 4 award-winning troupes that happens to be still around and willing to perform. Unfortunately, the choice of which available troupe to approach is usually made haphazardly, without any consideration of the suitability of the performance to the venue -- in this case, the frighteningly spacious stage of the big hall of the Opera house -- and often without the troupe in question having previously seen the said venue. It was perhaps natural and not at all surprising that the young Mexican troupe, when approached to perform in the closing ceremony only a few hours before the event, felt quite elated. Dazed by having this honour suddenly thrust upon them, they were sadly unmindful of what it might entail in terms of concessions regarding the scenography, the crucially important seating of the audience and consequent feel of intimacy -- indeed, of the whole integrity of the performance. Having euphorically said yes, the members of the Mexican Compania de Teatro del Espacio Cultural Metropolitano lived to regret their decision. If you have read my description of the show last week, and if you are familiar with the stage of the big hall of the Opera House, you will be able to imagine what a disaster placing that particular show in that particular space proved. Everything looked wrong and distorted, and it felt as if the performance had suddenly shrunk and retreated into the distance, becoming like a very pale shadow of its former self. Ten minutes into the performance and the audience began to wonder why it was given the best ensemble performance award, or was deemed worthy of any award at all; and ten minutes later, most of them had quietly filed out in the dark, leaving the huge auditorium almost empty. Having watched the show in its full glory at the Creativity Center, I initially determined not to see it again at the Big Hall, prophesying disaster. But, like the proverbial curious cat, I could not resist the temptation of looking in to see what ingenious scenographic solutions director Sandra Munoz might have come up with. I might have known that short of seating the audience on the stage, no solution would work. Watching this Mexican Bernarda Alba in the Big Hall was like watching someone wantonly committing suicide, and mutilating him/her self into the bargain. Such theatrical massacres are downright criminal and should be forbidden by theatrical law; the victims in such cases are not only the audience, but also the perpetrators themselves, not to mention the reputation of the jury. The festival organisers, eminently partners in such crimes, should know better than to put such lethal temptations in the way of young artists. What a great human endeavor was here (gratuitously) overthrown, I kept thinking, as I watched, echoing Ophelia. If the festival organisers had bothered to watch the winning performances, had any idea of which space suited which performance, or took the trouble to ask those who know, they would have automatically chosen for the closing ceremony the Iraqi Echo, a performance designed for a traditional, picture-frame stage and one that has scooped the Best Actress Award. Another award-winning performance that might have possibly worked with less damage to itself and all was the Polish Façade. And if neither was available, as the organisers might protest, it would have been better to invite any suitable, Egyptian performance, even a traditional one, like Playing with the Masters, which performed on the fringe on the last two days of the festival, or to have done without any performance at all. The fact that they did not care a pin about such a vital issue bespeaks an abysmal disregard of, and disrespect for theatre and its makers, and a valuing of the closing ceremony as merely a propaganda stunt. Coming after the vivacious Ukrainian Gloria, the closing ceremony was a painful let down. Still, one could draw comfort from the fact that the delightful Syrian , which won the Best Director award, did not have to suffer the fate of the Mexican Bernarda Alba. Like the Polish , which played at the opening ceremony, it relied on a beautiful, poetic text, in this case by Kefah Al-Khous, and trod a thin line between open theatricality and affective illusionism, casting some of the actors as both players and stagehands. Unlike it, however, it mined a topical, political vein, gently satirising the ineffectuality and ultimate, catastrophic influence of dreamy, idealistic, Arab intellectuals on workers, peasants and other simple, ordinary people, and was more fortunate in having the right space and the right audience. With its free seating arrangement, Al-Ghad hall was eminently suited to director Osama Halal's I-shaped stage-design, which consisted of two, long, horizontal lighted boxes, connected by a raised, narrow pathway in the middle, also boxed in and lighted at the base, and placed the audience on three sides of this construction. The play opens with Sancho Panza, a sturdy but poor peasant, sitting on the back platform, in the company of 3 players/ stage-assistants, of whom one melodiously chants a Syrian, folkloric, sad song, mourning the death of his master, the knight/hero , whose corpse lies, draped in a white mantle and spotlighted on the front platform. Eventually, as that errant knight, ridiculously dressed in a mailed shirt, metal helmet and high-platform boots, comes to life and repeatedly beguiles and seduces his faithful Sancho with his verbal bravado, playing on his fanciful dreams of wealth and power, and, at one point, mounts a swing that descends from the flies as if it were a horse, the rough and down-to-earth Sancho gradually sees through his game and ends up killing him and assuming his heroic role. The Syrian , where Sancho, rather than the eponymous hero, is the focus, and which metaphorically puts on trial a long line of historical Arab leaders/heroes, and questions the very idea of 'heroism', was at once captivatingly colourful, profoundly stirring, and, for an Arab spectator, painfully hilarious and ironically invigorating. In a similar manner, Sudan's Horizon Threads sought political comment through visual, theatrical metaphor. Here, however, the execution fell far short of the intention. That most Sudanese people feel the brunt of dictatorship, are profoundly dismayed by the bloody conflict in Darfour and long for a breath of fresh air and a ray of light in the midst of the suffocating darkness that envelops their country, was the message of Horizon Threads. To elude censorship, however, author Dafa'allah Hamid and director Hatim Mohamed Ali opted for expressionism, presenting us with a talking corpse in shrouds, who acts as narrator/commentator, and a lot of tombstones, bearing on one side engravings of grotesque, African masques, and carried around by a Sisyphus-like chorus of dancers/chanters, longing for light and air. Neither the recorded music, expressive but monotonously repetitive, nor the mimetically simplistic choreography of the performers' movement did justice to the author's/director's intent. The Sudanese Threads was a prime example of the ravages of political censorship. Was it also censorship, or stark despair of the efficacy of any political comment that led director Hakim Harb, whom I knew as a talented student at the theatre institute in Cairo, and whom I once thought of as idealistically suited, in terms of looks and sensibility, to play Jesus Christ, to opt for a Sufi way out of the present Arab dilemma, and dramatise Hermann Hesse's allegorical, lyrical and powerful novel, Siddhartha, about the spiritual journey of a boy of that name, from the Indian subcontinent, during the time of Buddha? First published in 1922, after a Hesse's visit to India in the 1910s, and dedicated to his 'dear friend' Romain Rolland, the novel derived its name from two words in the Sanskrit language: 'siddha', meaning 'achieved', and 'artha', meaning wealth. Together, the two words denote someone 'who has found the meaning of existence', or 'who has attained his goal.' It seems that since simple political goals have proved impossible to achieve by Hakim Harb's generation, he turned to spiritual ones, ironically, and quite tragically, seeking salvation through an escapist flirting with Indian myth. No wonder Harb's Nirvana, in which he acted the questing hero, and where he, and all the actors, barring the ones in the rowdy city scenes, rowed their way through wave- simulating, fluttering white sheets, handled by extras, armed with stick-like oars, fitted with lighted bulbs at one end, struck many, particularly the Arab spectators, as facilely romantic and somewhat artificial and irrelevant. To me, it seemed like an insidious call to detach oneself from the cares of the present and withdraw into a reclusive cell to worship some god -- a call not very dissimilar to the one propagated by some Islamist sects. Greece's Odyssey, by the ODC Ensemble, scripted by D. N. Maronitis, directed by Papakonstantinou, and performed at Al-Ghad hall by a Madonna-like singer/narrator, accompanied by a live band, was the nearest equivalent to a jarringly modern and electronically obstreperous simulation of the more melodiously reflective performances of the traditional narrators/ rebab -playing singers of the ancient folk epics, or Siras, in Egypt. Though the narrator/singer in this case was quite powerful and physically engrossing, and seemed to give her all and pour out her soul into the performance, she committed the unforgivable crime of offending the audience by sending off those who dared sneak off half way through her show (a thoroughly legitimate practice in this festival), with loud jeers and offensive gestures. Another disappointing performance was Romania's Dream, an adaptation of Shakespeare's A Mid Summer Night's Dream, thinned out and directed by Marius Gilea. Hyped as a performance that combines acting with puppet and shadow theatre, it turned out to be a dismally depressing rendering of the portions of the Bard's play that concerned the quartet of lovers, enacted on a bare stage, enmeshed in a web of white threads simulating the forest, and minus the delightful fairies, the farcical, crude mechanicals, and the priceless Bottom. Italy's version of Bertolt Brecht's The Ascent and Ruin of the City of Mahagonny, another jarringly boisterous performance that strove, with the aid of several video projections, blinding spotlights on the audience in the middle rows, and a choreographic design that kept the many young and lively performers maddeningly trudging up and down the stairs leading from the performance area to the back seats at the Creativity Center theatre, forcing the audience to constantly twist their necks until they literally got a cramp, was another disappointment. Though it strove to combine Brecht's formula of epic acting with the tradition of the Commedia dell' arte, and though it drew a huge audience, forcing the actors to give a third, previously unscheduled performance, it came across as a affectedly elaborate and ideologically tame. No festival leaves you without regrets. And in this one, I sadly missed the British Traffic Lights' A Prophesy in the Future Tenses, written and directed by Abbas Al-Jana. Based on the Arabian Nights, as the festival bulletin says, it shows Sheherezade for once murdered by the dictator Shahrayar at the end, when her prophecy of doom and gloom comes true. I also sadly missed the other Jordanian contribution, With No Title. The literature accompanying the performance describes it as an offshoot of the collaboration of Jordanian actress and director Majd Qasas, novelist Mefleh Al-Adwan, Dr. Faysal Darraj, and poet Abdullah Radwan. The focus of this collaborative project was Jerusalem, what happened to it over history and what one can do to save it. Describing the show and what it is supposed to communicate, Majd writes: "She [Jerusalem] is tied up, disabled and disfigured, a woman hardly able to move the wheelchair given to her by the cartel of conspirators and abdicators. She talks to her resurrected martyr son about the departure of her other living sons who left her suffering loneliness and disability. The son responds by telling her their stories: some were deported; others chose forgetfulness, and some sold themselves to the devil." Majd Qasas goes on to say that she built her play on the bitter prediction, made by Teddy Kollek, the ex-mayor of Jerusalem, some forty years ago, that "Arabs and Moslems at the turn of the 21st Century would not have more than 7% land to negotiate for." Al-Adwan's 'highly expressive' text, written in response to Qasas's idea, was 'later fragmented' by her into many 'components' and 'distributed among actors to suit the way ...[she] wanted to direct the play.' I am hoping to see With No Title when I go to Jordan next spring. But where and how can I see Sri Lanka's A Wonderful Day, by the Audio Visual Creation and Experimental Forum, written and directed by Chamika Hathalahawatha, or the horde of other Asian, Arab and African performances that I failed to catch. I suppose that in festivals, as in life, which I guess is another kind of festival, one should not aspire to see everything, but should be gratefully content to have caught some of the visions on offer.
