Nehad Selaiha reports on the first two days of the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre and takes a look behind the scenes Already the global financial crisis has hit the current edition of the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre (CIFET), causing at least four foreign troupes to withdraw at the last minute on account of the failure of their sponsors to pay for their air passage to Cairo. At least this is the story circulating among the festival guests. When my Bulgarian/German friend, Ginka Tscholakowa-Henle, a longstanding member of the festival's international selection committee, went along with many others to Al-Salaam theatre at 7pm, on Saturday 11, the day following the opening, to watch the Russian Surgut theatre's Hyperboreans: The Beginning of the World live, having seen it on video and liked it very much, she found out that it had been canceled and was treated instead to a performance from Nigeria which does not even feature in the festival's catalogue or on its schedule of performances. Neither she, nor anyone else seems to know how it suddenly materialized at such a short notice. I was planning to see the Russians that day myself; the idea of a show based on the old Greek myth of the people who lived behind the northern wind seemed attractive. Now I shall never know what the Surgut troupe and their author/director V. Matiychenko made of them or their story. Equally frustrating were the news that none of 'the 3 Macbeths' -- as Ginka referred to the South Korean Macbeth, the Ukrainian Brama II troupe's Lady Macbeth from the Provinces and the Slovak Poton theatre's Shake Shakespeare Macbeth -- would be coming. But nothing could equal the shock and dismay I and a lot of others felt at the absence of any mention of the two independent Egyptian productions the Egyptian selection committee had seen and highly recommended to play on the fringe, even though they were not chosen to represent Egypt in the international contest. In my last week's festival-curtain-raiser I mentioned both Dalia El-Abd's Tashkeel (Forming) and Cafeteria by the Wogooh (Faces) troupe from Alexandria and praised them highly, and I was not the only one to admire them; most of the other members of the selection committee who saw them with me shared my feelings. We watched the last performance on our schedule at midnight, on Tuesday 28 September, at the Palace of Prince Taz in old Cairo, and sat afterwards in one of its open, drafty courtyards to deliberate and make our decision. Out of the two dozen performances we had seen, only seven proved worth considering, and Forming and Cafeteria, both entered under Al-Hanager's umbrella, were among them. Indeed, Cafeteria ran neck to neck in the final voting with Walid Aouni's Qissat Al-Farashah Al-Qatilah (The Tale of the Deadly Butterfly) -- an experiment in reproducing the techniques of the old silent movies using the members of the Opera's Modern Dance Company as actors and authentic recordings of music and songs from the 1920s. Aouni's Butterfly was fascinating, but it belonged more in the realm of cinema than theatre and the votes were divided between it and Cafeteria. To resolve the dispute, the committee ended up choosing a different show altogether: an adaptation (by Hamdi Zeidan) of Bahaa Tahir's famous novel Khalti Safiya wal Deir (Aunt Safiya and the Monastery), mounted by the Creativity Centre in Alexandria and directed by Mohamed Mursi. It would be the second performance to represent Egypt in the contest, we decided. Ironically, the first one, the unanimously voted Qahwa Saada (Black, Sugarless Coffee), was also a production of the Cultural Development Fund's other Creativity Centre in Cairo (see my review of it in the Weekly, issue 901, 12 June 2008). Unwittingly, the committee had dealt a painful blow to the state theatre organization and its professionals. I later heard that its head was furious when he heard the news at 2am and vented his rage on the head of the committee on the phone. In the final report the committee sent to the festival's chairman, it strongly urged that the other five productions, which made it to the final voting, be given special care and attention while preparing the festival schedule. We thought it advisable to add this note since we knew that this year, with the National, Al-Tali'a and Al-Hanager closed down for renovations, there was bound to be an acute shortage of venues, which would, in turn, result in canceling some of the productions. Of the five we recommended, however, only three -- Aouni's Butterfly, Sameh Mahran's Al-Lughz (The Puzzle) and Ashraf Azab's adaptation and staging of Harold Pinter's Old Times (rechristened Christmas Eve) -- appeared on the festival programme, together with the rest of the state-theatre offerings which we had not even cared to discuss. Cafeteria and Forming, on the other hand, were prominent by their absence. I would not have believed it possible that a festival which chose the alternative theatre as the theme of its central international symposium and organized a special roundtable on the independent theatre movement in Egypt would have the cheek to blatantly ignore the only two performances which represented the movement, and ones that had been especially recommended by its appointed selection committee too. But it did happen, and for two days the young artists in both troupes were dazed and kept wondering what had happened and why they had been so unfairly ignored. Another independent troupe which was deprived of the chance to air its talents on the fringe for no credible reason was Hakii Al-Masateb (Mastabas Story-telling), a group of singers/storytellers founded by Ramadan Khatir who formerly worked with Hassan El-Gretly's Al-Warsha. To perform their delightful Wi Da' El-'Iird (And the Monkey was Lost) -- an adapted version of the funny tale of "Abu Mohamed El-Kaslan (the lazy)" from The Arabian Nights. Vividly narrated with the help of songs and shadow puppets, sponsored by the Jesuit Scientific and Cultural Renaissance Society in Cairo, and first shown at Rawabet some weeks ago, Wi Da' El-'Iird needed no theatre; just a corner in the opera grounds and an ordinary source of light, the troupe pleaded; a few electric bulbs would have done the job. But even such a modest request, they were rudely told, was beyond the means of the festival. Dalia El-Abd too had a taste of that rudeness. When she contacted the festival's office to inquire where she could perform, she was flippantly told to 'go and play at Al-Hanager'. The person who told her this did not bank on her taking him seriously. Though Al-Hanager has been gutted out and is currently unfit for human use, El-Abd and the members of the Wogooh troupe persuaded Huda Wasfi, its artistic director (who, unfortunately, was away in Germany for medical reasons while all this was happening), to take the person at the festival's office at his word and follow his spiteful, facetious advice to the letter. Wasfi and her dedicated staff are currently doing the best they can to make the stage at Hanager usable and put back the seats which had been wrenched out and piled up in a corner of the dusty auditorium. Barring an official veto from high above, Wasfi plans to run the Center's own production of Abu El-Ela El-Salamouni's Taaht El-Tahdeed (Under Threat) -- a psychological drama about the turbulent, ghost-infested, inner world of a frustrated artist who conducts an imaginary trial in his gloomy studio and ends up giving his wife a guilt complex and driving her to suicide -- as well as the two independent productions she is hosting. If all goes well, Forming will perform on the 16 and 17 October, followed by two performances of Cafeteria on 18 and 19. A happy end to a dismal story, you could say; but one that nevertheless has left a bitter taste in the mouth that will linger long after the festival has ended. During the first two days of the symposium I kept trying to shut the story out of my mind to be able to enjoy the interesting and highly informative presentations of some of the speakers, particularly those made by Malgorzata Semil from Poland, Mohamed Hussein Habib from Iraq, Youssef El-Rihani from Morocco, Marilli Mastrantoni from Greece and, most importantly, by Ana Isabel Fernandez Valbuena from Spain (who unfortunately could not show the visual material she had thoughtfully brought along for lack of projection facilities). A great pity and another blemish on the face of the festival. Where the concept of independence and the definition of 'alternative theatre' in particular were concerned, the speakers gave the audience a lot of food for thought. Indeed, the symposium was better-organized and much more serious this year than ever before, simply because it had fewer speakers who, therefore, had more time and could present their ideas in some detail and argue them in relative depth. It was also better attended than in previous years, mainly because the members of the independent troupes in Egypt flocked to it since the kind of theatre they have chosen to embrace was the subject under discussion. Their enthusiasm and diligence were touching, and however engrossed I was by what the guest-speakers said, every time I caught a glimpse of a young, eager face, avidly attentive, I felt a sharp stab of pain and was stung with shame at the way their elders were treating them. Fortunately, I did not receive the festival schedule on the opening night and found nothing to disturb me; I met many old friends and made new acquaintances, then settled happily in my seat to enjoy what could possibly prove the best reward of this festival -- namely Il Racconto di Antigone (The Story of Antigone) by the Italian Mistral Comangnia Danza Moderna which was chosen to grace the opening night. An anti-war treatment of Sophocles's play, interpolating excerpts from the writings of Brecht and Zambrano, and mixing grand classical acting of the finest quality with imaginative and highly poetic choreography and best quality dancing, this Antigone enchanted the audience and was frequently interrupted with rapturous applause. It had beauty, passion and intensity, and its denunciation of war and portrayal of the agony it brings in its wake had a painful immediacy and urgent topical relevance despite its air of timelessness. This is by far the best Antigone the festival has hosted in its 20 editions and is certain to remain long in the memory of those who were fortunate to see it.
