WAS he wrong to follow his mind and ignore his heart? The answer is no because, by following his mind, he has been successful in having his say as a writer; but the answer is also yes, because he is now a lonely old man, in need of tender loving care. Agayeb (Strange Things), recently written by Atef el- Nemr, is being performed every night at el-Talee'a Theatre. It shows how people in Egypt used to think and live the hardships they faced. The play, directed by Sameh Basiouni, an Egyptian, focuses especially on the lives of men of letters in the recent past. "In the past, there were men of letters and cultured people who devoted their lives to their country, fighting and struggling with the pen, their only weapon, ready to sacrifice everything. Such people are few and far between these days,” says Basiouni. The inner conflict between passion and mind is apparent when the Ostaz (the main character in the play impressively played by Mohamed Ibrahim) sacrifices his love for Hayat, in order to succeed as a writer. This conflict develops by means of flashbacks. Throughout the play, the mind, played by Islam Saeed, and the passion, played by Samar Allam, both giving excellent performances, keep on urging the Ostaz, who is an old man now, to remember his past life and what hurts him most. In his play Agayeb, Basiouni seems to be very like Robert Wilson (born on October 4, 1941), an American avant-garde stage director and playwright who has been called ‘America's or even the world's foremost vanguard theatre artist'. Although the hall, in which the play is being performed in el-Talee'a Theatre, is very small, Basiouni has cleverly made use of every inch of space, with the help of skilful lighting and decor by Wael Abullah. The play is by no means Basiouni's first. He has directed many successful plays for theatre, as well as acting in some films and TV series. The decor consists of metal – even the chairs for the audience are metal! Suspended above the stage, there is a huge banner on which some indecipherable words are written. "I asked Wael to make this banner, while we've used only metal for the decor, to show that life is hard. The incomplete words on the banner show that there are still many things that we don't know," explains Basiouni, born in 1981. "The audience have been interpreting what happens differently from what we expected. In fact, their interpretation is better than ours," the youthful director adds with a laugh. Basiouni has also succeeded in directing his actors very well, giving them the key to their characters and the space to show off their talent. "I like to work with academic people. They let you get on with it, without being worried about how they perform on stage," says the director, who fuses sound, image, text and movement to create extraordinarily evocative stage sets. Eman Mosameh plays the character of Hayat, the lost love of the Ostaz. She does so very professionally. Ahmed el-Shorbagy and Hossam Hamdi are the lovely smile in the show, playing light comic roles, while Mohamed Abdel-Wahab and Maher Mahmoud, the two silly inspectors, also handle their roles very well. Agayeb, a somehow experimental play which deals with events that have happened in the Ostaz's past, is proving very popular with the audiences. "The theatre crisis in Egypt will only go away if the directors don't find a way to bring the audiences back," says Basiouni, the youngest deputy director at e -Talee'a Theatre. "Directors must produce good plays of interest to the audiences," he told The Egyptian Gazette in an interview. The play Agayeb, directed by Sameh Basiouni, is being performed every night at 8 at el-Talee'a Theatre, Attaba, downtown Cairo.
