CAIRO - She was always there, silent, like the moon, like the sky, above, watching everything, but without commenting or complaining. She was just praying. Doaa' el-Karawan (The Nightingale's Prayer) was performed by the National Troupe for Heritage Performances in el-Ghad Theatre in Cairo, uniquely mingling the past with the present. The one-act play, based on a novel by the late Egyptian writer and critic Taha Hussein (1889-1973), was a sweet mixture of Egyptian folkloric heritage and Western culture, with the director, Karima Beder, employing an experimental style in her play. "I believe that modern dance is something very real and the theatre is open for all points of view," said Beder, who used modern dance as part of the dialogue between the artists. At the top of a ladder on stage, there stood a silent girl and she remained there silently throughout the entire play. "I prefer to let the audiences interpret my vision. It was great to hear that some people thought that this girl was the moon or the sky or was simply there to witness the events," she added. The Nightingale's Prayer tells the story of a small Bedouin family: sisters Hanady and Amna, and their parents. Known as a womaniser, the father is the victim of an honour killing, forcing the rest of the family to move to another town. They settle in a city where Hanady is hired as a maid by a wealthy engineer. The tragedy begins when she loses her virginity to him and is consequently murdered by her uncle, a common practice that stems from age-old traditions that condemn sexual relations out of wedlock. One of the strongest scenes of the play involved the girl's mother and her brother (the uncle), highlighting how women used to suffer – and still suffer – in this male-dominated society. In this scene, the uncle reduces the meaning of honour to the issue of virginity, without even considering the fact that he was the one who forced the mother and her two daughters to move to another town, without giving them any support. Here, we have the double standards of a society which tells people to be virtuous without offering them a secure life. Although the novel Doaa' el-Karawan was adapted in a massively successful film in 1959, starring Egyptian acting icon Faten Hamama and Egyptian actor Ahmed Mazhar, Beder and the dramaturge Rasha Abdel- Moneim eluded the trap of having their play compared to the movie, as the whole story was done as a narrative. The story was narrated by a girl (representing the nightingale) and two singers (a male and a female); the male sang in an Upper Egyptian style, while the female sang soprano. "This mixture between folkloric singing and soprano stresses my vision. The male voice shows the domination and the following of strict traditions while the soprano, which is very similar to screaming, shows the female screaming through this domination," the director explained. The human being, in his inner soul, feels as if he is the hunter and the prey too. This was the main idea that Abdel-Moneim worked on in the play. "I don't like to make theatrical adaptations of classical novels; I prefer to rewrite a story to show my reactions and interactions with it," she stressed. The director spoke the language of the body in her play. The leading roles were played by skilful dancers and actors, who introduced a classical novel in the experimental style. It's difficult to adapt a whole novel into a onehour play, but the dramaturge and the director took that risk and were surprisingly successful, interpreting many of Hussein's phrases in the novel by skilful body sways and reactions. "I bore it in mind that I was dealing with a novel that is part of Egypt's heritage and that the director wanted it done in an experimental style. So I rewrote it in a narrative style to pave the way for the director to make her own imaginative choreography," added Abdel- Moneim. Hany Hassan, the protagonist, impressively played el-Bashmohandis, who seduces Hanady. His acting and dancing were both very professional. The décor by Mahmoud Hanafi consisted of some small pyramids and blue ladders. Apparently designed to give the impression of a desert, the décor highlighted the harsh conditions that women suffer from, as well as the stubbornness of some men.
