CAIRO - “Hide all your old poems and write a suitable new poem for Egypt.” This is the opening line of an Egyptian poem entitled “A Vertical Scene from Al Tahrir Square” by the well-known young Egyptian poet Hisham el-Gakh. This line is very appropriate just now. The Egypt of before January 25 is very different from the Egypt of today. But we are still waiting to see what might happen in the near future. Theatre is one of the fields where there could be big changes. "I won't yet write a play about the Egyptian revolution; let's wait and see what happens first. Let's recover from the tsunami first," says Khaled Galal, an Egyptian director and the head of the Art Creativity Centre in the Cairo Opera House. Before the revolution, Galal was preparing to perform his play Qahwa Sada (Black Coffee), which was the fruit of his most recent workshop in the Centre. For the past two years, Qahwa Sada has been the country's best theatrical performance. It deals mainly with the problems in Egypt, such as poverty (there is a scene where a young boy has to fight every day to buy bread); illegal immigration; young women being left on the shelf; and many others, all related to the political crisis before the revolution that started on January 25. "I'm against adding new scenes to a play that's already been performed. These scenes, even if they're great, will make the melody dissonant," he says. Galal is angry with those people who change their opinions from time to time, in order to ‘go with the flow'. "I feel sick when reading an article by a well-known journalist, who defended the regime before the revolution, and now defends it, praising the power of the people," he explains. During his workshop (that has run for about four years ago, with the participation of many talented people), Galal has been dealing with themes related to this country. The fruit of his most recent two workshops has been the play Aymana el-7elwa, as well as Qahwa Sada. "My workshops are always close to what is happening in my country, and the good thing is that we take our time to create a good work," he adds. As for Egyptian actor and director Mohamed Sobhi, he says that the revolution is like a play, in which the Egyptians have just reached the end of the first act. For him, there should be a break between the first act and the second one. "I believe that what will happen in the second act depends on our reactions in the break," Sobhi told the Egyptian Mail. "When the January 25 revolution, started, the protesters' slogan was ‘We won't go, he must go'. It is not acceptable that people in different institutions have been using the same slogan since then to topple their directors. In the revolution, we called for political reform. So let's wait and see." In almost all of his works, Sobhi has dealt openly with Egyptian problems. In Carmen, one of his plays, Sobhi probed the idea of turning the ruler into a god. "We used to make our presidents gods. I said in Carmen it is the people who make their ruler a dictator. Weren't these the people who said to their President, 'We chose you and with our blood and soul we redeem you'? “People should treat their president as an employee working for his country. We should put our country first, above everyone else," he explained. As for making new plays about the revolution, Sobhi said that you cannot appreciate the details of an oil painting, if you stand too close to it. "If we make a play now, it will be just like we are trumpeting for something, without knowing what will come next. We should take our time to think and analyse," Sobhi stressed. Meanwhile, Riyadh el-Khouli, the head of the Technical House for Theatre, says that his production philosophy is to give more scope to young people and to say goodbye to the “old idols".
