CAIRO – They are very natural and full of enthusiasm. As they walk onto the stage, around 70 young performers catch the attention of the audience with their spontaneity and the sparkle in their eyes. They are students at the Artistic Creativity Centre, located in the Cairo Opera House, a gentle stroll away from el-Tahrir Square. After putting on a very successful concert a few months ago, they are now starring in ‘Helw el-Kalam' (The Sweetness of Words), a poetic recital with music, singing and comic scenes. The performance starts with this huge number of performers walking onto the stage, uttering different phrases from famous poems. Two of the actors suddenly raise their voice and the rest stop speaking. "Shut up all of you, we'll choose who will start," says one of the two actors, Mohamed Osama, who, like Ali Rabei, plays, in a comic way, the role of the ignorant student who knows nothing about poetry and is jealous that the others are so smart. They make the audience feel at home by talking to them and asking them to choose a poet that they want the actors to recite from. The performers, most of whom have just graduated or are still studying at university, have been trained to recite poetry and understand its deeper meanings by Professor Nagat Ali, who has been working with them for months. The director of the Artistic Creativity Centre, Khaled Galal, put the final touches to a performance that the audiences love. "In the Artistic Creativity Centre, students have to study acting, singing and elqaa [the art of reciting poetry perfectly]. The result is this recital, which we have been working on for months," he says. During the 90-minute performance, the actors recite many poems by Farouq Goweida, Ahmed Fouad Negm, Nageeb Sorour, Gamal Bekheet, Sayyed Hegab, Amal Donkol, Salah Gahein, the Syrian Nizar Kabani and other famous poets. It's like someone reading you more than 20 books in just an hour-and-a-half, but you don't get tired or bored, not only because of the variety of the poems, but also because the recitals are accompanied by music, singing and acting. "I have tried to make the performance look like a play or drama with music, singing and acting. People normally find poetic recitals boring. Here, I'm trying to create a new style which involves getting closer to the audiences so they don't get bored," the director told the Egyptian Mail. "After they'd finished their training with the Professor Nagat, I listened to them and began to edit them for length and redundancy. Then I started to make the final product," explained Galal. All the poems in the show are patriotic, dedicated to the love of Egypt. The performers chose the poems with Professor Nagat. "We have chosen poems that are related to what is happening now in Egypt. In addition to the old, famous poets, we have also chosen poems written recently, like the one by Gamal Bekheet (Mish Ba'ay mini gheer Shwayet Dam [Nothing remains of me except a few Drops of Blood]) and Abdel-Rahman el-Abnoudi's Ayadi Masrya (Egyptian Hands)," she explained. "We searched for the latest and the oldest on the Net and in books and tried them all out. It was really tiring training more than 70 students in how to pronounce the words and feel and understand them," added Nagat, who really had to be tough with her students. "Most of them are acting for the first time, so it hasn't been easy training them. It's taken time and effort," said the professional trainer, whose efforts appear to have been very successful, if the enthusiasm and sincerity of the performers is anything to go by. "They – like us – all suffered under the ex-regime and they are motivated by their experiences. Most of them participated in the revolution," she added. Very few things in life are free these days, but fortunately some people are still putting on high-quality artistic works for free, ‘holding the fire in this material world'. If you would like to enjoy a great poetic night, then you ought to attend ‘The Sweetness of Words', being performed every night at 8:00 in the Artistic Creativity Centre in the Cairo Opera House until October 23. Entrance is free!
