CAIRO - “Ahmed is the only man I want to live with, Ahmed is a rebel and I have rebelled against everyone who has tried to tie me down,” says Amira, a young bride, who rebels against all the old traditions and her very strict mother." Amira is one of the characters in Youssra Elsharkawy's play ‘In Madame Eman's Salon', one of the youth works included in a book entitled Theatrical Texts. Youssra is one of the young writers whose works have been chosen to be published in this book by the UAE's Forum for Arab Playwrights. Sponsored by the United Arab Emirates' Ministry of Mass Communication and Culture, under the supervision of Sheikh Sultan Ben Mohammed Elqassemy, the Ruler of Sharjah who is also an official in the UAE Government, this forum was held in Cairo on October 4th and 5th, while it is now being held in Alexandria Tuesday and Wednesday. Youssra's play was discussed on October 5th in the Academy of Arts, in the presence of Professor Sameh Mahran, the head of the academy, and other critics and professors. During the 90-minute discussion, critic Abeer Salah Eddin, who presented a critique of Youssra's play that appears in the introduction of the book, discussed ‘In Madame Eman's Salon'. The moderator then gave Youssra the chance to reply and after that attendees asked questions. In her play, Youssra, a young writer, theatrical director and also an editor in The Egyptian Gazette, tackles many important social issues, mainly concerned with women in our society, such as the domination of men over women, and old customs and traditions that harm women's rights and curb their freedom. She also discusses poverty and spinsterhood, rape and divorce, which often result from it. Youssra's play revolves around nine women who work in Madame Eman's hairdressing salon, each of whom expresses the story of thousands of Egyptian girls and women. Rahma (25), who works in the salon, used to work in Eman's home before the latter's husband raped her. The two sisters Hoda and Nada, are fat spinsters with a sense of humour, while Kholoud is a loving married woman and Um Reham a 50-year-old mother. Hanan, a married woman, always suspects that her husband is playing around with other women. The play revolves around the bride, one of the salon's clients, and Madama Shosho, a very old, insane woman. The drama depends on the playwright revealing the characters' problems and feelings while the bride is being prepared for her wedding by the workers in the salon. The bride is going to marry an already married man and each woman in the salon views her differently. When Rahma looks at the bride, she thinks of the happiness she has lost after being raped, while Hoda and Nada look at her and think of the ultimate dream they can't attain. Um Reham looks at the bride as her own daughter, who is also going to marry a man who's already married with children, while Hanan looks at her as her husband's second wife. "I always wanted to write a play about different women and the idea for this play came to me when I was actually sitting in the hairdresser's, listening to all the women there gossiping," Youssra (25) said during the discussion. Abeer then started her critique, going over some points and questions that she wanted the young writer to answer. “Each character simply reveals what is going inside her, complaining of her bad circumstances; the play has no dramatic structure that links all the characters together, as it only contains short separate monologues,” said Abeer. “The bride is the only active character in the play, as she is the only one who rebels against society and its traditions.” Abeer also criticised the absence of any men in the play, although all the ideas rotate around men. “When the writer gets the characters to rebel at the end of the play, why do they only shout inside the salon and so briefly?” she asked. Then the moderator asked Youssra to reply. "The play rotates around men or their absence in women's lives, but that doesn't mean there has to be a man in the play; on the contrary, the audience feel a man's presence," said Youssra. “I just want people to stand in front of the mirror to see themselves and their defects; this will make them rebel against themselves before they rebel against society.” While Abeer was criticising Youssra's play, the attendees were preparing their own criticisms. "With all due respect, I think your criticisms are old-fashioned and traditional; after all, we're dealing with new theatre and writing," Rasha Abdel-Monem, a young writer and a participant in the forum, told the critic. "When I read the play I really liked it and I thought it contained dramatic conflict, although you say it doesn't.” A very important attendee, Sameh Mahran, the head of the Academy of Arts, then had his say. "The world is now going in the direction of the ‘new writing', which depends on improvisation and updating the text according to the audience's reaction to the play," he said. "And the criticism must be appropriate for this.”
