In its seventh year, the Sawy Culture Wheel’s Theater Festival attracted professional and amateur talents alike, ranging from newly formed amateur groups, to theater companies with some experience in the field. Fifty-seven plays applied for entry, 31 were accepted and eventually zoomed down to 27 performances presented this week.
Three examples from the festival offerings summarize the current concerns of young theater makers.
The Escalator
“The Escalator is writer/director Amgad Imam’s first text-based performance following a number of musical operettas. In it, he stages the traditional conflict between good and evil. This conflict is translated in the physical characters Good and Evil in addition to a third character, the Conscience. Each of the characters in the play is accompanied by three actors representing Good, Evil and Conscience, dressed exactly the same as the characters they escort. All four versions of each character have verbal debates on what is the right or wrong course of action.
The world is black or white according to the creators of “Escalator. There is the good brother who works in an office, and the bad brother who performs with a belly-dancer. The dancer is trying to fool a wealthy mayor to get hold of his money, while he is using her to help him win a seat in parliament, a seat he is practically purchasing from a high official.
In spite of the simplistic drama, the repetitions, and all the clichéd characters derived from soap operas, there are some amusing moments in this performance. This basic dog-eats-dog drama is staged in simple sets with poor production quality. Its main redeeming quality is the humor some of the actors bring out through their puns and one-liners.
The Marionette Revolution
Another peculiar performance staged this year is Marionette Company’s “The Marionette Revolution. The storyline of this piece, written by Hazem Moustafa, adapted and directed by Mounir Youssef, centers on nine marionettes revolting against their puppeteer, demanding their independence.
The bulk of the play is spent in their negotiations of what is a revolution and who should lead it. Their various attempts in staging their coup are interrupted by the dancer who demands them to play music so she can dance.
This disjointed play presents stock characters: the clown, the policeman, the fisherman, the Nubian, the meek husband and the overpowering wife, and the dancer and her accompanying musician.
Eventually, the marionettes have their revolution and the meek husband manipulates them into accepting him as their leader. He sets up a make-shift trial for the puppeteer and, faking a few accusations, sentences him to spend the rest of his life in the body of a marionette. When the other characters refuse this injustice, he unexplainably turns against them, calling the guards to arrest them. The play ends with a large tableau of the slightly built meek husband on top of all the other 15 characters, on a stage drenched in red.
The Blind Seer
This unresolved drama couldn’t be more different visually from Hayat Group’s “The Blind Seer. Based on Mahmoud Abou Douma’s “They Came to Us Drowned and directed by Ahmad Abdel Fatah, “The Blind Seer is the most visually interesting performance of the three. With a simple set, it succeeds in creating a mystical atmosphere on a remote island, with characters wrapped in rags, and a prophetic seer.
The peace of an idyllic island is disturbed by the discovery of a drowned man. The man, who miraculously comes back to life, promises them riches, fulfilling their dreams using a magic box attached to his body. Naively believing him and ignoring the voice of reason, the island residents follow his directions to perform a series of unreasonable acts, such as starving themselves for days and giving up all their clothes in exchange of better ones. Promising one of the women a child, he attacks her with other drowned men.
The people of the island realize that his promises are all pipe dreams, and, inexplicably, he leaves with his men, without a fight.
The festival
This sampling of Sakia’s Theater Festival illustrates an obvious concern by young theater-makers with the classical conflict between good and evil, and in all three aforementioned performances, this tension is not resolved in any satisfying way.
Visually, the production values differ from one play to the next, yet in general, the visuals depended more on the creativity of the costume design and simple backdrops with no original scenographic effects.
Artistically, most of the amateur groups’ work seems to be influenced by television dramas rather than any theatrical traditions; from the stereotypical characters, to the voice and style of acting; from the overdramatic sound effects to the pop soundtracks.
Artistic quality of the plays aside, it is quite encouraging to learn that there are 57 amateur working theater groups in Cairo. This raises the hope that some fresh blood might make its way into the veins of the ailing theater scene.
The Sawy Culture Wheel’s Theater Festival concludes tonight, 8 pm, with an English-language adaptation of Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream staged at the Word Hall. Tel: (02) 2736 8881
