This year, the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theater (CIFET) presents 26 performances in the official competition, in addition to a number of Egyptian performances staged on the fringe.
Besides a number of new plays, many of this year’s performances are reworkings of classical and canonical texts. The Iraqi entry “Sada (Echo) is a new play written by Majeed Hamid Al-Jebory and directed by Hatem Ouda.
Al-Jebory’s two-character performance is a meditation on the impact of the violence that shredded the Iraqi society in the last few years. The measured movements and subtle lighting effects at the beginning of the show do not prepare the audience for the atmosphere of fear and violence that follows.
The woman, played by Samar Qahtaans, does not say much apart from the “Allahu Akbar (God is great) prayer. The prayer is used more to declare that God is greater than the tyrants and oppressors. The man, played by Boshra Ismail, has the responsibility of delivering all the other lines of the play. He recounts how he killed others, and how he felt a thrill in carrying out these killings.
What starts out as a subtle play with dramatic music and lighting effects ends up being a very loud performance. The actor shouts his lines, and screams, while being drenched in red light to suggest the violence and blood baths that Iraq has witnessed in the last few years.
The program notes contains Nelson Mandela’s famous quote “I cannot forget but I can forgive. The play itself does not encourage forgiveness; instead it enacts the hostility and brutality which feeds the violent mindset.
The entry from Ghana was another disappointment. The French text of “Tibi’s Law was written by Jean Verdun and translated to English by Robert Cohen and directed by Dzifa Glikpoe.
The ambitious project of this play is to tackle globalization and its impact on the poorer nations of Africa. The program notes explain Tibi’s Law: “In all human societies, everything ends up forming a pyramid. The more extreme the wealth is at the peak, the more abject the poverty is at the base. It poses a question concerning what course of action should Africa take, “turn the pyramid upside down, or build its own and put her sons at the pinnacle?
The two-character play is set in contemporary Africa, in a cemetery in a small, impoverished West African village. The Master of Ceremonies and ‘African Sayer,’ Tibii, organizes funerals, which are attended by both mourners and foreign tourists, who have been sent by their travel agents to witness “the real Africa.
The performance wished to present Africa’s plight in present times through focusing on death, destitution, and sexual exploitation. But rather than relying on forceful imagery and powerful theatrical impact, all the audience witnessed on stage was a man talking and talking, disappearing behind a makeshift shrine and another man appearing and talking.
For most audience members who did not understand English, this performance offered nothing. For the lucky few who were able to understand it, the concepts were still vague while the performance was not engaging enough for them to stay till the end.
The creators of “Tibi’s Law warned the audience before the performance that “this is a highly intellectual performance, and it is difficult to understand. What a lame excuse this is to disguise bad theater.
Even the African mourning rituals were not presented in an engaging way to add depth or color to the performance. Using three women to cross the stage while chanting and wailing had no relation to the lengthy monologue of Tibi. The soundtrack of chants, on the other hand, lost its appeal after a while, as the four lines repeated over and over again throughout the length of the performance started to wear thin.
The Moroccan Theatreale de Nous Jouons Pour Les Arts chose a canonical text for their Experimental Festival entry: Eugene Ionesco’s “Scene a Quatre. The dramaturg and director Adil Abatrouab adapted the absurd play in the shape of “Li Fharmator to offer a commentary on current society.
The first scene, a monologue in Moroccan dialect, was presented in complete darkness. A ballerina, played by Amal Ben Haddou, appears on stage next. She is harassed by some voices from the auditorium before three characters, played by Mohamed Larbl Ajbbar, Khaled Janabi, and Mohamed Rmichi, perform some acrobatics in the auditorium, and on stage.
There is a clear polarity between two of the men, representing the two main faces of society (liberal/conservation, progressive/traditionalist). The tension between them is depicted via slapstick antics, which sees them slapping each other and muttering unclear words. Most of the play is unintelligible, which, in the minds of some, might qualify for an experimental festival.
If these three plays are any indication of the state of contemporary theater, then this one bad omen. If they are a commentary on the state of the world, then it’s an even worse one.
