Whenever Hassan Hassawi is unable to comprehend certain behaviors in society, he falls unconscious, hence his nickname Hassan Ghaybooba (Hassan Coma). The blackout following his astonishment doesn’t just last an hour, or even a day; rather the character goes into a coma which sometimes lasts a year or two. “Hassawi we Ayyamo (Hassawi and His Days) is a collection of scenes based on playwright Lenin El-Ramli’s weekly columns that first made their appearance in Al-Ahram newspaper in 2003. It is from this collection, which later became a volume of four books, that the 20-scene performance played at El Sawy Culture Wheel last week was derived from.
Hosted by the Egyptian Canadian Friendship Association and the Egyptian Canadian Cultural Association of Ottawa, the play will also be performed in Canada next month as part of the El-Masri 2008 Festival.
At the beginning of the show Hassawi asks the audience if they would like to hear a joke. The crowd does not go easy on him. “No, they shout back, knowing the evening ahead is a fest of satire.
An offstage standby character asks for a joke. Hassawi lays out the rules – the jokes can be about anything but the notorious taboo trio of “religion, sex, and politics.
The series of enactments that follow are a contradiction of these terms.
Scenarios lifted directly from contemporary reality gives the comedy an edge. The play explores the predicaments in which Hassawi finds himself.
Ramli describes Hassawi as an ordinary Egyptian – educated, of a low status. Nevertheless, the character is also depicted with a special sensitivity; the madness of everyday life that the majority of Egyptians accept as the status quo drive Hassawi into a coma.
Hassawi “cannot understand what happens when he wakes up, Ramli told Daily News Egypt, yet the rest of society is happy to carry on. Ramli’s character, whose name alludes to the proverbial “stubborn donkey, is a device used to alert society to its unpalatable elements.
In one farce, Hassawi runs a “marriage agency where a customer climbs level after level based on a series of choices, “rich or poor, “smart or not, “healthy or handicapped, till he is forced to choose an extremely unlikely and unattractive option. Finally, when he finds out that even this derisory choice is not available, Hassawi, who himself has been searching for a bride, offers to undergo a sex-change operation in order to marry his customer.
Mohamed Aleildin, who plays the title role, counts this particular scene as his favorite moment of the play, along with a sequence in which Hassawi discovers his wife in bed with different government officials. Each time, the wife claims to have been forced into bed in order to pay the bills – electricity, water, gas – that the official has come to collect. Each time, Hassawi, the husband, goes to the kitchen to fetch a weapon, but eventually settles instead for a cup of coffee. In conclusion, and following a conversation with a doctor, he wonders if coffee really is detrimental to health.
Aleildin finds that Hassawi is a “real personality fostered by Ramli’s humorous invention to make him always susceptible to fall unconscious.
Instead of changing or solving a particular problem, he noted, Hassawi’s response is always to fall unconscious.
Yet it is not answers that Ramli pursues, but ideas – “to make audiences think about questions, because we escape from them. Hence, the naïve and passive Hassawi perpetually falls into querying on matters that fall under the umbrella of the taboo trio.
“I try to unearth the questions that are not asked, said the playwright, who received the Prince Claus Award for “humor and satire in 2005. The jury “particularly valued his work for its sympathetic attitude towards human weakness, a quality that pulses strongly in his latest production.
Actor Nagham Osman also appreciated being in a play that resonated with the audience, “I never acted in a play where people laughed so much, and clapped at every punch-line.
Osman said she learned the principles of comedy under Ramli’s direction, “Don’t go on stage trying to make people laugh, said Osman, quoting Ramli, “Go on stage believing what you say, that’s when people will laugh.
In its Canadian tour, “Hassawi we Ayyamo will play in Montreal on Nov. 7 and in Ottawa on Nov. 8. For more information visit http://www.el-masrionline.com/fest2008.asp.
