Now that the Experimental Festival has had its closing ceremony, it’s easy to think it is over and done with until next year. But as someone who has witnessed the theatrical landscape in Egypt evolving for the past three decades, and even prior, I find it quite special to see how what was considered alternative/experimental theatre in the 1990s – things like total theatre, dance theatre, non-dramatic or post-dramatic theatre, theatre of images, and so on – has gone on to become mainstream, drawing upon the diverse vocabulary of the many theatre styles available today to create an eclectic mix. While it may use elements borrowed from theatre in Europe and America (including Latin America), in the present show that mix has at its core a metaphor that is not only deeply Egyptian but immediately understandable to anyone experiencing our modern Cairene urban life. In fact, it was an epiphany for me to realise that the story – both past and present – of the Attaba-Ezbekiya area poignantly reflects (or, rather, is poignantly reflected by) Opera el-Attaba.
For a start, the location of the state’s Tali’a (or Avant-Garde), and to some extent also the National, Theatre embodies all the defining tenets of postmodernity: iconoclasm, eclecticism, juxtaposition of margins and centre, past and present, and deconstruction of fixed ideas. The Tali’a and the National stand on land that used to be part of the flourishing Ezbekiya Gardens which, in the early 20th century, were home to a great number of theatres including Teatro Ezbekiya; the old Opera House (built in 1869); the Egyptian incarnation of the Comédie-Française; and a hippodrome. With the creep of Nasserism and military rule after 1952, which increasingly deemed the arts superfluous compared to “respectable” professions, the Ezbekiya Gardens lost their unique character. The final nail in the coffin was the fire that levelled the Old Opera House in 1971 and the decision of the powers-that-be to construct a multi-storey concrete monstrosity of a garage in its place.
The gardens, now home to a wealth of second-hand book stalls which were the only source of knowledge, before the Internet, continued to dwindle in size as the government took bite after bite out of them to build roads and overpasses, expand Attaba Square, etc. Government forces destroyed the book stalls with bulldozers, demolished historical buildings after turning out the tenants, and paved over the newly-recovered land to build more streets and overpasses.
What has remained of the carnage are these two structures: the former Teatro Ezbekiya, converted into what is now the National Theatre, although virtually nothing remains of the original building; and the two interconnected buildings of the Tali’a Theatre and the Puppet Theatre, which share a charming if small garden. The Tali’a, an offshoot of Saad Ardash’s brainchild, the now-defunct Pocket Theatre, was founded in its current location in 1973. Since then, it (including its small black box theatre, the Salah Abdul-Saboor Hall) has sometimes lived up to its name, sometimes not. But the thing to remember when heading out for an evening at the Tali’a is that the theatre is now completely – and I mean completely – surrounded by street-vendors hawking their wares of every description: replica handbags, women’s underwear, men’s athletic wear, shoes both formal and informal, assorted luggage, children’s clothing, not to mention hot food, juice, and snacks; the list is endless. In addition, one of the exits of the Attaba Central Bus Depot and Multi-Storey Car Park (not to be confused with the Opera Multi-Storey Car Park, some 400 metres away) lets out directly onto the vendor-clogged street outside the gate leading into the theatre. To make matters even worse, each vendor has availed him-and it’s almost invariably a him-self of a microphone and speakers into which to bellow in an attempt to out-shout his neighbours, with the result that the cacophony of calls, cries and chants generates more noise pollution than the vehicles that clog the streets and, ironically, make it impossible to hear about what any of them are selling.
Into this chaos, author-director Hani Afifi drops two classically-trained singers in formal dress, on a raised stage quite literally in the middle of all the street vendors (with adequate amplification, I hasten to add), performing Neapolitan song. This is the start of Opera el-Attaba. The interaction between the singers and the street-vendors is fascinating, although it would be even more effective if the singers were facing outwards towards the vendors, not inwards towards the audience gathered in the theatre’s front garden. In this juxtaposition, entire segments of observable reality are gathered up wholesale and stuffed into the box of metaphor: the singers represent Culture with a capital C, also Art, Music, and Beauty, and in their juxtaposition with the street vendors the latter (and indeed the street itself!) come to represent, perhaps too simplistically, Ignorance, Poverty, Overcrowding, and Materialism. Significantly, philistinism is not on the list: Neapolitan song, especially “O Sole Mio”, is accessible to a wide audience, and the vendors we saw seemed amused and entertained – if slightly puzzled – at the spectacle. In a charming aside, four street children who saw the outdoor performance went to the ticket office to ask if they were allowed to buy tickets and come in to watch the play (yes, the class divide is that bad, but that’s another story for another day) and Injy Eskander, the play’s executive director, overheard the exchange and bought them all tickets to attend the performance.
That said, philistinism is implicated in the play, and strongly, but it is not laid at the doorstep of any one person or group of people. Opera el-Attaba’s themes are as clearly delineated as the stage itself: Omar Ghaayat together with the director have created a deceptively simple scenography of extraordinary power, dividing the Tali’a’s proscenium arch stage into three de facto zones: a wood-beamed skeletal structure of a room on the right, complete with a floor lamp, the room of The Intellectual; and an identical skeletal structure on the left, a room stripped to its bare bones, holding a bed, commode and telephone, where The Housewife lives. These rooms are canted at an angle towards the centre of the Tali’a’s small stage, leaving a small but useful area at the centre which does double duty as a public place, serving at various points in the play as a Metro carriage, a street vendor’s stall, a set of stairs representing the seats of a microbus, and other Cairo scenes. The play’s action is by no means limited to the stage: the actors periodically swarm through the auditorium, selling wares like their counterparts outside, singing mahraganat, recording for TikTok, and receiving awards, to name only a few activities. Periodically, the two classical singers wander around between the two skeletal rooms and sing bel canto numbers.
Don’t be alarmed: there is a method to the madness, and a good one too. The central focus always returns to one or another of the two skeletal rooms. In one, The Intellectual (Mohamed Abdel-Fattah) makes profound observations about the postmodern culture we live in, including “cultural fragmentation” (al-tasharzum al-thaqafi). He is clearly cognizant of what is going on, but just as clearly cut off from any meaningful participation in the society going on all around him. Unlike The Intellectual, The Housewife (Doaa Hamza) in the other structure is connected to the outside world by means of a telephone, which she uses to order deliveries of ever-increasing quantities of food, medicine, and household goods. The cartons in which these goods arrive pile up, mounting steadily to crowd her small room, so that by the end of the performance she is almost buried in them. The blanket that she uses at one point to cocoon herself points to the most poignant theme in the performance: insecurity. The Housewife’s insecurity is purely material: she fears not finding – or no longer being able to afford – basic necessities, and so takes to hoarding food and supplies until she has stockpiled herself into a corner. Meanwhile, the other actors play multiple roles, enacting street scenes where poor people are either robbed or harassed, overcrowding in the streets reaches its limit, actors and singers become loud and shallow (especially entertaining is Eyad Rami playing multiple roles including a mahraganat singer), and compassion and sympathy are conspicuous by their absence. Virtually anyone immersed in the reality of urban life in Egypt today can relate to the chaotic and fragmented scenes that nevertheless represent unified themes: rampant materialism, short attention span, hypersexualization, desperation leading to grasping avarice, and a lack of (1) time, (2) security and (3) resources to enable people in contemporary Egypt to enjoy or practise the pleasures of art and Culture with a capital C – the latter being possibly elitist, but that is clearly a theme of the performance.
At the end of Opera el-Attaba, the Housewife winds up buried behind her hoarded stockpile of boxes; meanwhile, the actors start placing bags of products such as those sold in Attaba in front of the Intellectual, so that he is completely buried under material goods. Stark symbolism? Perhaps. But the juxtaposition of the younger people’s chaotic chasing after instant gratification while the only two older people in the play become buried in material goods paints a bleak but poignant picture. Opera el-Attaba seems insistent on breaking down all barriers. It definitely breaks down barriers between theatrical genres, bringing absurdism, multimedia, post-drama, and much more to the stage; it breaks down the barriers between the Tali’a Theatre and the marketplace outside it; it breaks down the barriers between the stage and the audience, using the proscenium, the stage stairs, and the auditorium, as well as screens on the sides; and between musical performance and theatrical performance, albeit in a modest way. The young actors, too, fluidly transition from character to character, playing multiple roles (Hagar Awad is particularly impressive, playing each character with unbridled enthusiasm). The only ones who remain behind barriers are the two older people in the drama: the Intellectual and the Housewife. I am tempted to read into this a comment on how one can remain so focused on one’s intellectual pursuits and one’s insular home life that one ends up becoming isolated from society at large: their confinement in the boxy rooms which they never exit, as well as their eventual burial in material goods, seems to indicate a difference between them and the younger generation who, although they have lost direction, are still freer to move about in space than their older counterparts. It is largely thanks to these younger counterparts that Opera el-Attaba, while steeped in metaphor, is lively and entertaining.
In practical terms, the set works beautifully on a metaphorical level (symbolising “insecurity and insularity” for the older generation and “left without security or shelter” for the younger generation) and also manages to be pleasing to the eye, especially thanks to the subtle, unobtrusive lighting which works on many levels and includes strings of lights that not only guide the eye across the set but add to the party atmosphere. Mohamed el-Gharabawi is a veteran lighting designer in the state theatre, though, so I am not surprised. May Kamal’s costumes are understated and versatile, lending themselves to the many quick changes required by the show, and they work well without stealing the show or appearing incongruous – a rarity.
* A version of this article appears in print in the 10 October, 2024 edition of Al-Ahram Weekly
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