The festival is the brainchild of Nabil Bahgat, Professor of Theatre at Helwan University, founder of the WAMDA troupe for Aragouz and Shadow Puppets shows, and the former Egyptian Cultural Attache to Kuwait. Bahgat was also the one who created the Aragouz annual festival a few years ago.
Video by Amira Noshokaty.
The festival honoured Professor Said Abu Raya, one of the pioneers of Shadow Puppets theatre in Egypt, as well as Professor Nagwa Anous, who explained in her speech that Shadow Puppets date back to Ancient Egypt and there are drawings that illustrate this art during the Akhenaten Era. The opening included an exhibition of Shadow puppets created by Artist Mohamed Raieq.
Babet Al Temsah (The story of the Crocodile)
Tens of children and their parents occupied their seats, their eyes glued to the white screen, eager to watch one of the most enchanting interactive shows that the world has ever known.
As the members of Wamda Troupe moved the shadow puppets from the back of the screen, music played, and the magic slowly began. Made from leather and cardboard, the puppets recounted one of the oldest tales of this genre, Babet Al Temsah (The story of the crocodile) by Ibn Daniel, an icon of shadow puppets. Since 2004, the WAMDA troupe has been holding weekly Shadow Puppets and Aragouz shows. Aragouz is a traditional Egyptian Puppet listed on the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in Need of Urgent Safeguarding since 2018.
"You can consider Shadow puppets theatre, as our cultural heritage paradigm," Bahgat told Ahram Online.
Roots of shadow theatre
“This is the first shadow puppet festival, for shadow puppets were always a side activity and not a main part of the Aragoz annual festival,” Bahgat added.
He explained that once Aragazou received funding from UNESCO, and in collaboration with the Ministry of Culture, the Wamda troupe, which had managed to train many calibers, found it very important to put Shadow Puppets in the limelight.
“Shadow puppet is the Arabic dramatic theatre that was founded since the 2nd century Hijri. It is a theatre, all right, but we did not name it theatre, for it beholds all of the Islamic arts in it in addition to the existence of a script for the theatre, and the oldest theatre texts we have received is that of Ibn Danial in the 7th hijra century,” he said. “But we have some evidence of the existence of a shadow puppeteer called Ghaffar el Raqes in the 5th hijra century.”
Shadow puppet as a means of art therapy
The origins of the Shadow Puppet theatre date back to Gawa in East Asia; some say it was on Gawa Island in Indonesia, others say it was in India, and others say it was in China.
“There was a Chinese Emperor who lost his wife and was depressed, so his minister created a sellout imitating his wife and started to talk to him; hence it was used as the first evidence of art therapy,” Bahgat explained. He added that the art was transmitted to us through the Silk Road, wars, and trade, and it settled in Egypt.
Ibn Daniel, a shadow puppet artist from Baghdad, settled in Egypt and became very popular; however, Bahgat notes, there were other Egyptian Shadow Puppeteers long before Ibn Daniel arrived in Egypt.
“There is a theory that says that there was originally the art of human shadows, called ‘shadow’, and then they created shadow puppets and named them as such to differentiate between the two art forms,” he added.
Shadow Puppets in 20th and 21st century Egypt
“The Fatimids were quite fascinated by this art. Even Sufi pillars such as Ibn Arabi and Ibn El Fared mentioned them in their writings; there were even references to the technique of this art in Ibn El Haitham's books,” Bahgat emphasized.
“So it was a very popular art that was widely spread and extremely effective. I believe it is the first trial to produce cinema because it is the usage of making an image by using light. It’s the theatre before theatre was invented,” he added.
But soon technology ruled it out, and television and cinema took over the imagination, and time washed away the art of shadow puppets until the revival attempts that kicked off in the mid-1980s, when scholar Alfred Michael gathered the three masters of the trade for a performance at the Goethe-Institut.
Director Hassan El-Geretly, founder of the El-Warsha Theatre troupe, collaborated with them later, and Hassan Khanoufa, Ahmed El Komy, and Hassan El Farran became part of El-Warsha’s theatrical repertoire until their deaths.
In 2004, Professor Nabil Bahgat established his Wamda troupe, which revived the art of Aragouz and Shadow Puppets in Egypt and worked with Khannoufa, who was the last of the shadow puppeteers of Egypt.
Since 2004, and under the auspices of the Egyptian Ministry of Culture, Wamda holds a free shadow puppet and Aragouz performance every Friday at Beit El-Sehemy.
“We have what it takes to represent us, and the Shadow Puppet Theatre is the correct answer to our cultural renaissance and to build on it. Theatre did not start in the 19th and 20th centuries; it started with the Shadow and Puppet theatre, our Cultural Paradigm.”
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