Headed by Sameh Mahran, the festival opens on 1 September with a ceremony at the Main Hall of the Cairo Opera House, hosted by Egyptian actress Nourhan Shoeib and featuring the play Hayat (Life), directed by Karima Bedeir.
The 33rd edition is organized around the theme “Geo: Theatrical Experimentation,” examining the relationship between experimentation, geography, identity, and cultural, social, and political contexts.
The theme extends beyond the stage into the festival’s workshops, seminars, residencies, and international collaborations.
Several productions explore how personal and collective trauma, memory, and loss continue to shape the present.
You Since Yesterday (Jordan, Abdulsalam Qubailat), adapted from Jordanian writer Tayseer Sboul’s You As of Today, addresses the trauma of the 1967 Six-Day War.
Salma, Mon Amour (Egypt/France, Ahmed El-Attar) explores the disorientation of an Egyptian family after the beginning of the war in Gaza in 2023.
Egypt’s two competition entries, What Do the Survivors Dream? (Egypt, Samah Hamdi) and The Book of the Dead / The Missing Name (Egypt, Ezzat Ismail), also place loss and its aftermath at the centre of their theatrical explorations.
Another strand of the programme examines freedom, social control, and the pressures of contemporary society. Show Off (Tunisia, Taher Issa Ben Larbi) uses fashion, circus, and cabaret to critique the fashion industry, consumerism, fast fashion, and the influence of media and advertising.
A Night’s Game (UK, Alleyne Dance) draws on real-life experiences of incarceration to explore the psychological turmoil surrounding the loss of freedom. The Children of Today (Germany, Charles A. Washington) imagines a future beyond capitalism.
Questions of womanhood and female emancipation emerge in The Garden of the Hesperides (Spain/Morocco, Alicia Soto), a dance-theatre work that creates an imagined inner garden shared by women across cultures, religions, and generations.
Elsewhere, the programme returns to classic stories of love, mortality, and the human condition. Poor Liza (Russia, Marc Rozovsky) revisits Nikolai Karamzin’s tragic tale of a young peasant woman whose love for a wealthy man ends in betrayal and death.
Zhenya + Tanya = Love (Belarus, Vera Polyakova-Makei) revisits Pushkin’s Eugene Onegin through the story of two young women, Zhenya and Tanya, whose lives and relationships unfold against the backdrop of contemporary Belarus.
Icaro (Switzerland, Daniele Finzi Pasca) takes place in a hospital room, where the performer chooses an audience member to become his temporary roommate and recounts the story of his previous companion, Augusto, who has died.
A Night’s Game (Alleyne Dance) marks the return of cooperation between the British Council and CIFET after more than 15 years.
The festival’s Arab competition brings together four productions. The Depths of the Soul (UAE, Abdulrahman El-Mulla) is an introspective exploration of hidden emotional lives and inner conflicts of its characters, while The Revivers (Saudi Arabia, Ahmed El-Ahmari) examines the experience of those who accompany the dead to their final resting place. Alongside You Since Yesterday (Jordan) and Show Off (Tunisia), the productions bring four Arab perspectives to the festival’s competition.
The jury, headed by Egyptian actor Ryad El-Khouly, includes actor Khaled El-Ruwaie (Bahrain), producer Patrizia Acerra (US), and directors Mohamed Mounir El-Araki (Tunisia), Mohamed El-Gharabawy (Egypt), Hassane Kassi Kouyaté (France/Burkina Faso), and Sasho Ognenovski (North Macedonia).
Beyond the competition, the festival will honour theatre figures from Egypt and abroad. Egyptian Theatre Day on 5 September will honour five directors, Hossam El Din Salah, Hisham Gomaa, Hamdy Hussein, Abir Ali, and Mohamed Gabr.
The wider list of Egyptian honourees includes actress Aida Fahmy, actor Hamza El-Eily, directors Tarek El-Dewiry and Hamdy Hussein, set designer Mohamed El-Gharbawy, and writer and academic Essam Abdelaziz.
International honourees include Patricia Lombardi Acerra (US), Scott Graham (UK), and Lemi Ponifasio (Brazil). The Arab honourees are director Lina Abyad (Lebanon), researcher and thinker Youssef Aidabi (Sudan), director Sulayman El-Bassam (Kuwait), and veteran actor Jawad El-Shukrji (Iraq).
The festival will also host discussions, beginning with “From Cairo to World Stages” on 4 September, bringing together Ahmed El-Attar and Omar Ghayatt to discuss taking Egyptian theatre abroad and cross-border collaboration.
On 6 September, “Programming International Theatre Festivals: Curating, Selecting & Distributing Performing Arts” will bring together festival programmers and cultural professionals to discuss artistic selection, touring, and distribution. The first session will feature John McGrath, Hassane Kassi Kouyaté, and Ahmed El-Attar, while the second will bring together Cathy Costain and Isabel Moria.
Training forms another major part of the programme, with seven workshops led by Egyptian and international practitioners. Ahmed Kamal’s “Beginning” focuses on acting fundamentals for young participants, while Sulayman El-Bassam’s “From Text to Actor” examines the transition from writing to performance.
Tammy Ryan and Gillian Rhodes lead workshops on memory and the body and storytelling through movement, respectively, while Greek scholar Savvas Patsalidis explores contemporary theatre through poetics, politics, and the body.
Two workshops that kicked off before the festival’s opening will culminate in performances during the festival. Spanish director Paco Gámez’s “Performance Creations in Open Spaces” focuses on performance outside conventional venues, storytelling, improvisation, and audience interaction, while Italian director Alessio Nardin’s “Commedia dell’arte: The Smart Mask Reveals the Truth,” supported by UNIC, explores masks, improvisation, and physical comedy.
Following last year’s practice, the festival will hold “Giving Back” sessions which honour late theatre practitioners. This year, the sessions will honour Egyptian director Saad Ardash, among other Arab figures.
For the detailed programme, check the link here
Short link: