The cast of the play on stage. Photo Courtesy of Amira Noshokaty.
Last Thursday marked a unique performance at the premises of Al Warsha theatre troupe, Egypt's first independent troupe and the masters of storytelling.
The performance titled Dayen Dayer, meaning "all around the place," with reference to the belly of the greedy Mamluk King named Dayer (Round), was the closing ceremony of one of Al Warsha's theatrical acting projects.
Based on the Ubu Trilogy (1896) by Alfred Jarry, which introduced the absurdity genre in theatre, Dayer Maidour was first performed in the 1980s. The script was written by Khaled and Naguib Goweily and directed by AlWarsha's founding director Hassan ElGeretly. It was adapted into a Mamluk-era setting, drawing inspiration from the folk figure Al-Zeinni Barakat, and featured performances by actors Hanan Youssef and Ahmed Kamal, who played King Dayer.
"In principle, we never re-perform our plays because I am already looking forward to our next new one; however, we thought we can start using our archive plays in our acting programme, and in a sense, it would be a revival of the old play but with a fresh take, so the actors trained on the script with partial movement," ElGeretly explained to Ahram Online.
The play opens with the greedy man who conspires to be king, and when he succeeds, he becomes even greedier in the most absurd of ways. His smart wife, who is equally greedy, conspires against him and so on.
The witty script and minimal movement of acting give the audience space to imagine and engage with the story. Although created in the 1980s, the adaptation is a real gem that remains fresh, with its humour and theme of abuse of power still relevant in today’s global context.
The new actors successfully brought the essence of the original play to life while adding their own interpretation. Their presence and subtle acting highlighted the Egyptian elements of the characters and made the audience engagement particularly strong.
Dayern Dayer starred Karim Mostafa, Maram Badran, Hani Sami, Ghada Omar, Mohamed Zeini, Said Abul Ezz, Ali Abdel Latif, Marwan Ali, and Haitham Ibrahim.
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