I was at the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre and the accompanying conference for a week. It felt like a month. And coming back the day after the Queen's death to a moment of rapid change makes me feel like I've been to the moon and back.
This blog tries to encapsulate the experience of that intensive immersion, with a nod to the British relationship with Egypt. I refer to that because the Elizabethan era began with upheavals in that relationship , and there's a personal footnote about that which I will tell you about. And the end of that era has arrived, by coincidence, with my most recent enounter with the country and the exciting contemporary theatre of the region. So Part 1 reflects on a couple of ideas from the conference and Part 2 emphasises the international and forward-looking aspect of the festival programme. I am returning to teaching at my university again on Monday so I'll think about how this experience could impact my teaching.
Here's a big thank you to Fatema Shokr, without whose help I couldn't have had such a rich experience in Cairo this last 10 days. This is my final post featuring our conversations.
Part 1. Attending Seminars on Technology, Theatre and Translation
As we walked to his office in the Culture and Arts Centre near the Cairo Opera House, after one of the seminar sessions, Dr Gamal Yakout, President of the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre asked me “I wonder how you communicate during the seminars”.
Image - My certificate of giving a presentation at the Intellectual Hub of the Festival, and a commemorative coin for membership of the Festival Jury.
Gamal meant more than “do you understand enough to join in?” He was asking whether, with limited comprehension, I was able to observe the rituals of the seminars - the way questions, presentations and arguments were organised.
Urged on by this subtle provocation I decided to ask a question in the next seminar session.
I asked Dr. Qasim Al-Bayatli, the translator of Eugenio Barba's On Directing and Dramaturgy: Burning the House (2009), about translation.
Image - (Centre) Dr. Qasim Al-Bayatli, with Dr Mustafa Salim (L) and Mr Ahmed AbdelFattah (R), on the translation panel.
Qasim is a formidable and poised figure. He generously replied to my question in English, agreeing that translation is an impossible and therefore creative process. He noted that Arabic and English languages and Arab and European cultures are close enough that a greater proportion of ideas will translate - compared to say a translation into Arabic or English from Japanese or Chinese, which are more distant, culturally. Geographically, the distance depends on where you stand of course. The seminars included academics from all over the Middle East - from Yemen to Morocco.
Qasim Al-Bayatli, interviewed by Nermeen Nader. CIFET Facebook site 7/9/22
In this video Dr Al-Bayatli discusses translating Barba's dramaturgy and he lists the components of performance: visual images, texts, sound. These elements that Barba uses to create ‘scores’. These scores are created by actors and musicians to assemble a dramaturgy. If digital elements - or technology generally - is understood as one additional and equal component then dramaturgy can accommodate live and digital texts in combination.
Much of the conference has discussed the perceived 'threat' to human performance, to liveness, from technology. The debate between Philip Auslander and Peggy Phelan on mediation and liveness is repeatedly cited in seminars in the UK, and the argument goes that 'live' theatre elements are always already mediated and technological, anyway. Thinking of Barba's use of multiple components in a score as part of his theatrical dramaturgy, digital ‘texts’ complement other live elements (e.g. human actors) rather than stealing from them.
An optimistic view of technology was also expressed by Dr Mohammed Seif who asserted in the same seminar that he is not 'scared' of technology. Indeed in the closing ceremony technology was a powerful component: there was some impressive projection mapping, lighting designs on display at the festival's closing ceremony.
A cultural performance also got an upgrade.
And several of us took selfies and slo-mo films on our smartphones:
Saidi (Southern Egyptian) Folk Dancer rotating a traditional skirt at CIFET closing ceremony
Part 2. Inherited thinking v Unsung collaboration in research
In 1976 Kurt Mendelssohn, my grandfather, wrote a popular science book called The Secret of Western Domination, in which he argues that economic domination is clearly underpinned by science and the Enlightenment. Prior to this 'domination' however, a sophisticated science, albeit one that embraced Islamic faith, was established by 1037 (CE) by Ibn Sinna, ابن سینا (Avicenna), and this had already made a significant impact on European scientific technique.
In the last few years, the project to decolonise the curriculum to acknowledge this kind of impact, has been promoted in British universities. And I think there is an opportunity to share the ideas and practices of the artists and academics represented at the conference through my own teaching and curriculum.
Kurt Mendelssohn also wrote The Riddle of the Pyramids in 1974. As a Physics specialist he naturally offered a Physics reason for the collapse of one of the pyramids. I was so fascinated by this book as a boy that I wrote my own story of the discovery of Tutankhamun's treasure. And of course it is a kind of Indiana Jones-style Orientalist fantasy in which Howard Carter is depicted as a Harrison Ford-like adventurer.
Simulacra celebration: my book (age 11), and a delegate having his picture taken with Tutankhamen, CIFET Festival closing ceremony. Dar El Opera, Zamalek, 8/9/22.
My other granddad, James Talbot, was decorated for driving a burning train out of a public railway station in Ismalia in 1940. He was an MBE - 'Member of the British Empire'. I was hugely impressed with him too.
So when I started my own volunteer posting to Egypt in 1986 I imagined I was some kind of adventurer. In the first few weeks in Mansoura we chalked a union jack on the wall of our ground floor balcony. To 19 year old lads this was nothing more than hanging out a patriotic banner. But someone slipped onto the balcony overnight and quietly wiped it out. Our friend Nader, who is now a teacher, gently took us to task, giving us a firm history lesson.
Our neighbour Nader Rabee (Left) in 2021 and (Centre and Right) with us in 1986.
My granded was posted in Cyprus just before the Suez Crisis - the British invasion of independent Egypt. The British Prime Minister at the time, Anthony Eden, resigned when it failed. For many this event marked the end of British imperialism. It's a complex story, better told by John Bichara in CairoScene, writing in response to the death of Queen Elizabeth. He says that the Queen had been opposed to the campaign.
Bichara, John CairoScene. Looking Back on the Life of Queen Elizabeth II & Egyptian Independence. 9/9/22 [posted on Facebook by Fatema Shokr, accessed 9/9/22]
Egypt was a British Protectorate until 1952, not a colony. But the impact of “colonial” cultural relations is striking. Writing in 1988 in Lifting The Veil: British Society in Egypt 1786-1956 Anthony Sattin says there was a mutual opacity between the Egyptians and the British. The other was veiled and the gold discs decorating this veil could dazzle. The Egyptian perspective on history in the comedy film The Headmaster الناظر El Nazer, 2000 starring comedians Alaa Waley El Din, Hassan Hosny and Ahmed Helmy, is less romantic.
Alaa Waley El Din in The Headmaster 2000
I watched it on the flight home and enjoyed the parody of a pre-revolution dictatorial headmaster. Coloniality theory and Orientalism (following Edward Said) would argue that the research work by my grandfather and his angle on the pyramids are one example of an academic approach that becomes "the basis and justification for the exploitation of the world and its resources by European systems of domination" (Future Learn 2020, 1.4).
But The Headmaster is more forgiving. It offers a creative response to coloniality and to subsequent education systems in the country - from the Egyptian perspective. It's funny and more powerful than a blunt policy to decolonise a reading list. This film should certainly be on the reading list for my students of Comedy Writing and Performance in the new era of King Charles III - because the performances are excellent and the comedy is very persuasive.
A final thought - a photo in The Riddle of the Pyramids shows my grandmother on her hands and knees crawling through the middle of a pyramid.
She typed up and possibly edited a large amount of the text of my grandfather's book. This book involved practical investigation on archaeological sites in Giza and along the Nile. It involved science and technology but also a network of local people, like the hotel staff, taxis drivers, and shopkeepers, as well as project hosts and expert collaborators such as I have met this week at CIFET. You couldn't possibly write The Riddle of The Pyramids without that kind of co-operation, without hosting and guidance. Possibly you would benefit from help from language teachers, as I have had.
These relationships are unsung research collaborations and the way that they shape knowledge should also be acknowledged explicity in our global creative research and practice.
References
Barba, Eugenio (2009) On Directing and Dramaturgy: Burning the House. London: Routledge.
Bichara, John. CairoScene. Looking Back on the Life of Queen Elizabeth II & Egyptian Independence. 9/9/22
Mendelssohn K (1974) The Riddle of The Pyramids. London: Thames and Hudson.
Mendelssohn, K (1976) The Secret of Western Domination: How Science became the key to global power, and what this signifies for the rest of the world. London: Praeger Publishers.
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