Gunmen kidnap Syrian diplomat's father    Court sets verdict date in jailed activist Hassan Mostafa's case    Survey results highlight negative outlook    Gaza border continue closed after the abduction of 7 policemen    FJP member faces criminal charge of insulting Egypt's judiciary    Prosecution investigates 13 arrested following Friday clashes    Health Ministry: Al-Azhar food poisoning caused by Salmonella    Sectarian clashes in Alexandria leave one dead    Ferguson criticises Manchester City for Mancini sacking    Tamarod clarifies Shafiq endorsement    Tennis: Serena Williams reaches Italian Open final    Hatem Saleh: Exports Climb 5%...Imports Down 19% In Q1 of 2013    British Girl, 5, Drowns In Pool Of Egypt Holiday Resort In Sharm El-Sheikh    U.S. 'Idol' Winner Shines Light On South's Gullah Culture    Roadside Bomb Kills 19 In West Baghdad: Police, Medics    White House Fights And Loses Battle To Withhold Benghazi Records    Google's Schmidt To Meet Britain's Cameron As Tax Row Rages    Wall Street Week Ahead: Correction Talk Gets Old As Rally Sails Along    SFD Grants US$ 25 Mln To Alexandria Business Association    Hard-line Afghan MPs block law protecting women    France's Hollande signs bill allows gay marriage    Iranian director's taut family saga rivets critics at Cannes    Shots fired at Cannes, actors flee for cover    ON THIS DAY: Barca humbled by Milan    Suspected Islamist gunmen assassinate Yemeni colonel    US commuter trains collide; 60 go to hospitals    Clashes Erupt Near Tahrir Square Between Police, Unknown Civilians    'Rebel' Signature Campaign Is Just A Survey: Brotherhood's El-Beltagy    North Cairo May Face Power Outages As Workers Strike    VIDEO: Real stunned after chaotic game    Spanish King's Cup winners since 1939    Vimpelcom plans to delist Orascom stock-sources    North Cairo may face power outages as workers strike    Man Utd, Chelsea target Rabiea – report    Low turnout dampens Friday anti-Morsi demonstrations    David Beckham is to retire from football    Dollar approaches 10-month high as markets reassess Fed outlook    Emma Watson wows in glitz gown at Cannes    Syrian grain imports pick up despite worsening war    David Beckham Set To Retire From Football    AFTE: current student elections system led to some problems    Goons of the intellect    Creative arts may ease cancer-related anxiety, pain    Islamic finance needs global sharia board    Egypt's central bank Q1 profit rises to 30%    YouTube launches ‘Comedy Week' 19 May    Parkour: More than a sport, it's art    AUC showcases its musical range in stunning double feature    

Articles of the author Nehad Selaiha
Varieties of oppression
From 2 to 11 this month (May 2013) the Cultural Palaces Organisation held its 22nd Annual Theatre Clubs Festival at El-Samer space (a makeshift marquee theatre pitched on the derelict site of the demolished El-Samer theatre), bringing to Cairo what several selection committees appointed by the (...)

15 - 05 - 2013
Women's Prison revisited
That the personal is political is an article of faith with radio, television and theatre writer Fatheya El-Assal. Her experience as a woman growing up in a repressive patriarchal culture that denied her all but the most elementary education – an experience she meticulously detailed in a 4-volume (...)

30 - 04 - 2013
The felling of a pearl tree
With nearly 30 plays to his credit (I know of 28, including a trilogy, but there may be more), Mohamed Abu El-‘Ela El-Salamouni (1941- ) ranks as the second most prolific writer in contemporary Egyptian theatre after Tawfiq El-Hakim. He wrote his first play, Hekaya min Leilat Al-Qadr (A Tale of the (...)

24 - 04 - 2013
A salvage operation
After a two-year suspension, the Egyptian National Theatre Festival made a turbulent comeback, whipping up a lot of controversy. On the opening night, on 27 March, 2013, significantly chosen to coincide with the annual World Theatre Day and the re-launch of the Egyptian Centre of the International (...)

16 - 04 - 2013
Invitation to madness
The phenomenon of the writer/director that has dominated the theatre scene in Egypt since the mid 1980s, both in mainstream theatre and on the fringe, particularly among independent theatre-makers, can be traced back to the work of a few prominent figures in the history of the Egyptian theatre. It (...)

27 - 02 - 2013
Textual migrations
In 1948, Emmanuel Roblès (1914-95), a French writer of Spanish origin, born in Oran in Algeria, wrote a play called Montserrat, in which the eponymous hero, a young Spanish officer sent to Venezuela in 1812 to help capture Simón Bolívar, chooses to die the rather than reveal the hiding place of (...)

20 - 02 - 2013
Women centre stage
On 9 January, I found myself in Qatar, almost against my will. Though I was delighted to be invited by the board of the Arab Theatre Organisation to attend the fifth edition of their annual Arab Theatre Festival, talk about theatre in post-revolutionary Egypt and be among this year's honorees, I (...)

29 - 01 - 2013
Swimming against the tide
For the majority of artists in Egypt, 2012 ended on a doleful note, with great anxiety, even panic about the future and many, many regrets for all the past mistakes that have turned the 25 January revolution into something of a nightmare. Fled is the glorious dream and a grim reality weighs heavily (...)

02 - 01 - 2013
A dream come true
The story of Teatro Eskendria inspires Nehad Selaiha with renewed hope for the future of a once cosmopolitan city We are told to 'despair of nothing we would attain, as unwearied diligence our point would gain.' This is the moral; now for the story. One evening in Alexandria, many, many years ago, (...)

18 - 10 - 2012
Back in force
Nehad Selaiha hails the fourth Independent Theatre Season Do you know the old song that says 'Going to One Wedding Brings on Another'? Well, it seems this dictum can also be true of some non-conjugal festivities. While the 38th annual Regional Theatre Festival of the Cultural Palaces Organisation (...)

27 - 09 - 2012
Welcome visitors
Nehad Selaiha finds plenty of youthful energy and defiance in the 38th annual festival of regional theatre troupes From fasting to feasting is the best way to describe the Cairo theatre scene in the weeks immediately following the holiday of Lesser Bairam at the end of the holy month of Ramadan. (...)

13 - 09 - 2012
A grim prophecy in festive robes
Nehad Selaiha watches the first fruit of a cooperation protocol between the State Theatre and Cultural Palaces organisations So far, the 25 January revolution has effected no material change in the structure, organization, working methods, or funding policies of the public theatre sector. Nor was (...)

06 - 09 - 2012
An elegiac love song for Isis
Nehad Selaiha marvels at the beauty, passion and political acumen of a new creation by an independent artist at Al-Hanager For decades now, in fact since the early 1970s, the policy governing all state-run theatrical activities has been prominently characterized by wanton wastefulness. Leaving (...)

09 - 08 - 2012
Business as usual
At the Creativity Centre, Nehad Selaiha finds solace but feels a pang For months the theatre committee of the Supreme Council for Culture debated the future of theatre festivals in Egypt. Uppermost on its agenda was the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre (CIFET), the last edition (...)

25 - 07 - 2012
Dancing on hot coals
Nehad Selaiha reads a powerful political statement in a new dance theatre piece by Dalia El-Abd The first round of presidential elections had left me with the anguish of a choice of evils: it was either the fire of Shafiq, a former general and, therefore, an extension of the military regime that (...)

05 - 07 - 2012
In the loony bin
Nehad Selaiha welcomes the Egyptian premiere of Dale Wasserman's stage adaptation of Ken Kesey's novel One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest at the AUC and ponders the representation of mental institutions on the Egyptian stage. Egyptian movies have featured scenes in mental hospitals since the late (...)

24 - 05 - 2012
'Third' is best
Nehad Selaiha applauds the timing, context, artistry and political implications of a student production of Wendy Wasserstein's Third by the drama group of the English department of Cairo University Wendy Wasserstein's Third, by the Drama Group of the English Department Cultural Society of Cairo (...)

10 - 05 - 2012
Fightingback
Nehad Selaiha ponders recent and past attack on theatre and draws hope from present activities For months now, the so called 'Arab Spring' has been looking more and more like a harsh season of scorching, blinding sandstorms and thick clouds of poisonous vapours, blowing upon green valleys from the (...)

12 - 04 - 2012
A forest of masks
Nehad Selaiha finds topical resonance and lots of fun in a provincial production of Alberto Moravia's La Mascherata Though rendered into Arabic from the original Italian by Saad Aradash (the late great Egyptian director and theatre scholar) in 1987, Alberto Moravia's La Mascherata (The Masquerade, (...)

05 - 04 - 2012
Chasing ghosts
Nehad Selaiha hails Lenin El-Ramly's Fi Baytena Shabah, currently at Miami theatre, as a potent antidote to theatrical depression At last another stunning masterpiece by Lenin El-Ramly, one of the greatest Egyptian playwrights ever and the greatest living one. Indeed, in one respect, El-Ramly (...)

29 - 03 - 2012
A play for our times
Nehad Selaiha is staggered by the correspondences between the Romanian and Egyptian revolutions in Caryl Churchill's Mad Forest: A Play from Romania at the AUC At the Malak Gabr Arts Theater, in the AUC Centre for the Arts in New Cairo, the stage was lined on all sides with forbidding black walls. (...)

23 - 02 - 2012
Breathless mirth
Nehad Selaiha hails the Egyptian premiere of Ben Elton's Gasping at Rawabet When director Leila Saad kindly emailed to invite me to a performance of a play called Gasping by a playwright called Ben Elton I did not know what to expect or make of the title. I had not known of the existence of such a (...)

16 - 02 - 2012
The fading of a dream
Nehad Selaiha mourns the passing away of a cherished place and dream On 28 February, 2008, I wrote: "Over the years, Al-Hanager, under the direction of the indefatigable, enlightened and widely respected theatre academic and critic Hoda , has built a prestigious international reputation as a forum (...)

02 - 02 - 2012
Fragrance of times past
Nehad Selaiha remembers an ardent rebel who did not live to see 25 January I had arranged with friends to go to Tahrir Square on New Year's Eve at 10 pm after dropping in at my mother's. On an impulse, however, I found myself driving to the Floating theatre in Giza at 8. Nothing spectacular was (...)

05 - 01 - 2012
A year of revolutionary theatre
Nehad Selaiha gives a bird's eye view of the Egyptian theatre scene in 2011 Theatre has been active in the Egyptian revolution since its eruption on 25 January 2010. During the Tahrir Square 18-day long sit in, which brought Mubarak down, theatre artists made their presence very much felt. With (...)

29 - 12 - 2011
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