Nehad Selaiha enjoys a triple bill written and directed by Lenin El-Ramly, wondering whether this formula will catch on Double and triple bills were once a regular item on the annual programme of most state-theatre companies in Egypt. Between 1956, when a morale- raising triple bill, including Alfred Farag's first play, Sawt Misr (Voice of Egypt), was presented at the National, in the thick of the Suez war, under the title "The Battle of Port Said", and 1970, when director Ahmed Abdel-Halim staged three of Naguib Mahfouz's eight known plays at the National -- Al-Tarekah (The Legacy), Al-Nagaat (The Rescue) and Yumeet wa Yuhyee (Death and Resurrection) -- calling the show Taht Al-Midhallah (Under the Umbrella), after the title of the collection of short stories in which the plays appeared, there are records of at least 16 such productions. Two of these, both produced by Al-Masrah Al-Hadith (The Modern theatre company), were actually quadruple bills: the 1962 "An Evening with El-Hakim" which featured four of his one-act plays, and the 1965 "An Evening with Crime" which included Alfred Farag's Al-Fakh (The Trap), Abdel-Rahman Fahmi's Al-Harb (War), and El-Hakim's Oghniat Al-Mawt (The Song of Death) and Al-Sundooq (The Chest). Apart from unearthing many hitherto neglected pieces by old hands, like Tawfiq El-Hakim and Mahmoud Taymour, and introducing the ordinary theatre- goer to such delightful foreign specimens as Chekov's The Bear, The Jubilee and The Proposal (which were presented in a triple bill at El-Hakim theatre in 1964), this tradition helped to keep the art of the one-act play alive by encouraging the 1960s' new generation of dramatists, such as No' man Ashour, Youssef Idris, Mahmoud Diab, Fathi Radwan and Alfred Farag, among others, to attempt it. Multiple-bill-productions could also serve as an inexpensive way of testing the potential of new writers, and indeed directors, by trying out their first works on the public. One example of this was a 1966 National theatre triple bill, called "The National Avant- garde", which consisted of two plays by two new writers -- Waraq...Waraq (Papers...Papers) by Layla Abdel-Basit, and Al-Danas (Defilement) by Hassan Ahmed Hassan -- plus Ghareeb (A Stranger) by the relatively known Mahmoud Diab, and marked the debut of three new directors: the late Abdel-Ghaffar Ouda, Adel Hashem and Nabil Muneeb. After 1970, however, the tradition of the multiple bill seemed to disappear. Though writers have continued to produce short plays, some of them real little masterpieces, very few of them ever reach the stage, and if they do, it is usually in single, short-run, small- budget productions, mounted by students, amateurs, or independent troupes working on the fringe. Until quite recently, even a playwright of the caliber, stature and popularity of Lenin El-Ramly could not stage any of his short plays in mainstream theatre. Three of these -- Al-Kabous (The Nightmare), and Ayn Al-Hayat (Spring of Life) -- were sponsored by Al-Hanager, a cultural centre which predominantly caters for young, independent groups and budding artists, while Al-Shay' (The 'Thing') was performed in the open courtyard of the French Cultural Centre in Mounira, Salaam Al-Nisaa (A Peace of Women, or, Women for Peace) was staged in the open-air theatre of the Opera house and Ikhla'ou Al-Aqni'a (Off with the Masks) premiered in the garden of Al-Gezira Arts Centre in Zamalek. While professional directors and inexpensive, or semi-professional actors were hired for the three Al-Hanager productions, the other three were almost exclusively done by amateurs whom the author personally trained and directed in order to cut down costs as funds were terribly short and he had to supplement them out of his own pocket. A few months ago, however, El-Ramly finally managed to persuade the heads of both the state-theatre organization and the National to sponsor a production of three of his short plays to be performed as a triple bill in a big theatre. One can understand their initial reluctance; like most directors of big theatrical institutions, they doubted the financial success of the venture, arguing, not without reason, that since short plays have become associated in the minds of the public with small halls, experimental trends and young audiences, a multiple-bill soiree, staged at a large venue, is bound to fall between two stools, attracting neither the regular clientele who prefer a more traditional fare, nor the young who are invariably contemptuously suspicious of anything such venues have to offer. Nevertheless they agreed; El-Ramly had timed his proposal well. How could they refuse him when a revival by the National of his 1988 smash hit, Ahlan Ya Bakawat (Welcome Gentlemen), was playing to packed houses in both Cairo and Alexandria and bringing in unprecedented box-office returns? El-Ramly's triple bill, Al-Muhadarah (The Lecture), , and Ikhla'ou Al-Aqni'a (Off with the Masks), currently on at Masrah Al-Zamalek (formerly a commercial theatre venue which has been recently taken over by the state-theatre organization), should have opened at least two months ago, before the notorious exams fever set in, leaving all theatres nearly empty. Since two of the plays are repeats which have been successfully tested more than once before, and only The Lecture, the shortest, is new, one would have been able to judge more accurately the future prospects of this formula per se. Like Chekov's On the Harmfulness of Tobacco, The Lecture is a farcical dramatic monologue which progressively reveals the real character of the speaker, undercutting his pomposity and foregrounding his weaknesses. Whereas Chekov's lecturer is a henpecked husband longing for freedom, El-Ramly's is a pathetic would-have-been scientist who develops a severe case of megalomania due to his repeated failure and begins by terrorizing his audience and ends by blowing them up. It was quite hilarious and gave the young Hamdi Abbas a wonderful opportunity to display his comic talent. We Deserve a Photo, which ironically echoes in its title the opening verse of a famous 1960s' patriotic song by Abdel-Halim Hafiz which glorifies the Egyptian people, was, on the other hand, harsher and more somber --a savagely satirical piece which centers on a photo and formally develops as one. Two friends (Mohamed Ali and Hamada Barakat), the latter just returned from abroad on vacation and with a passion for photography, wander into one of the shanty towns round Cairo and are both shocked and fascinated by the decadence, squalor and violence of the place and the way its inhabitants seem to take them for granted, and even defend and rationalize them. The picture which unfolds through the eyes of the two strangers as they sit at a dingy, makeshift café to rest their feet resembles a fiendishly grotesque, viciously merciless caricature which, nevertheless, has enough grains of truth to validate it and make it really sting. But the brutality and sordidness of life in certain parts of Egypt today and the lethargy, ignorance and indifference of many of its people is not the point of the play. Its real satirical target comes into view when the photography buff decides to immortalize two drug addicts who have been publicly smoking hash for days on the roadside in a snapshot for his own private collection. Suddenly, to his utter befuddlement, the inhabitants are up in arms, incited by a minor court official who frenziedly invokes "the reputation of Egypt", accusing the photographer of being a traitor, intent or harming it. The row rapidly spirals when the police, depicted as thoroughly corrupt and in cahoots with swindlers and dealers in all kinds of forbidden goods, are called in and soon enough the photo of the two drug addicts becomes a major national issue debated in the media and reported by foreign correspondents. To a foreigner, such an incident as the play details may seem wildly farfetched and ridiculously implausible. To Egyptians, however, it is simply plain fact. In an article published in The Daily Star on April 20, 2004, Hossam Bahgat, the director of the Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights and vice- president of the Egyptian Association Against Torture, reports the case of four Egyptians who printed and sold a funny bumper sticker saying "Cairo Traffic Rules: Green = Stop; Red = Go; Yellow = Go faster" and were promptly arrested after a photo of the sticker, together with a complaint by an agitated, self-proclaimed "Egypt-loving Arab citizen", were published in a daily newspaper under the bold headline: 'Urgent to the Tourist Police.' Five days later, as Bahgat reports, 'the four found themselves in a criminal trial under Article 178(II) of the Penal Code, which criminalizes the "possession of pictures that could harm the country's reputation, whether by departing from the truth, providing an incorrect description, emphasizing improper aspects (my italics), or by any other means." The charge for which the hapless four almost got sentenced to up to two years in prison was, and this is fact not fiction, "harming the traffic system's reputation". Bahgat quotes other equally ludicrous charges and cynically concludes that 'while Egypt's 1971 constitution ... stipulates the right of every citizen to "express his opinion and to publicize it verbally, in writing, by photography or by any other means," it restricts the scope of this right by placing it "within the limits of the law." And the law is not exactly friendly to freedom of expression.' And this is the crux of We Deserve a Photo : freedom of expression. The hero could have easily surrendered his camera and the whole film to his attackers as they demanded and walked away to safety; but he doesn't, not because he is keen on the picture of the two addicts who were quite willing to be photographed, but because he refuses to be coerced by a crowd of indolent, loud-mouthed ignoramuses who rather than face up to their miserable reality and do something about it, blindly follow the regime in squashing any honest criticism on the plea of protecting their "country's reputation." According to Egyptian law, the charge of the amateur photographer in El-Ramly's play would be 'harming the country's reputation by emphasizing improper aspects'. Never mind that the emphasized aspects are not just improper but really quite dangerous and urgently need attention. As Bahgat says: "The regime firmly believes that it has a responsibility to prevent Egyptians from harming their own reputation" and its response to any factual description of reality is not to remedy its faults or improve it, "but simply to shoot the messenger." Compared to We Deserve a Photo, Off with the Masks, which concludes the evening, though equally serious and urgent in intent, seems much gentler in tone and more appealing in aspect. Rather than an all- too-real filthy slum, with swarms of flies buzzing around, the setting here is an imaginary oriental city seen through the eyes of Sheherezade and the cautionary tale she tells, though it ends tragically, has the charm and quaintness of an old folk tale. Simply told, it is about a people who are seduced by a sanctimonious quack into wearing masks which eventually consumes their real faces, leaving a void behind. When I reviewed the play two years ago (see "Guarding his own light", Al-Ahram Weekly, Issue No. 764, 13-19. 10. 2005), I described the end of the play as "tragic, almost nihilistic", but added that "the road to it was crafted with such delightful artistry and quirky humour that one did not feel quite as hopeless as one should have done at the end of the show." The same judgment holds true of the current performance. But though I have no wish to revise my former evaluation of the Masks, or tone down my glowing praise of El-Ramly's craftsmanship as both writer and director, I have to admit that the change of venue has affected my reception negatively, leading me to rethink the wisdom of El-Ramly's project. Despite the improved performance and viewing conditions at Masrah Al-Zamalek, the less primitive sets and costumes, the sophisticated lighting and sound equipment, not to mention the roomy, upholstered seats, I kept wishing that Sheherezade would conjure up some wizard from her Arabian tales to transport the show and all back to the garden of Al-Gezira Arts Centre where I first saw it. It could be true, perhaps, that over the years, we have come to associate one-act plays with untraditional spaces and more rugged conditions.
