 |
| Downtown Cairo 1 /2007 |
Presenting Molahazat Ly Leia on this blog is challenging. The images of this project are existing only on diapositives since the theaterperformance was an old fashioned slide-show, and not all of those survived the censorship of Mubarak's regime in Egypt. We might have been naive, or rather courageous; but an attempt to create a theatrical lullaby for the vivid but also tensed city of Cairo, turned out in a very critical production.
For my first project in Egypt (and my first visit to the Arab World), I asked Shady El Dali to show me his city during nighttime. I was seeking for the more obscurated side of Cairo. Shady agreed, he was living at night anyway. He took me on several trips, and everywhere I saw beauty, poetry, surrealism and absurdism, Shady would show me his hard reality behind. Not only illuminated pyramids; but slums, inhuman workconditions, social injustice and poverty became the destinies of our nightly journies. Shady loves his country -that's why he showed me its uglyness- and wanted to use this project to speak out about the symptoms of dictatorship.
We have made that lullaby for Cairo on stage, I had never expected it would be such a discomforting one. While I wanted to soothe our audiance with pictures of Cairo, Shady wanted to wake them up by showing that same images. This dynamics worked very well - one image has always plural realities. What I care with me is the beauty of Egypt's people, their strenght to stand. I've seen theatre groups rehearsing at 4AM, a time their theatre was finally available for art. If life could'nt happen during the day - it had to happen at night. Such experiences had major impact on my life & work. It was the openness and generosity in Shady and the Egyptian people, which made that happen.
 |
| Downtown Cairo 2 /2007 |
The following images are Rehearsal-photos by Eyal Pinkas, during the Performance in Theatre Frascati, Amsterdam 2008:
