Egypt’s culture min. to inaugurate the 27th edition of the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theater on Sept. 1

CAIRO – 30 August 2020: Egypt’s Minister of Culture Inas Abdel Dayem will inaugurate the extraordinary 27thedition of the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theater on September 1 at 8 p.m.

Abdel Dayem will inaugurate the 27th edition of the festival in the presence of the festival’s president Alaa Abdel Aziz Suleiman, the festival’s board of directors, Honorary President of the festival Fawzi Fahmy and a number of playwrights from several generations, at the National Theater in Attaba, for the first time in the festival's history.

All the precautionary measures set by the state to battle the coronavirus (COVID-19) will be applied, where the number of attendees of the opening ceremony will not exceed 25 percent of the total capacity of the National Theater, while adhering to all other sterilization and other prevention measures, without detracting from the features of the opening ceremony.

This year's edition of the festival is dedicated to the late actor, director, and professor of acting and directing at the Institute of Theatrical Arts Sanaa Shafe'a, in recognition of the role he played in the Egyptian theatrical scene at both the artistic and academic levels.

The opening will include a short artistic show directed by Kamal Attia, honoring eight individuals who have played a prominent role in the manufacture, support and study of alternative creativity and adventurous theater.

The list of those the festival is set to honor include director Sami Taha; Lebanese playwright, writer, director and actress Maya Zbib; Swiss director Milo Rao; French director Bruno Mesa; and founder of the Kanta Bailey Theater, director Nolo Vakini.

This year's session, which will run until September 11, will present several live and online events. Three competitions will be launched, with two held virtually on the festival's official YouTube channel.

The competitions include the “The Quarantine Theater” in which nine shows selected from 54 shows submitted for participation and representing European, American, Egyptian and African theaters will be competing. The basic concept of this competition is to search for alternatives to the live show that had been halted by the epidemic.

The second competition will be for video shows that do not exceed the 90-minute barrier. These are shows that were produced before the pandemic and were prevented from being shown and transmitted. Nine of 172 submitted shows are competing, including one Egyptian show.

The third competition was not part of the festival’s basic plan, but it was added later after a proposal was submitted by the festival’s late board member Hassan Attia, as an investment in the initiative of the Egyptian Ministry of Culture to gradually restore cultural events while adhering to precautionary measures. It is intended for live Egyptian performances.

The third competition will be presented on the various national theaters, the Open Theater, Al-Hanager Center for Arts and the Theater of Institute of Dramatic Arts, with the participation of 13 performances representing various official and independent theater production institutions.

The three competitions have equal prizes of LE 75,000, the golden shield and the festival’s certificate for the show winning the first place, in addition to L.E 50,000, a silver shield and the festival‘s certificate for the show winning the second place.

The festival’s workshops and seminars will be also held live and online on social media platforms.

Furthermore, the festival celebrates the Egyptian Theater Day, on its fifth day [Sept. 5] on the stage of the National Theater, trying to restore the glamor of the celebration that Egyptian playwrights agreed upon in honor of the victims and survivors of the famous Beni Suef accident.

The event witnesses a celebration befitting the Egyptian theater and its history.

The ceremony will witness a performance directed by Nasser Abdel Moneim as well as the honoring of the directors Fahmi el-Khouly, Khaled Galal, Abdul Rahman al-Shafei, Hamdi Tolba, and Ragaa Hussain, in addition to  honoring the late writer Mohsen Moslehi, interior designer Hussein el-Ezzaby, director Hussein Mahmoud, and critic Ali al-Raei as part of the celebration of his centenary.

One of the new activities in this year's edition is the "Festival’s Memory", which is a non-competitive course, in which nine distinct performances that were presented in previous editions of the festival will be staged again.

The session will also include the issuance of an electronic and printed daily newsletter, to be added for the first time on the festival's YouTube channel.

Alaa Abdel Aziz Suleiman stated the festival’s various competitions, shows, seminars and workshops will be available on the festival’s official YouTube channel and its official Facebook page, as well as the festival’s official website, in accordance with the intellectual property rights, and internationally followed rules in this field.