الفنان محمد رياض رئيس المهرجان القومى للمسرح فى حوار لـ«روزاليوسف: أتمنى أن يطوف المهرجان القومى محافظات مصر

Artist Mohamed Riad did not fail in his commitment to the presidency of the National Theater Festival for the second year in a row. He was always up to the responsibility and the huge burdens that were placed on his shoulders. Riad, according to him, was able to get closer to the Egyptian street through the festival’s activities, as he had great ambitions and dreams that Riad wished he could achieve on the ground. About those dreams, this ambition and the most important challenges, he said in this interview:

■ Did you hesitate to accept the presidency of the National Theatre Festival for fear of encountering administrative obstacles?

– I did not hesitate or fear to take part in the experience. On the contrary, I accepted because I was a member of the festival’s supreme committee for three consecutive sessions… the thirteenth, fourteenth, and then fifteenth. At the time, I had some suggestions, but they were not implemented because I was one voice. The first of these suggestions was the necessity for the festival to take to the streets because it was very elitist. My concern was for the audience to get to know the festival and know that there is a festival for Egyptian theater, because this step would achieve a state of theatrical movement. The festival is a celebration for theater people, and therefore it is important to bring the stars back to it again. I also saw and emphasized the necessity for the honorees to be alive and not deceased. What is the value of honoring after death?! The artist should be happy with this honor. It is important to remember him and thank him for his journey of giving in theater. Therefore, I decided to activate these decisions when I took over the presidency of the festival. I took part in the experience courageously without fear or paying attention to anything other than the interest of the festival and Egyptian theater.

■ In your opinion, how was the national festival able to attract the audience?

– The first thing that concerned me was that the festival not be limited to the elite, and I think that the most important attraction element happened at the festival last year when we dedicated the session to the leader Adel Emam, and this was a decision that was not easy to implement because I made a great effort to reach him and his family and convince him of the idea because Adel Emam has a different system and way of thinking about his work. To make the session in his name was a very difficult matter, you will not find the name Adel Emam circulating among the festivals, then we used advertising in a thoughtful way through the media committee and social media, we developed a strategy for advertising methods and announcing its activities, I did not wait for the press conference to be held, but I decided to announce everything before it was held so that we would have time for dialogue and discussion and open the door for questions, and of course I thought about trying to reach an agreement with sponsors, but this has not been implemented yet.

■ Is it easy for a freelance artist to work within a government system?

– The fact that I am not an employee affiliated with any department in the ministry enabled me to work freely without making calculations, and of course thinking outside the prevailing context may not enable me to achieve everything. For example, I thought about lighting up the Cairo Tower, and I agreed with a bus company to hire a group to tour Cairo with musical bands playing songs from old theatrical works. These are ideas that I could not achieve due to the budget, so I decided to work with what was available, but I started to exploit Mohamed Riad himself in promoting the festival. In every television interview, I did not talk about my participation in any dramatic work, but my talk focused on the festival. I stressed emphasizing the identity of the festival, meaning establishing a specific mental image of it in the viewer’s mind by focusing on the design of the advertising poster, shield, and logo, in order to create a complete mental image of the national festival. I thought about changing the name and transforming it from the National Festival of Egyptian Theater to the Egyptian Theater Festival because sometimes confusion may occur, and some people think that the festival represents the national theater only.

■ How did you see the festival this session?

– Since I took over its presidency, I see it as a big festival, in my opinion the most important festival in the Arab world, and when you see something as it should be, others will see it as the same way. Therefore, it was important for this session to work with a different system there, with theatrical events, workshops and seminars that started before the main events. The youth benefited from an important period of training and there was a historic turnout for the workshops. Therefore, we reaped the results of the hard work last year. In this session, we made sure that reservations were online to make it easy for everyone to attend, especially those who came from the governorates to follow the festival.

■ In your opinion, what is the pivotal role that the National Festival should play in the theatrical movement?

– Last year, I noticed that all the texts were dramaturgy, foreign texts, or texts from the sixties of the last century, so I thought of holding a competition for playwriting under the name of the First Work Competition in order to discover new writers and inject new blood into the field of writing. I wanted to see people I had not seen before in Egypt who presented us with 186 playwriting texts, from which we chose only three. The texts were printed and participated in the Cairo International Book Fair, and this year we have three more writers in two sessions, and the result was the discovery of six new writers. This is one of the festival’s roles, which is to serve the entire theatrical movement. Also, the turnout to attend the shows this session was historic, and I have never seen this type of audience before. It is necessary to connect people to the theater. The festival has played this role since last year, and we continue with this policy, as the National Festival is a holiday for theater people and a holiday for art in general through workshops, intellectual seminars, and master classes. Next year, I am seriously thinking about moving its activities to the governorates.

■ What do you mean by the possibility of transferring events between governorates?

– I will start by holding events without transferring the major competition, because transferring the competition and the entire festival requires study and planning for the possibility of applying the idea on the ground, because I usually think about goals that can be achieved on the ground, for example, it is possible to hold workshops in the governorates at the same time as holding workshops in Cairo, seminars and master classes. I am thinking at first of choosing Qena Governorate from Upper Egypt, Port Said, Arish, Mansoura and Alexandria… five governorates in which we can hold a theatrical movement simultaneously with the festival, but in order to hold the entire festival events in a governorate like Alexandria, for example, this is an ambition that I hope to achieve, that the festival is held every year in a different governorate so that it returns to Cairo again, but this requires other planning.

■ Is it easy to implement this ambition?!

– Certainly..we need the support and solidarity of all parties together. I need a larger budget and support from the governorate, civil society institutions, the Ministry of Social Solidarity, the Media and the Press because this is an idea that concerns the state in general and it is necessary for everyone to work together so that we reach results that contribute to enriching the theatrical movement.

■ You faced an attack this session after giving honors space to figures from the private sector because some consider it a theater with a bad reputation.. How did you see that?

– I disagree with the idea that it is a theatre with a bad reputation because theatre is basically a private sector since its early beginnings at the hands of Yaqoub Sanou, then Naguib El-Rihani, Fouad El-Mohandes, Ismail Yassin and many others, all of these were private sector troupes. The state theatre started in the sixties at a later time after these troupes. Was “Raya and Sakina” vulgar.. or My Fair Lady.. or Mohamed Sobhi’s theatre vulgar.. or Ahmed Bedier in “The Constitution, Oh Our Master” or “Atiya the Terrorist” and Ahmed Adam who has been working in theatre since he was 12 years old in “Popular Culture” and his works with Mohamed Sobhi, as well as Ahmed El-Ebiary, the only writer and producer who continued despite the cessation of all private sector troupes from work, he continued in extremely difficult and harsh economic conditions. Salwa Mohamed Ali was honoured for her career in independent theatre, because it was a very important trend. Ezzat Zein from the Palaces of Culture worked there for 55 years as a writer, director and talented actor.. I am against these divisions and I do not know who invented them, because in my opinion theatre is theatre.. each of them has an influential experience Clear, extensive and successful, this is the basis and standard for honoring. This is the history of Egyptian theater that was erased by the lack of interest in documenting and filming it. Therefore, we made a cry at the closing ceremony about the necessity of paying attention to filming theatrical works. When we wanted to use film material about these honorees, we found only very few scenes from filmed performances, which forced us to include some of their dramatic and cinematic works, and this is a sad thing. There are works that were lost and they are an integral part of the history of Egyptian theater. Theater is not just providing capabilities, but ideas and the will to implement these ideas. Material matters are important, but how are steps taken with ideas and will?

 

■ In your opinion, how can the crisis of not filming theatrical performances be overcome?

– I tried to overcome part of this crisis by signing an agreement with Al-Hayat TV to film the works of university youth and independent theatre participating in the festival’s activities, because these are works that are important to document. I tried to contribute to a solution to the best of my ability because the shows of the Art House are filmed according to completely different agreements and mechanisms, while the shows of the university and independents may be more flexible in the possibility of filming and keeping them.

■ After the closing ceremony, some objections may arise regarding the arbitration results. Have you thought about cancelling the competition, as some have suggested before?

– No, of course not. I will not think about cancelling the competition. This was proposed before, but we found that the competition creates a state of competition and a great incentive to participate in the festival’s activities. People fight to participate. If we present the festival as if it were just a carnival, the turnout for shows participating in its activities may decline. For example, the Oscars competition cannot be cancelled, and all major festivals have some kind of competition.

■ What was the biggest challenge you faced at the National Festival?

– The biggest challenge is to emphasize the identity of the festival and have a presence in the street and the Arab world. I must mention here that many of my colleagues in Arab countries have expressed a desire to come to Egypt to attend the festival’s events, but of course it was impossible to host anyone because we do not have the budgets that enable us to do so. I am also thinking in the coming period of trying to change the date of the festival because this time is not appropriate at all. We obtained the Opera House with difficulty because this is the period during which the Opera House Theater undergoes annual maintenance, and then the unavailability of many stars due to the summer vacations. I suggest that the National Festival be held during the month of October so that everyone can attend. This will lead to a state of reconciliation between it and the dates of other festivals such as the Experimental Festival and the Citadel Festival because it is important that there is a space of time between the National Festival and the Experimental Festival. I also hope that there will be a permanent headquarters for managing the festival. It is necessary to include the National Festival in the festival budget because until this moment the National Festival is outside the budget. This will make a difference in the budget and in everything, because we are forced to wait for the new fiscal year. Each sector contributes a financial percentage, and this severely disrupts work. I suggest reducing the number of official competition shows to 25 or 30 shows because the judging committees suffer from extreme fatigue due to the number of shows, and we also suffer greatly in forming the judging committees. We seek to choose the committees carefully, always taking into account the presence of people who are characterized by experience and impartiality.

■ Did your preoccupation with heading the festival prevent you from participating in artistic works?

– I refused to participate in some works, but I was offered plays from the previous period, and I was actually going to participate in them, and I stipulated that the work be completely out of competition at the national festival, but the works were suspended for other reasons unrelated to my participation in them. In any case, heading the festival is very hard work, and for three months I did not go home, and my family did not enjoy the summer vacation, because of my extreme preoccupation during this period.

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