Supervisor Elham AbolFateh
Editor in Chief Mohamed Wadie

Silver Jubilee of Cairo’s Contemporary and Experimental Theatre kicks off


Tue 11 Sep 2018 | 11:20 AM
Yassmine Elsayed

Swiss Ambassador: Egypt is center for cultural exchange in the Arab region

Cairo - September 11 (SEE): Minister of Culture Dr. Enas Abdel Dayem opened the celebrations for the silver jubilee of Cairo International Festival for Contemporary and Experimental Theatre, presided by Dr. Sameh Mahran.

The event took place in the main hall at the Opera House and was attended by a  number of distinguished guests including foreign ambassadors and theatre fans.

The celebrations are set to continue until September 21st on 9 theatres at Cairo.

This year, the celebrations include the display of 10 foreign shows , 11Arab shows and 6 Egyptian ones.

The opening of the event at Opera started by a play for Director Khaled Galal, performed by acting department students at the “Innovation Center” at “Cultural Development Fund”. The students performed famous monologues, with many languages, excerpted from famous Arab and global plays.

During the event, key theatre icons were honored including late Dr. Nagy Shaker from Egypt.

This year’s celebrations are dedicated to a number of Arab and Egyptian innovators. They are: Asaad Fada (Syria), Gawad ElAsady (Iraq), Hatem ElSayed (Jordan), Samy Abdel HAmid (Iraq), Abd-Allah ElSaadawy (Bahrain), Abdel Aziz Elsaree’ (Kuwait), Abdel Kareem Barsheed (Morocco), Ezz Eldeen Elmadany (Tunisia), Fahmy Elkholy (Egypt), Mohamed Adar (Algeria), Mohamed Salmawy (Egypt), Huda Wasfy (Egypt) and the International Institute of Theatre.

The event was concluded by a rise in big pyramid at the very middle of the theatre, reflecting the prestigious status of the Cairo International Festival, followed by the display of a short documentary on the silver jubilee of the theatre.

Among the attendees was the Swiss Ambassador to Egypt Paul Garnier, who spoke before the guests about the role of the Swiss cultural center, existed for 30 years at Cairo, in enriching the mutual cultural activities between Egypt and Switzerland as well as the prospects for enhancing cooperation in this regard.

In his speech, he affirmed that Egypt is a center for the cultural exchange in the Arab region.

He noted that a big goal for the Swiss cultural center is to enhance exchanges across countries as well as disseminating visual arts and literatures among many countries.