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 approach the Egyptian street with 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 Theater Festival for fear of colliding with administrative obstacles?
– I did not hesitate and I was not afraid to undergo 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 did not enter into force because I was one voice. The first of these suggestions was the necessity for the festival to go out to the street because it is 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 back the stars to it again, as I saw and stressed the necessity of the honorees being alive and not departed, so 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 went through the experience bravely without fear or paying attention to anything except the interest of the festival and the 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 element of attraction happened in 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 style in 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 the propaganda in a thoughtful manner through the media committee Social media, we developed a strategy for advertising and publicity methods for 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 to discuss and debate and open the door for questions. 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. 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 began 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 the emphasis on emphasizing the identity of the festival, meaning establishing an image A specific mentality about it for the viewer by focusing on the design of the advertising poster, shield, and logo, so that I can 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 assumed 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 according to its value, others will see it in the same way. Therefore, it was important for this session to work with a different system there, theatrical activities, workshops, and seminars that began before the start of 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 the 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 theatrical writing 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 theatrical 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 other writers during two sessions, 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, 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 celebration for theatrical people and a celebration for art. In general, through workshops and intellectual seminars, master classes, and next year I am seriously thinking about transferring its activities to the governorates.
■ What do you mean by the possibility of transferring the activities to the governorates?
– I will start by holding activities 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 simultaneously with 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 festival’s activities in full 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 until it returns to Cairo again, but this requires another plan.
■ Is it easy to implement this ambition?!
– Of course.. We need the support and solidarity of all parties together, I need a larger budget With the support of the governorate, civil society institutions, the Ministry of Social Solidarity, Information and Press, because this is an idea that concerns the state in general, and it is the duty of everyone to work together to reach results that contribute to enriching the theatrical movement.
■ I faced an attack this session after granting space to honor 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 theater with a bad reputation because theater 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 theater began in the sixties at a later time after these troupes. Is “Raya and Sakina” It was vulgarity.. My Fair Lady.. Or Mohamed Sobhi’s theater is vulgarity.. Or Ahmed Bedier in “Dustour Ya Sayedna” or “Atiya the Terrorist” and Ahmed Adam who has been working in theater since he was 12 years old in “Al-Thaqafa Al-Jamahirah” and his works with Mohamed Sobhi, as well as Ahmed Al-Ebiary, the only writer and producer who continued despite the cessation of work of all private sector teams, he continued in very difficult and harsh economic conditions, Salwa Mohamed Ali was honored because of her career in independent theater, 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 theater is theater.. Each of them has an influential, clear, extended and successful experience. This is the basis and criterion for honoring, this is the history of Egyptian theater that was erased by the lack of interest in documenting and filming it, so we presented a cry at the closing ceremony for 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 the shows Photographed, which forced us to put 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?"full-width clearfix">
