Alfred Farag is one of Egyptian theater’s leading contemporary playwrights and has had a profound influence on shaping Arabic drama and Egyptian cultural politics. The two one-act plays presented (along with a third one which is not presented, The Visitor) were written in the Seventies. The 1970’s ushered a crisis for Egyptian theater resulting from censorship and political pressures, but it also marked Farag’s transition towards bold experimentation and successful embrace of modernist, absurdist, and postmodern styles.
These plays form a series that portrays female subjects interacting with male aggressors who threaten their lives as well as their dwellings. All three plays depict women who are trying to find their way out of a world of male danger. The plays suggest neither social change nor moral reform. Instead, they portray individual angst, deprivation, solitude and alienation. The principle that governs their dramatic action is that, when attacked, one has no option but to defend oneself in the most effective way possible. These one-act plays seem to be telling the story of the same woman, one who feels that she has something to defend and fight against the predator man.
Date/Time: Thursday May 9 at 6:30 pm
Country: Egypt
Title: The Stranger and The Peephole
Playwright: Alfred Farag
Translator: Dina Amin
Director: Anna Bahow
In collaboration with The Egyptian American Society