Home: A multi-year artistic collaboration between Egyptian and US music and theatre artists.

FESCH.TV INFORMIERT:

This short video in Arabic and English, with corresponding subtitles in those respective languages tracks the first year of an exciting new artistic collaboration between theatre and music artists in the US and Egypt in the creation of a new music and theatre performance, supported by the US Embassy Cairo Public Affairs Section.

In 2019 acclaimed music-theatre and theatre artists from Portland, Oregon touring with US State Department Arts Envoys to the world-renowned CIFCET theatre festival in Egypt. During their time performing, teaching and connecting with artists and young people in Egypt, the US artists made connections with several emerging Egyptian theatre and music artists, including the Cairo theatrical troupe Shake.Sphere and music group Fabrica. The artists from their two very different cultures and countries, found a remarkably common language and interest in creating new theatre works that combine movement, music, found songs and personal narratives to reach audiences with universal and contemporary stories with impact.

After discussions with and encouragement with the lead organizers of CIFCET, to embark on an ambitious plan to create a new bi-lingual, Arabic and English, theatre work with music that the two groups would collectively build and rehearse together. Shortly after the US artists returned home, weekly video calls between the two teams began, and the theme and title of HOME was selected for the work.

One the Portland team, Hand2Mouth Theatre’s Artistic Director Jonathan Walters was invited to take part in a State Department’s Educational and Cultural Affairs (ECA) sponsored conference in ‚Art, Culture and Transforming Conflict‘ in December 2019 and was led through the process of how to gather US Embassy Public Affairs Section (PAS) support to underwrite this and other potential international collaborations. These conversations unearthed the importance to the artists, and to ECA the importance of creating a curriculum for creative learning workshops to be co-taught by the Egyptian and US artists for young Egyptian college age students. This workshop was successfully first led remotely in January 2021.

After being awarded a PAS Cultural/Public Diplomacy financial award in 2020 from the US Embassy Cairo, the Egyptian and US artists have been meeting remotely to create their new collaborative work, and the first in-person travel to collaborate will take place is set for November 2021. A corresponding workshop will be led during the visit – with participating young undergraduate arts students at Cairo-area Universities, hosted by Cairo University, to both teach the US artists unique approach to community building and personal story creation via theatre – but also to train and select some of these younger artists to join the eventual finished performance as a ‘chorus’.

Future development periods, with the eventual premiere date and host organization, will be clarified in the coming months. Currently, conversations with CIFCET are underway about the possibility of work-in-progress showing of HOME at the 2022 edition.

Currently Hand2Mouth Theatre has been awarded PAS Awards to make other collaborative artistic diplomacy exchanges in 2021/22 in the following additional countries:
Georgia, Peru, Ethiopia, Namibia, Lebanon, Armenia, and Serbia.

“The most important part for me, though, is the sharing; exchanging of ideas and artistic concepts; and breaking down the walls that can separate cultures and countries.”
– Allen Nause, former Artists Rep Artistic Director