By Bilal Maanaki
Dina A. Amin. Alfred Farag and Egyptian Theater: The Poetics of Disguise, With Four Short Plays and a Monologue. Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2008. xxx + 321 pp. $34.95 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-8156-3163-7.
This urgently needed book is an investigation of Egyptian theatre through the works of the preeminent Egyptian playwright Alfred Farag (1929-2005), during the turbulent period of the sixties and seventies, when Egyptian society was undergoing great political turmoil and drastic social change. Alfred Farag is regarded among the foremost Egyptian playwrights in the post-1952 revolution period. He played a major role in disseminating and popularizing theatrical performances across urban as well as rural Egypt. In addition to writing more than thirty plays in both classical and colloquial Arabic, Farag was also a theatre practitioner who was involved in theatrical troupe formations, and, unlike his contemporary Arab playwrights, he had a strong sense of the role of the stage in shaping all aspects of his drama, especially the characters’ dialogues and monologues. Dina Amin takes a historiographic turn in her examination of Farag’s works by focusing on the poetics of dramatic texts, especially his use of metadrama as a literary tool to disguise his commentary and criticism of both the Nasser and Sadat eras.
Amin’s book is divided into three parts, not including an introduction and an appendix. The latter includes a chronological reference list of Farag’s plays with the date and place of their productions, in addition to a small photo gallery of various performances. As attested in her introduction, the majority of works published on the playwright focus on his 1960s masterpieces, to the detriment of his work during the 1970s even though this later period reflects Farag’s artistic and literary maturity and a different political and social span of time (albeit a pessimistic one). Amin’s main objective “is to provide a reading of Farag’s plays of the seventies through focusing on his skillful use of metadrama” (p. xxv).
Amin begins her analysis in chapter 1 with a biographical account of the playwright, his education, literary interests, his various governmental and non-governmental jobs, as well as a description of his political views regarding Arab politics in the sixties and seventies. She offers a detailed report on Farag’s imprisonment under Gamal Abdel Nasser’s regime and how this detention inspired his famous play Hallaq Baghdad (The Barber of Baghdad, 1964), which he wrote and performed in prison. Even though Farag’s plays were not favored by the political regime of the time, the official attitude began to change after the declaration of the National Charter in 1962. Encouraging reconciliation between leftist intellectuals and artists and the government, many leftists and artists, including Farag, took high official positions in the Ministry of Culture. Besides Nasser, Amin examines Farag’s life and work during the presidencies of Anwar Sadat and Hosni Mubarak.
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