_Workshop in Cairo 2003

"My Unknown Enemy", a series of workshops organized by the Cultural Identity and Development Committee (CIDC), provided the framework for an additional meeting between theatre professionals with different cultural and religious backgrounds. From 27 November to 7 December director Alexander Stillmark, dramaturge Sabine Brandes and three young actors from Germany and Switzerland travelled to Cairo. For ten days they worked on Gotthhold Ephraim Lessing's "Philotas" with about a dozen actors from Cairo's independent theatre scene. Stillmark had also selected this text for "Image.Construction.Site II", the artistic programme organized by the ITI that accompanied the World Theatre Festival in 2002. The text is particularly well suited because it enables an intense interrogation of motives of heroism, stereotypes of the enemy, social responsibility and self-sacrifice. In working with the text it was possible to distinguish tolerable and comprehensible differences among the participants on the one hand, and the irreducible – yet also clearly identifiable – oppositions in attitudes toward the culture of the Other. The working principle was once again open dialogue, curiosity and play. Working in Arabic and German, the participants sought to create lifelike scenes that shed light on and render legible the texts of the past from the perspective of the present.

The workshop was organized by the German ITI Centre (with financial support from the Kulturstiftung der Länder) and the Cairo Goethe Institute. The Goethe Institute not only provided facilities for the workshop, but also provided interpreters and organizational support. The ITI would like to take this opportunity to thank the Goethe Institute on behalf of all of the workshop participants.