Amr the "Fairy Godmother" and the Case of the Athenee Troupe from Lebanon

... Farouk Hosni wanted a Lebanese performance for the opening [of the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre (CIFET)] "as a show of solidarity" with the Lebanese people and the troupe's Al-Nasheed (The Anthem -- reviewed last week) was recommended and accepted. There remained one problem: the troupe could not afford the plane tickets and the regulations of the festival stipulated that companies should pay their own fare. In ordinary circumstances. Randa Asmar and Ghibrial Yamin, the founders of the troupe and its leading actors, would have sought the help of sympathetic bodies and individuals. But with Lebanon all but totally destroyed and needing all the help it can get from its friends and neighbours, fundraising to go to a festival is not only impossible, but hardly the decent thing to do. Since the troupe were not getting any money for their performance, the least the festival could do was pay their passage. The festival's organisers, however, were loath to bend the rules, fearing it would set a precedent and set their worst bureaucratic face dead against all arguments and commonsense. They completely forgot that exceptional situations call for exceptional measures. The fairy godmother who stepped in at the last minute to transport the troupe to Egypt and save the minister's face was pop singer Amr Diab; the whole thing cost him LE20,000 -- a small drop in the ocean of the Ministry of Culture's budget. One winces at the mention of this unsavoury episode. But the deplorable treatment of the troupe did not stop at this; as if to punish them for the embarrassment they unwittingly caused the festival, its organisers barred them from taking part in the contest, though Randa Asmar's performance could have successfully competed for the best actress award, and allowed them only one performance instead of the usual two allotted to all groups in or outside the contest. Naturally, they were bitter about the way they were treated and I shared their feelings. My bitterness deepened when I learnt that the other Lebanese troupe, from Haigazian University, would not be bringing their Li Wannus (For Wannus) to Cairo. It seems that in their case, no fairy godmother was at hand to come to the rescue. That the festival could easily have paid their fare and didn't still mortifies me. Link