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Residencies and Workshops
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Workshops |
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Residency |
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Workshops
- Workshop on "stories of war:" This
workshop was organized by Hasan El
Geretly in cooperation with Al Jana
Centre in Lebanon as part of the Janana
annual summer camp from 15-23 August
2007.
more
- Workshop on women and storytelling:
organised by the Arab Theatre Training
Centre as part of the "Hakaya Festival"
in January 2008.
Mujawara
Siwa Oasis and Minia in
Upper Egypt embrace
the "art of storytelling" apprenticeship
At a
distance
from Cairo, weighed
down by its cultural load of the central
capital, in the Minya
in the midst of Upper Egypt and, later on,
in the remote Siwa Oasis rich with popular
and traditional heritage, both locations
embraced the
apprenticeship on the "art of storytelling."
A group of people from different age groups,
coming from different parts of the Arab
World, with an experience and an interest in
the art of storytelling, participated in
this workshop. For twelve consecutive days,
from the 25th of January until the 5th of
February 2008, professional storytellers and
beginners met together, exchanged work
experiences from their independent and
collaborative storytelling projects and
benefited from the apprenticeship with some
of the most important "Arab Iliad" and
spontaneous storytellers.
This art apprenticeship was organised under
the umbrella of the "Hakaya" project by The
Arab Education Forum and the Arab Theatre
Training Centre, in collaboration with
director Hassan Gretley of the Egyptian
theatre group El Warsha, the Jesuit and
Freres Association in Minia and Dayer Ma
Ydour Centre in Siwa. Hakaya project is
based on the communication between
generations and their various expertises.
This communication is manifested in its
deepest form through the
apprenticeship/residency open to
storytellers which will be organised by the
project annually.
The participants met for the first part of
this apprenticeship with the last of the
Hilaliyyeh epic poets, Hajj Sayyed al-Dawi,
for six days. During the apprenticeship, the
participants worked along several axes, most
importantly to benefit from Sayyed Dawi who
narrated segments of the Newborn section of
the Hilaliye which tells the stories of the
birth of the epic protagonists and their
family tress, as well as the Leadership
section, the Taghreebeh (immigration), and
the Orphans anthology (diwan).
The majority of the participants had a sense
of community and were active in civil
societies and institutions, they were not
only young storytellers but also artists
with a social and artistic sense which they
hope to invest. They also hope to develop
their storytelling expertise and experience
through community work.
With such a diverse group, the participants
came up with a variety of new projects which
were discussed through apprenticeship such
as a storytelling festival in Morocco and a
living memory project in Alexandria.
Networking between the participants took
place as many of the projects strongly
related to heritage. Through collaboration
and assistance, the participants worked in
joint projects and offered ideas to enrich
others. Some side themes were discussed,
such as the relation between storytelling
and theatre which included a trip to the
Stick dancing school in Malawi Centre in
Minia. Hasan El Geretly, the apprenticeship
facilitator in Minya, added that
storytelling is the most active form of
artistic expression and the most widely
practiced in the Arab World, as Scheherazade
told stories to avoid death, we tell stories
to live.
Hundreds of kilometres away in the midst of
the desert is a location where once your
foot steps, the wheel of time stops and
takes you back thousands of years where you
land in a strange world. In this bizarre
world reality mixes with superstition, tales
with mythology, rituals exceed holidays and
celebrations to create a myth called the
oasis of Egyptian "Siwa." The participants
spent five days in the oasis of Siwa where
they met local spontaneous storytellers. The
isolation of this oasis preserved the local
Amazigh heritage. The participants also met
with the Sheikhs (heads) of the tribes, and
the Lebanese/French storyteller Jihad
Darwish held a storytelling training
session. On the margins of the
apprenticeship, the participants visited
some tourism sites such as the Cleopatra
Spring and the natural reserve at Siwa
Oasis.
The twelve-day apprenticeship concluded the
first stage of the "Hakaya" project which
started in November 2006. The second project
meeting was held in collaboration with the
Creative Forum for Independent Theatre
Groups in Alexandria on the 8th and 9th of
February 2008 where the first stage of this
project was discussed and future stages of
joint work were considered.
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