El Miraya El ‘Arabia - Arabic version

The show “El Miraya El ‘Arabia“, was presented in Cairo for the first time the 26th and 27th of June at the Rawabet Townhouse as a work in progress. it was presented in february 2012 at the Irondale Ensemble in Brooklyn (NYC).

AN ARAB IN MY MIRROR
Text: Riad Gahmi and Philippe Vincent
Arabic translation: Nabil Gahmi
English translation: Bob Lipman
Directed by: Philippe Vincent and Florence Girardon
Music: Bob Lipman
Costumes: Cathy Ray
Lights: Julie-Lola Lanteri-Cravet
with: Anne Ferret Riad Gahmi Florence Girardon Bob Lipman Philippe Vincent and Solafa Ghanem (Egypt)
or Scarlet Maressa Rivera (USA) Solafa Ghanem (Egypt) or Estelle Clément Bealem (France)

and the voice of Catherine Hargreaves and the participation of Terry Greiss.

Coproduction: Scenes, Theater of Venissieux (France), CCN-Rilleux la Pape (France), Theatre of Marseilles Bernardines (France), Forum Freies Theater Düs- seldorf (RFA). With the help of Institut Français and FACE (French American Cultural Exchange).

Through a gallery of portraits, from person in charge to simple witness, from the Algerian war to the Egyptian revolution, through the attacks of September 11, we paint an intimate picture of the story of these relationships, sometimes of attraction, sometimes of repulsion, of the love and hate which bind the West to the so-called «Arab world». A sounding board for the multitude of voices that make up this story, insoluble in the politics of Manichaeism.
Fifty anachronistic individualities: French, foreigners, gas station attendants, traders, barbers, hostages, policemen, unemployed, shoe shiners, a stewardess, WTC1 bellhop, from the sixties to the present day, gathered together in one place. Here, it is less the answer we are interested in, than the multitude of sensations, of points of view, less the answer, if there is one, than history on an intimate level».