‘Now it’s a theater’: Ahmed El Attar on the new Rawabet Art Space

When Rawabet Art Space, then Rawabet Theater, announced it would be shuttering its operations in 2019, Cairo's community of artists and art-goers were left stunned, even bereaved. Since its opening in 2005, as a companion space to the renowned Townhouse Gallery, Rawabet had been one of only a few homes for local performing arts — its vibrant roster of contemporary dance and theater shows had been consistently dragging audiences past the mechanics’ district on Champollion Street and into its modest playhouse.

But for Ahmed El Attar — playwright, cultural manager and director of the D-CAF Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival and Rawabet’s current artistic curator — the theater’s closure presented the perfect opportunity to renovate the space. “I always felt Rawabet had to be something more,” Attar told Mada Masr. In March 2021, after a substantial renovation, Rawabet re-opened to the public with a facelift and a mission to make the venue financially sustainable. Ever since, it has held space for a variety of shows that range from contemporary dance and experimental music to classical theater.

Before it was up for grabs, Rawabet was part of the Townhouse Gallery for contemporary art, which ceased its operations in 2019 following a turbulent period that included a police raid in 2015 and ended with them not being allowed to renew their lease.

Mada Masr spoke to Ahmed El Attar about his vision for the new Rawabet.

Sara Elkamel: After being a home for the performing arts for almost 15 years, Rawabet’s forced closure in 2019 was deeply upsetting to many. And it remained in this precarious position until you took it over as artistic curator in March 2021, under your production company Orient for Film and Theatre Productions.

Ahmed El Attar: Honestly, I don’t do much curating; we just rent Rawabet out. We want to keep it alive. There’s no curatorial practice per se. The idea is to keep it open and somehow sustainable.

SK: What was your motivation for reviving Rawabet?

AA: It all started when Rawabet closed down in 2019. We [Orient Productions and Studio Emad Eddin] had reopened the [American University in Cairo’s] Falaki Theatre [in 2012], and ran it until 2017, when AUC took it back. Between you and me, it was a relief. We had grown exhausted with its operation. It’s never easy when you’re dealing with a big institution. But anyway, AUC had taken back Falaki and adopted a new pricing scheme [for renting out the space], making it much less accessible to a large part of the performing arts sector. They do collaborations, of course, and they still offer discounts for large events, but at the end of the day, the new pricing scheme is an obstacle for many artists.

I belonged to a generation that had nothing available to it. At the beginning of my theater career, we performed at the Institut Français d'Égypte, which had a very small stage, and the Swiss Club, which was also very unequipped. We even performed in my house. There was no adequate venue. But then suddenly we started finding a multitude of new spaces: Rawabet, the Jesuit Cultural Center and the Falaki Theater when the AUC let go of its operation ten years ago. Then we found ourselves in a moment when we were losing two of these spaces: the Jesuit burned down [in 2021] and AUC took back the Falaki Theater, so it was a real shame that Rawabet was also shut down.

We [Orient for Film and Theatre Productions] then decided to take Rawabet over. We were very aware that we were the only ones capable of running a venue like this because we’ve done it before — we have the staff and the know-how. We know how to run a venue in Egypt. It was either we do this, or the sector would collapse. That was the choice we had to make. Luckily, Al-Ismaelia for Real Estate Investment is the owner of the venue. I talked to [Al-Ismaelia Chairman and CEO] Karim Shafei, and we came to an agreement: we would rent Rawabet for a very symbolic price while we renovate it and get it off the ground.

I had many reservations about Rawabet, even in its heyday. It’s true that there are many ways to make theater: there’s street theater, poor theater — there was even a coffee shop theater in Egypt in the 1960s. Performance can take place in a multitude of spaces. But I was always thinking that, at the end of the day, if you have an actual theater in a city like Cairo, where there aren’t that many independent spaces, then it’s such a waste to be working in an unequipped theater. It was not fit to be a performing arts space. 

I always felt that Rawabet could still grow, especially after having operated for all these years. It was such a long time for it to remain an old, decrepit garage. When they [Townhouse Gallery] left it, the first thing I thought about was how to renovate it. How to upgrade it to host proper local and international shows. The agreement with Karim was that we’d take the theater, renovate it ourselves, and in return, we’d have something like a year without rent, or a very symbolic rent. And this is what ended up happening.

We had just managed to get funds to renovate the space, and then COVID-19 broke out. We basically spent the first year of COVID completing the space’s renovations, because it did need a full renovation. We added a lobby in a front-facing area that had previously been unused. We bought Rawabet’s equipment as well as our own, and we invested in new equipment. As a small theater, we’re fully equipped. ​​It’s a real theater now.

SK: Where did the funding for these renovations come from?

AA: From the British embassy, the Dutch embassy and a bit from the Goethe-Institut in Cairo.

SK: What are your favorite performances so far in Rawabet’s new era?

AA: I travel often, so I haven’t seen everything, and it’s only been a year [of operation]. But contemporary dance, such as the shows by Nasa4Nasa and Carol Akkad, were very popular with audiences. And that’s always been the case with dance — even at the Falaki Theater, dance would always draw a larger audience than theater. Maybe it’s because it’s a new form of expression freed from the traditions of text, acting and decor associated with theater, drawing a different, often younger audience. Stand-up comedy has also been very successful. We’re trying to host music events, but that’s challenging. Of course, there’s a shortage of activity in the local theater scene in general right now.

SK: I felt that Rawabet’s renovation has also allowed for an expansion of the types of theater performances that can take place at Rawabet. For example, in your adaptation of Duncan Macmillan’s interactive play Every Brilliant Thing, actress Nanda Mohamed used the lobby to talk to the audience before the performance and hand out instructions to guide their participation in the show. Can you tell us a little bit about this project? 

AA: I first came across Every Brilliant Thing when I was taking part in the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2017, where it was being performed. [The British Council’s art programs head,] Cathy [Costain,] told me about the show so I tried to get tickets, but it was sold out — I’m actually glad I never saw it. When they later launched a project to translate contemporary European theater into Arabic, the British Council sent us work by five or six contemporary writers from the UK, including Duncan Macmillan. I passed all of this on to [theater director and professor] Mahmoud El Lozy, asking him to select the best two or three. He ended up choosing Every Brilliant Thing. When I read it, I thought it was a great text because it deals with a very challenging and heavy topic, depression and suicide, in a clever, light and deep way. It has everything — it’s funny, but it’s also powerfully emotional. Nanda is an amazing actress, and I guess my adaptation was successful, but I was also working with a great text, so I followed it to the letter. I only changed the cultural references. It’s really a lesson in theater. Ultimately, it comes down to a very simple text, a script, an actor and a soundtrack. There are no set designs or props, so you could do it anywhere and with very little.

SK: It also seems that in your approach to relaunching Rawabet, you weren’t just driven by a motivation to put on more production-heavy performances, but even more so by making the venue financially sustainable enough to be able to hold any type of show at all, even if it’s a “simple” or low-maintenance production, so to speak. 

AA: Exactly. Ultimately, it’s all related. The reservations I had were over the quality of the space, but also over the ideology behind it. I mean, the “art for free”/ “art for all” idea doesn’t work. First of all, it’s a completely false premise; the idea that making art for free allows it to actually reach people who can’t afford it. Studies conducted in France, as well as in other countries that really think about and support the arts, have debunked this idea. Painter and activist Fernand Léger once did an experiment in the Louvre Museum, where they opened the museum for free with the intention of attracting the masses, including factory workers, for example. But they never came. And when they did come, they headed straight for the Mona Lisa. The primary obstacle to going to an arts institution is not the cost, but the slew of social, cultural and emotional hurdles that also stand in the way. Money comes later. That’s why Rawabet was frequented by the same audience over and over again — it almost became a family affair; we go and we don’t pay, and the circle stays the same. The artist remains poor and the venue is nowhere near sustainable. Ultimately, the venue is never rehabilitated, the performances are of poor quality and the audience is static: so it dies.

SK: Is that why you’ve decided to step back from curating and instead rent [the venue] out, to circumvent the sustainability issue?

AA: Yes. We currently rent the venue out for LE4,000 a night and require LE2,000 for set-up. We’re also fully equipped, so these rates include equipment and front of house expenses [ticket sales, cafeteria]. It’s really affordable. But we also pay very little rent now. Next year, we’ll start paying more, so we’ll need to figure out another equation then.

But the idea is to make the equation relatively sustainable for everyone. After taxes and the vendor’s share, the net ticket sales go directly to the artist. We’ve had many sold-out shows, such as the contemporary dance performances by Nasa4Nasa and Carol Akkad, and they were selling LE150 tickets, so they were making money. And because of the tickets, there’s been a new audience. It’s not that we don’t want the old audience. But there are now people coming who have never been to the theater before. The possibilities are much more open.

Outreach is something we can begin to work on, like we’ve done with D-CAF for the past four years, where we dedicate a certain number of tickets to organizations working with specific marginalized communities, and people who’ve never experienced performing arts in this way. Sometimes we’re surprised by how much they enjoy what they watch.

SK: This year D-CAF celebrated its 10th anniversary. Congratulations. I remember a few years ago, you told me that as someone who has had their work showcased regionally and internationally since the mid-1990s, you were eager to see a proper international festival in Cairo, and that's when you met Karim Shafei of Al-Ismaelia [for Real Estate Development], only to discover you had a shared vision for a downtown arts festival. I’m curious to know how Ismaelia's support has changed D-CAF over the years?

AA: Honestly, since D-CAF started, Ismaelia’s support has been consistent. They offer spaces and some money. I can imagine, and I’m just guessing, that not everyone in the organization sees the benefit, but I think it’s Karim’s vision that’s pushing everything forward. There are definitely other projects that Ismaelia involves itself in that have a much bigger profile and appeal to the certain clientele that they target.

SK: I remember going to art shows in the very run-down La Viennoise [a 19th century hotel in downtown Cairo] a few years ago, which Ismaelia has owned for years and rented out to local artists as an exhibition space. One Viennoise exhibition I particularly remember was named “Kharya” (“Piece of Shit”), featuring work by Ganzeer, Hany Rashed, Ahmed Hefnawy and others. Their artwork, which responded to the 2011 revolution, drew a massive audience. I just recently discovered that the crumbling hotel was restored by Ismaelia in 2018, and is currently being used as the headquarters of a financial services company.

AA: Ultimately, Ismaelia is a real-estate company that targets high-end clients. Once they invest in a building, they want to attract high-end clients. So they want to find different uses for spaces like La Viennoise or Cinema Radio [a 1940s venue modeled after Radio City Music Hall in New York City]. It becomes a different game, which is fair, because ultimately it’s a business. We can’t blame a business for being a business.

It’s important for people to have a vision and at the same time, what I like about Ismaelia, other than the fact that they’re consistent in their support, is that they’re not imposing. There are only a handful of businessmen in Egypt investing in the arts, and the people who do so usually do it for their own personal exposure, not for the art or the artist.

SK: In general, downtown Cairo has been radically changing over the past 10 years. I remember, for instance, for the 2015 edition of D-CAF, you had scheduled street performances, and then at the last minute there was a crackdown on coffee shops in the area, so you moved the performances inside. Do you feel like the tension in downtown has eased, or have you just adapted to the limitations?

AA: We adapted. We came to understand that downtown is not a place for public performances. So we just adapted to that, because we won’t go through the same cycle every year only to reach the same results. We got the message and we moved on. We’ve also evolved into a festival. In the first four years, we used to hold a film program, but now we’ve almost abolished the film program, because as a festival, we have to look at those around us in the sector. Zawya has established its presence and I don’t want to compete with anyone. Or, to put it differently, they do the job much better than we do, so it no longer made sense for us to continue hosting a film program. It’s the same with visual arts. We used to have these huge exhibitions, but then we realized that there are other people who are constantly curating work, so we took a step back there as well.

It’s the same with music. I remember in the first edition of Cinema Radio, we had 12 concerts, including Oka Wi Ortega and She7ta; it was their first time performing in concert — not at a wedding or on the street. But the scene has changed radically since 2012. We featured Wegz in an opening act for Abyusif in 2019; he wasn’t known at the time. Now these musicians are superstars. So, we have to reflect. As D-CAF, it’s not my role to find out who the next big guy is and get him to play, my role is to discover and observe the alternative scene. If the alternative becomes mainstream, it’s out of my jurisdiction, because now I can’t sell LE500 or LE1,000 tickets.

SK: If the past 10 years are any indication, then downtown Cairo will likely remain a contentious neighborhood for some time — between Ismaelia’s plans to resurrect the area and the dormant political tension. Do you still believe D-CAF will be resilient?

AA: Of course it’s resilient. Look, we know where we are, we know the environment we’re living in and its boundaries, so we work within those boundaries in order to survive. We feel like what we present to the audience is very vital. What I felt this year, more than any other year, is that the festival is becoming known across the city. Its reach is growing wider than the local niche audience it had before.