ARCHIVES 2018 / MAMA

When men are only passing through, women remain. And in this bourgeois living room in Cairo, they take up all the space. As a place that serves at once to protect family intimacy and to welcome visitors from the outside, this ordinary location provides Ahmed El Attar with countless combinations to express the symbolic and physical imprisonment of the Arab woman and of her children. With Mama, he paints an unforgiving portrait of the mother, made monstrous by her limitless love, and uses his thirteen characters and this living room to expose the audience to a miniature society made up of alternating relationships of power. Each is at the service of the others, and lets him- or herself be buried under things left unsaid. With this play—the last in a trilogy about family—the director dares to shift our point of view on the mother, too often seen as an untouchable object to honour and cherish, in order to make her the mistress of her own destiny, and more largely to explore her responsibility in our time of crisis. Because loving too much or badly has never led to more freedom...

Ahmed El Attar
At once a performer, director, and playwright, Ahmed El Attar tirelessly works on moving the lines of our understanding and always bases his work on reality in order to change our perception of it. His shows find their central questions and storylines in modern Arab society and always focus on oppression, in particular in a family environment, to shine a new light on the habitual. Beyond his work as an artist, Ahmed El Attar is very active in Cairo's cultural scene, where he founded and directs a training centre as well as the Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival.