Spring Play to Continue Dialogue on Sexual Harassment
By: Maya Abouelnasr
@EmEn1125
Photo Credit: News@AUC
The Arts Department is seeking to continue the national conversation on sexual harassment by showcasing different perspectives in five outdoor, site-specific mini-plays at AUC next semester.
Site-specific theater refers to performances outside of the typical theater venue and links the environment with the storytelling, which, for this play, will occur at five different locations at the New Cairo campus.
Attendance will be restricted to small groups of ten audience members wearing masks per mini-play.
Professor of Theater and Theater Program Director Jillian Campana explained that the play, titled You, w-ana too (إنت و أنا كمان ), was inspired by last summer’s local #MeToo movement, starting with the case of the sexual predator Ahmed Bassam Zaki, which received national and international attention.
Each of the five mini-plays will be student-written and will cover a different perspective, which include family and couple, victim and perpetrator, male and female, power and incapacity and bystander.
After each mini-play, attendees will rotate and be taken to the next one by a student guide. Location scouting for the exact venues of the mini-plays is still in progress.
One disclosed idea by the team is taking the perspective of the victim and perpetrator and linking that to the orange groves area due to their somewhat hidden location, inspired by a recent location scouting trip to campus.
The team noticed that the hidden orange groves area contains an empty space that, besides possibly being used for performances, could also represent how both victims and perpetrators alike try to maintain anonymity to avoid scandal.
“No one can ignore it anymore. It’s time for us to pay more attention to this issue and this performance offers a really unique opportunity for us to comment on it,” Campana told The Caravan.
When word broke that Zaki attended AUC from 2016 to 2018, the AUC community called for increased safety measures for the campus, as well as for the university to respond to the allegations.
Campana said that she had been wanting to do a play on sexual harassment two years ago, but added that it may not have piqued as much interest then due to lack of public awareness and salience.
The university has since launched the #AUCSpeakUp initiative, which endeavors to improve upon and reassert the values of making campus a safe, inclusive space for the entire community.
AUC also launched on November 19 the SpeakUp Dialogue series, a series of talks that take place once a month until June 2021, and will feature several prominent figures in Egypt who are actively participating in the ongoing national conversation.
The You, w-ana too team are liaising with the SpeakUp Dialogue series and the #AUCSpeakUp task force with the hope of continuing the open dialogue through their outdoor, site-specific play format.
The team hopes that conversations will be sparked among attendees during the five to ten minute walk from one location to the other and that it can yield a positive change in some people’s perspectives.
Multimedia Journalism alumna Noran Morsi, who is also one of playwrights in the team, echoed this point and commented on the takeaways the team hopes viewers will gain from the overall play.
“The team’s goal is to show different perceptions of sexual harassment, how it can be perceived in different ways and also from the point of view of families, different ages and different types of people,” Morsi told The Caravan.
She added that this has been done in an attempt to have viewers better understand the extent of the issue of sexual harassment.
Morsi also remarked that she hopes viewers, especially those who are not exposed to sexual harassment on a daily basis, come out of the play with more compassion as well as the ability to think outside of their own experiences.
You, w-ana too will be performed in March 2021 at the AUC New Cairo campus to small groups of masked attendees, and those not able to attend on campus will be able to watch either a recording or a livestream.
