The New York Times has an article on a play by a Swiss playwright featuring Egyptian muezzins, spurred by the Ministry of Awqaf’s attempt a few years back to synchronize/standardize the call to prayer in Cairo (not sure how much it was ever implemented, actually..) I’m also a little skeptical, as always, of the claim that this play was “too politically touchy” to be performed except once in Cairo, but I don’t know the details. The title of the article “A CAll Silenced in Cairo…” invokes the usual trope that interesting art is always problematic/taboo in the Arab world. (Ironically, it’s in Switzerland that recently there were calls for banning minarets. And as the article mentions, mosques in Germany have been targeted by far-right protests).
On a separate note, I’ll be traveling for the next 10 days, so no posts till the end of the month.
i attended the cairo performance which was excellent. there were sensitivities about the play and the planned second performance had to be canceled. we were not on the guest list and it was hard work talking our way past the tight security at al sawy.
Here’s a devastating review of the play:
http://en.qantara.de/webcom/show_article.php/_c-310/_nr-631/i.html
And thanks for your blog, I enjoy reading here and have discovered lots of books and films because of your articles!