Rewriting Narratives in Egyptian Theatre: Translation, Performance, Politics ed. by Sirkku Aaltonen and Areeg Ibrahim (review)

Rewriting Narratives in Egyptian Theatre: Translation, Performance, Politics is an ambitious collection of thirteen essays, authored by theorists and practitioners, that centres on the import and export of scripted drama to and from Egypt. Fusing theatre studies, translation studies, and cultural studies, the essays argue boldly and persuasively for a broad understanding of dramatic translation. "[T]he written script," the editors explain, "hardly ever marks the end of the process but only a beginning of an endless chain of new rewritings" (119). Philanthropic foundations, government-supported institutions, publishing houses, universities, and commercial and non-profit theatres commission and support the creation of translations, which then move from playwright to translator to directors, actors, designers, critics, and audiences. More than a technical process of matching linguistic equivalents, this collection shows, dramatic translation is a form of "rewriting," which interweaves a set of culturally specific textual and performative practices.

Editors Sirkku Aaltonen and Areeg Ibrahim are both scholars and practising translators. It is this combined understanding of theory and practice that characterizes their analysis of the numerous and linked forms of theatre "rewriting." They divide these forms into four categories: intercultural, interlingual, intercontextual, and intermedial, which also comprise the four sections of the book. This overlapping and "somewhat blurred" (7) categorization is not a weakness but rather a testament to the complex and inseparable processes by which dramatic texts are translated, transformed, and reconstructed. While most essays in the collection are fertile case studies of rewriting scripted dramas, the editors expand the definition of "narratives" to include rewritings of Egyptian theatre history, the reformulation of theatre criticism in Egypt, and the transfer of theatrical models (in this case Augusto Boal's Theatre of the Oppressed) into an Egyptian context. The editors complete each section with a "testimonial" from a theatre practitioner – a playwright, translator, critic, and filmmaker, respectively – each of whom reflects on his or her experience of creating, translating, reviewing, or documenting Egyptian theatre.

The first section on "Intercultural Rewriting" examines theatrical border crossings, or how drama makes its way from one culture to another. The essays examine the socio-ideological motivations that have propelled both Egyptian and western institutions and individuals to translate, publish, or canonize the work of certain Egyptian playwrights while neglecting or ignoring the work of others of equal importance and influence. Ibrahim's "Politics of Choice and Cultural Representation in Translating Egyptian Drama between Two Revolutions (1952–2011)" explores this issue in the context of several state-supported projects, particularly the Contemporary Arabic Literature series of the General Egyptian Book Organization. She uncovers a curatorial process for selecting plays for translation that was crucially affected by playwrights' political standings and the resonance of their work in particular historical moments. Such state-supported projects nevertheless published a far more capacious and balanced selection than private publishing houses, for which "eminence and thus marketability of certain dramatists" (53), among other issues, took precedence. Marvin Carlson's "Tawfīq al-Hāk īm as the Representative Egyptian Dramatist in the West" discusses the politics and contingencies surrounding the ubiquitous translations of one particular playwright into French and English. He reveals the propensity of western scholars and institutions to translate and publish a select number of al-Hāk īm's texts, which, although not his most celebrated plays in Egypt, best satisfied orientalist assumptions about Egyptian society.

The essays in the second section, "Interlingual Rewriting," analyse translations of Shakespeare into Arabic over several generations as well as their performance in Egypt. Omaya Ibrahim Khalifa's essay, "Allusion in Three Translations of Hamlet into Arabic," for instance, explores translation as a historically specific act, which, depending on the political context and priorities of the translators, produces very different versions of the same play. The section ends with a delightfully detailed testimonial from Mohamed Enani on his approach to translating Shakespeare. Enani insists that dramatic translation is...