Egyptian [deleted by mod] Monologues

In Egypt, 'dramatic' push for women's voices

Cairo - A young woman stands under the spotlight inside a small theater at the elite American University, looking defiantly into the audience.

She is "Muslim Woman," one of four actresses performing a skit of the same name put on by Cairo's Bussy Project, a three-year-old troupe of playwrights-turned-anthropologists.

Project participants say they are tired of women's issues being ignored or pushed aside in Egypt, but are also upset at the way that many in the West think about Arab and Muslim women.

Since 2006, the project – named after the Arabic command, "Look!" – has collected stories from Egyptian women about some of the country's most taboo topics, including street harassment, sexual abuse, divorce, female circumcision, and the confusion that arises in a culture that discourages male-female interaction but makes women's primary social responsibilities marriage and childbearing.

Each spring, these interviews are transformed into monologues that the group weaves together into a play.

Bussy was inspired by Eve Ensler's Pulitzer Prize-winning play "The Vagina Monologues," which played only once here in 2005 before running into trouble with the school.

The actors, too, had problems with it – but for a very different reason: It didn't seem relevant to Egyptian society.

" 'The Vagina Monologues' had stories from Bosnia and all over the world, but only one story about the Middle East, which was about Lebanon," says Mariham Iskander, an energetic director at Bussy.

"We felt like our region was mostly ignored," she says. "These weren't our stories, so we decided to write them ourselves."

Armed with pens and notebooks, the Bussy Project set out to find more Egyptian voices.

Sondos Shabayek, a director, joined the Bussy Project after watching one of the show's first performances in 2006. Watching it in the audience made her feel as if she was not alone in grappling with harassment and sexism on a daily basis.

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http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0602/p04s01-wome.html