Majalla wrote a great summary / review of the conversation here: http://www.majalla.com/eng/2012/04/article55230698

The event was framed by music from our fabulous house band Fantazia Duo. Our steadfast hugely talented friends through the project. shukran.

However, This is not the end for the Cafe project.

We return for a one-off cafe in May, as part of the East is East Festival with the wonderful Tea and Mirella Hodzic, with Vanya Krawczyk. Born in Sarajevo Bosnia, sistersTéa and Mirella Hodzic sing gorgeous close harmonies and haunting melodies. They will be accompanied by the Polish Roma virtuoso accordionist Vanja Krawczyk.

And then the cafes kick off our journey into the countries of the Former Soviet Union in the autumn… More info to follow.

Diverting out rehearsal process from Alexandria to Fez in the space of 3 weeks caused incredible challenges; from finding accommodation for 30 people to gaining the appropriate visas for all our artists to be able to join us. Not only were we attempting to start to rehearse essentially two plays in eleven weeks, but we had all these other challenges going on as well. It was always going to be difficult, but Tim’s ability to rise up and lead us through tough times has been incredible.

Thanks to our amazing producer Roy Luxford  we have had made many wonderful friends in Fez who have all enabled this process to happen, without them, this project may have ground to a halt.

The welcome we had from this beautiful city has been so friendly; it has been a wonderfully rich and entirely appropriate place to build out production.

Now, as we a start to pack up our props for shipping to Toronto, the work in the rehearsal Courtyard is getting more and more intense. We are beginning to run stories into stories and are seeing the shape of the show. It’s an exciting time as we start to see how the final piece could look and feel. There’s still a lot to do, but the early signs are that it is going to be an incredible event.

It is a very emotional experience for me to see the actors and musicians, many of whom are having to rise above very difficult circumstances in their home countries, create such powerful and brilliant work. We are so lucky to be working with these talented people on stage and back stage and it is a true testament to Tim and his vision that we are all working together.

This week we have been working on stories in the first part of the production. These include Aziz and Aziza which tells the sorry tale of Aziz whose sexual naiveté leads him to become a pawn in a dangerous game of love, jealousy and lust played out by 3 women.

We have also been working on the story of a husband who brutally murders his wife when he discovers she has been having an affair. When he finds out that his information was incorrect and his wife was innocent, the husband plucks out his right eye and renounces his life to follow the path of a dervish.

Tim began this project with the aim of bringing to life the stories as they are in the oldest Arabic texts and to reveal their true character.

Each story has its own rhythm and pace and requires its own way of telling. Tim works with the actors and musicians to discover the best way to tell the story. His process involves mining the text for the reality of the story’s world whilst the musicians, led by Ahmad el Sawy and Bastien Legatta come up with a musical theme that is then developed during rehearsal with the actors.

For the actors there is the challenging task of narrating a story whilst also being a central character within it. Tim has worked in this way on other stories such as his Grimm Tales. He works with the actors to understand that they must have an action and intention when narrating just as they do when they are speaking dialogue.

This detailed text work ensures that the actors are alive and in the moment, constantly looking to affect the other characters and the audience when they are on stage.

Experiencing Tim work is like watching a surgeon peel back and reveal the inner workings of the body. His ability to dissect the stories to discover their deep, rich reality is thrilling. He works relentlessly, constantly challenging the actors to mine ever further.

And the result of this hard work? We shall find out soon enough but I know it will be extraordinary.

Every morning we start at 9am with a warm up preparing the body through yoga and vocal exercises. At 10am we work with choreographer Imen Smaoui on the ensemble sections within the stories. Imen’s approach is to create a real sense of physical freedom for the actors getting them to respond to the environment of the scene as instinctively as possible.

Our warm up sessions are underscored by the musicians who do their own warm up in one of the beautiful rooms within the palace.

At 11.30 we begin work on the stories. This week we are working on Part 2 – stories that contain magical birds, serious physical assaults and other theatrically challenging events. The first story session involves us editing and adapting the text into a script and working out what language each line is spoken in.

After a delicious lunch cooked by our in-palace chef Tariq we begin to get the stories on their feet; slowly but surely bringing the characters to life.

Rehearsals finish at 8pm and then the production meetings start where we discuss props, costume, lighting and set.

Our costume designer Zolaykha is currently making prototype costumes and is away from rehearsal.

Oum-Keltoum Belkassi our designer is with us tonight and we will discuss the many props that we need for the show.

This week we are also lucky to have Hanan Al-Shaykh with us and she will be helping us to make improvements to the text.

It’s a long old day, but with such an inspirational team of actors, musicians, stage management and creatives, it goes very quickly!

We are in the magical, Medieval town of Fez in Morocco and our rehearsal room is the stunning Palais el Mokri.

This will be our home for the next 10 weeks as we devise and create our production.

We are working with 19 actors and 5 musicians cast from across the Arabic world. We have an Arabic and Scottish stage management team, a Tunisian choreographer, a Moroccan designer, an Afghan and American costumes team and with our UK producer and Canadian Commissioners, this really is a truly international project.

We are adapting 20 stories from the original Alf Layla Wa Layla stories. These stories have been written a new by Lebanese writer Hanan Al-Shaykh and translated into Arabic, English and French.

The stories will be performed in Arabic, English and French and will be an epic retelling spread over 6 hours.

More details about our creative process will come over the following weeks.

Hawi follows the journey of Youssef, a prisoner released after five years of solitary confinement in order to fetch a sheath of important documents, with a number of seemingly unconnected subplots, concerning a group of aspiring songwriters, a satellite TV executive searching for a show host, and an elderly juggler. Filmed with non-professional actors and and unpaid crew, the film has an dynamism and roughness, beautifully depicting daily Egyptian life.

We showed the film alongside our fantatic house band the Fantazia duo who wowed us with their music.

The actuall screener barely made it to London. Ibrahim caught up in the extraordinary events of the last six weeks in Egypt was out of contact. We eventually managed to track down the film and it left Cairo and arrived in London, after being trapped by the curfew, with literally minutes to spare.  It was worth the adventure. The film was hugely appreciated by our full-to-bursting guests.

Our new Cafe house band Fantazia treated us to a beautiful set of music from the Maghreb on oud and darbuka.

Our poets Ehab Bseisso, who had come down especially from Cardiff for the evening, Fathieh Saudi and Fadhil Assultani took to the stage with host Dr Stefan Sperl Senior Lecturer in Arabic at SOAS and actress Dina Mousawi.

Each poet gave us a small window into their work with a reading of their own poems in Arabic and English and then discussed their inspirations which ranged across Rabia  al-Adawiyya, Mahmoud Darwish and Badir Shakie Assayab.

As the World’s media was spinning with stories and images from out of Egypt, it was fantastic to have an opportunity to hear some rich beautiful words of poetry spoken in Arabic in Central London.

Next month, we will screen the UK premiere of Hawi – an Egyptian film which won Best Arab Film at Doha Film Festival last October. Set in Alexandria, Hawi tells the story of Youssef who is released from prison after five years in solitary confinement and a number of his encounters with daily life in Alexandria. Director Ibrahim El Batout has talked of his ‘desire to get closer to everyday reality; subject matter, the lives of the so called ordinary people; and ideology; the hope of political renewal in Egypt, which goes along with the loss of hope coinciding with the failure of the renewal.’

It may have been cold outside and festive planning nearing fever pitch, but Khyam took us on a journey of discovery that led us away from the cold, pre Christmas London night.

His ability to play the oud is exemplary and the different styles of music that he offered was surprising and inspiring.

From rock riffs to a brilliant Oum Kalsoum tribute, we were treated to the differing sounds of the oud from a real master.

The cafe took place at Al Hasaniya Moroccan Women’s centre, located at the base of London’s famous Trellick Tower. It’s the only centre of its kind in London and the United Kingdom serving specifically the needs of Moroccan and Arabic-speaking women and their families.

During the evening we heard about the incredible journeys these ladies have made from Morocco to the United Kingdom. We heard about their struggles and successes and celebrated the vital role these women and this centre play in their community.

Soufiane provided wonderful live music and Fatima cooked up the best cous cous I’ve ever tasted.

We also took the opportunity to discuss our next participation project- a women’s choir set up in homage to Oum Kalsoum. The feedback was extremely positive and we look forward to developing the idea further.

Thanks to Alan for the pictures and thanks to all at Al Hasaniya for making us so welcome.

You can find out more about Al Hasaniya by visiting their website:

Our October cafe acted as a warm up to our Lyrical Alliance gig at the Roundhouse. We decided to take a closer look at the poems that had inspired the Arabic Hip Hop artists we worked with.

We invited Dr. Stefan Sperl, senior lecturer at SOAS and Algerian Hip Hop artist Rabah Donquishoot to give us an introduction to the seven extraordinary, pre-Islamic poems that make up the Mu’allaqat.

Dr. Sperl gave us his take, coming to the poems as a Western observer  on the traditions within, whilst Rabah gave us his thoughts as an artist linking himself to these poets as 5th century rappers.

We were led on a journey through the poems and learnt about the architecture of camels, bitter apples and how good the Arabic language is at developing rhymes.  

Rabah spoke about the poems and their influence on his work and how he considers Hip Hop to be the new Mu’allaqat.

He then took up the mic with fellow Lyrical Alliance rappers Samm and Rayess Bek and they performed one of their tracks that takes inspiration from the poems.

It was a fascinating evening that showed just how relevant these ancient poems are to our contemporary, urban world today.

Thanks to Momo for being excellent hosts as usual and Yiannis Katsaris for taking these fantastic photos.