AUC club hosts performance about women empowerment

 Sunday November 3, 2013

 

 BY ZEINA MAKAREM AND MIRIT AGAIRY

“Hekayat Bent Al-Baqal,” a storytelling play performed by author Arafa Abdel Rassoul on Monday, discussed women in Egyptian society and the values she personally learned growing up.

The event was hosted by Heya, one of AUC’s clubs, a women’s empowerment initiative.

“Hekayat Bent Al-Baqal means the stories of a shopkeeper’s daughter and that’s exactly what I told,” said Abdel Rassoul.

Abdel Rassoul’s first story touched on some of the principles she learned from working with her father who was a shopkeeper in a poor neighborhood.

She seeked independence by selling movie tickets whilst a student in order to support herself as she hated relying on her father for an allowance.

Throughout her second story, Abdel Rassoul discussed the culture that prevailed in Egypt during the sixties by portraying how women were raised to think back then.

Abdelrasoul’s father broke the law by selling sugar at a higher price than the one set by the government. When the authorities found out, he escaped; leaving her in charge of the shop, which eventually led to her arrest. But, being a minor at the time, she was released.

In the police station, during the sixties, she recalls seeing a beautiful woman walk into the station wearing an elegant dress.

The officer whipped the girl’s feet, but as she was wearing a dress, he asked her to lie down and put her feet up and to hold her dress around her legs. Every time the officer whipped, the girl would let go of the dress.

Abdel Rassoul recalls seeing a sight she considered unusual; the girl was wearing black underwear, the very same kind her mother told her only “bad” girls wore.

The story portrayed how women were raised to think back then; a promiscuous girl was identified by the color of her underwear.

In her performance, Abdelrasoul demonstrated several unique storytelling skills, most notably her humor and the effects she added to the story, like sounds, movement, and voice-imitations.

Additionally, she was able to relate to the young generation of the audience through her colloquial Egyptian vocabulary, which made the audience entranced by her stories.

“I very much enjoyed the performance. It was a new and different kind of performance than the ones we have become accustomed to nowadays,” said Farah Shimy, Heya’s Marketing Head.

Abdelrasoul has always loved theatre, yet, she did not consider storytelling as an art until she came upon it accidentally.

Once, while in a casting session, she auditioned by telling a story to the director.

The director was so taken by her storytelling skills, that she was requested to recite her stories in the same manner.

Ever since, Abdel Rassoul and her husband, Mostafa Darwish, who is also her editor and director, have been performing storytelling events everywhere.

“The media will not condemn the art of storytelling to its death because of the rise in production of movies and so on,” said Darwish, adding, “storytelling is [an] art that has existed forever and will continue to exist. It is the method with which a story goes on forever.”