The Cairo international festival for experimental theatre

Name	Country
Amal Bakir	Egypt
Osvaldo Pellettieri	Argentina
Paolo Lorimer	Italy
Juan Antonio Hormigon	Spain
John O’Neal	USA
Dorota Ficon	Poland
Dick McCaw	England
Raja Ben Ammar	Tunisia
Clare Grant	Australia

Journalist, theater critic and member of the Egyptian Women writers Association.

· Graduated from the Faculty of Law, Cairo University. However, she was destined to join Al-Ahram newspaper instesd of working as a lawyer.

· Has supervised the last page on Al-Ahram for about twenty years and also the "Theatre Arts" page for thirty years on which she reflects on the theatrical movement both nationally and internationally.

· Has been influenced throughout her career by the most distinguished theatre critics in Egypt such as Muhammad Mandour, Aly Al-Ra'ey, Rashad Rushdy and Louis Awad.

Has managed to interview such great international writers and artists such as Arthur Miller, Luciano Pavarotti, Galina Ulanova, Anthony Quinn in addition to most Egyptian artists and playwrights

· Director of the Argentinean and Latin American Art History Institute, College of Philosophy and Letters, Universidad de Buenos Aires.

· Founder and director of GETEA (Argentinean Theater Studies Group) and director of Teatro XXI.

· Has been Visiting Professor at the Universities of Montreal, Valencia, Alcala de Henares, Trieste, and the Universidad de la Republica (Uruguay).

· His numerous publications focus on literary theory and criticism and Argentinean and Latin American Theater.

· Studied acting and directing in San Francisco University and joined immediately after getting back to Italy “Potiga Teatral” under the direction of Vittorio Gassman.

· Has worked with many Italian theatre groups, particularly with such contemporary directors as Elio De Capitani, Ferdinando De Bruni, Gabriele Salvatores, Luigi Squarzina, Ivaro Piccardi, Salvo Bitonti and Giuseppe Venetucci.

· Has collaborated during the last ten years with Giancarlo Nanni and Manuela Kustermann and played the leading roles in several productions in Italy and abroad.

· Secretary-General of the Asociacion de Directores de Escena da España (ADE).

· Professor of theatre directing in the Real Escuela Superior de Arte Dramatico de Madrid (RESAD).

· Director of a number of performances for the theatre of Zaragoza University (1962 – 1965). Among them are: Los bandidos, Las galas del difunto y La hija del capitan, Volpone and others

· Studied at the Centre Universitaire International de Formation et Recherches Dramatiques, affiliated to Nancy University in France (1992 – 1995).

· Assistant director for many performances produced by Zaragoza Chamber Theatre (1966 – 1969). Among them are: La dama del olivar, Andorra and La exceptopn y la relgla.

· Director of the School of Theatre at the German Institute in Madrid (1973 – 1978).

· Founded the Compaña de Accion Teatral in 1975 and presented with it such performances as Hombre por hombre, La vengadora de las mujeres and La locandiera.

· Has worked since 1976 as a professor of theatre aesthetics at the Real Escuela Superior de Arte Dramatico de Madrid (RESAD).

· Was selected by the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico to take care of organizing a celebration dedicated to Calderon.

· Member of the Board of Directors of the Festival de Teatro Clasico de Almagro (1983 – 1990).

· Has lectured at various Spanish and international universities and cultural and educational centres.

· Earned a BA degree from Southern Illinois University in 1962. Upon graduation, he became a Field Secretary of the Student Nonviolent coordinating Committee. From this involvement came the Free Southern Theatre which began as the Tougaloo Drama Workshop, founded by him and Gilbert Moses. That theatre's aim was to use theatre as an instrument to stimulate the development of critical and reflective thought aong Black people in the South and to support the efforts of those involved in the Civil Rights Movement.

· Among the plays he has written are Hurricane Season, Where is the Blood of Your Fathers, Preacher Man, Preacher Man! and Jerusalem Gallows Dream.

· Artistic director of Junebug Productions, an organization which takes care of producing plays and funding their touring throughout the States. The most recent play he has written for Junebug is Like Poison Ivy: Variations on Mood Indigo which revolves around Environmental racism and its devastating consequences on the lives of people.

· Has performed and taught in the past 17 years in all but two states of the United States.

· Has written numerous articles published on well-known journals such as The Black Scholar, Tulane Drama Review, Black World and American Dialog.

· Has been visiting professor in the theatre departments of Cornell University and Louisville University.

· Has received many awards and fellowships, among them the Louisiana Artist's Fellowship in Theatre and grants from the Rockefeller and Ford Foundations.

· Founding member of the most important contemporary avant-garde theatre in Poland since the 1980s. She has played about 50 leading roles in the performances staged by that theatre such as Pragmatysci, Witkacy – Autoparodia, Sonata b and others.

· Has performed in a multitude of classical and modern performances. Among them are: Macbeth, Faust, Oedipus Rex and others.

· Trainer of young actors and actresses instructing them how to create that intimate relationship between the performer and the performance.

· Has got several awards and prizes such as the Best Actress award in the Fourth Polish Drama Festival (1998), the First Prize for Creative Young Artists (1999), the Acting Award from the Theatre Actors Syndicate in Poland (2001) and the Audience Award for her achievements with Witkacy Theatre (2005).

· Writer, scholar and specialist in managing theatre companies and festivals.

· Actor, stage manager, musician with the Cambridge Medieval Players, a semi-professional student company (1974 – 1977).

· Graduated in 1978 from Trinity Hall Cambridge University with a 2/1 Degree in English Literature and was awarded a Doctorate in 2003 by the University of London for Bakhtin's Other Theatre, a thesis exploring the relation between the ideas of Mikhail Bakhtin and 20th Century theatre practice.

· Co-founded the ATC London – the Actors Touring Company with director John Retallack in 1978. He was musical director and on stage musician n Retallack's adaptation of Byron's Don Juan (1978 Edinburgh Fringe First Award) and Don Quixote (1980).

· Co-founded the Medieval Players Company with Carl Heap in 1981. Both produced over thirty plays from the Medieval and Renaissance repertoire, including adaptations of Chaucer, Grimmelshausen and Langland. The company became one of Britain's most popular touring theatre companies and it collaborated with the BBC and the Open university on four projects.

· Was appointed in 1993 director of the International Workshop Festival (IWF) and developed a programme exploring the creative dynamics of actor-centered theatre where the experience and knowledge of the actor is considered as an active element in the creative process of making new work.

· Began in 1995 a seven-year programme of workshop festivals entitled A Body of Knowledge, each one of which addressed to a fundamental aspect of the performing artist.

· Published several articles, books and one play script. Among them are: Into Europe – International Training Opportunities in Europe (1994) and An Eye for Movement (2006).

· Studied in the Higher Teachers’ School and Maximilian University, Munich.

· Founding Member of Fu Theatre and director of training courses in dance theatre conducted by the Higher Institute of Theatre in Tunisia.

· Collaborated with the Municipal Professional Theatre in Al-Kaf City, Tunisia and with the New Theatre Group.

· Has written and directed several plays in which she has played the leading roles. Amongst those plays are: Tamtheel Kalam (1980), ‘Araq (1983), Borg Al-Hamaam (1985), Al-Amal (1986), Saken Fi Hay al-Sayyeda (1989), Leila Beida (1992), Bayya’ al-Hawa (1995), Faust (1997), al-Monshaar al-Ha’er (1999) and Hawa Watany (2005).

· Has won numerous awards and prizes such as the Best Actress Award from the Carthage Days Festival in 1987, 1989 and 1995, the Jury Special Award for Best Actress in the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre in 1989, the Grand Prix in the Modern Dance Meetings, Bagnolet, Paris in 1992, the Culture and Letters Presidential Award (1993), and the Alawaeyan Order from King Muhammad VI of Morocco.

· Lecturer in Performance at the University of NSW, where she teaches writing for a range of performance genres and the devising of new work and has directed several major productions with students.

· Founding member of seminal Australian experimental performance group Sydney Front, touring Australia and Europe and was artistic director of Playworks Writers Organization (1993 – 1997).

· Has performed in many new works for performance, including Burn Sonata and Inland Sea, Laquiem and Prelude to the Mary Stuart Tapes.