AHMED EL ATTAR
THEATER DIRECTOR’S MENTOR
Ahmed El Attar is an Egyptian independent theater director, playwright, and cultural manager.
He is the founder and general manager of Orient Productions, a leading Cairo-based private production company that offers various services and hosts a number of diverse projects in the fields of entertainment, arts and culture.
El Attar is also the founder and artistic director of The Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival (D-CAF): Egypt’s largest international contemporary arts festival, the Temple Independent Theater Company, Maktabi: Cairo’s only creative office spaces dedicated to the creative sector, and Studio Emad Eddin (SEE) Foundation, a unique project that provides training and rehearsal spaces for independent performing artists in Egypt.
His theatre work has been performed in the most prestigious theaters and festivals in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Sweden, Portugal, Germany, Belgium, Holland, France, Switzerland, Italy, Croatia, Montenegro, the United Kingdom, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Russia, the UAE and the United States of America.
His 2007 play, F**K Darwin or How I Have Learned to Love Socialism, received the Best Actor Award at the 22nd edition of the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre.
In January 2010, El Attar received the prize for Best Theatre Text from the Sawiris
Foundation for Social Development for his play Life Is Beautiful or Waiting for My Uncle from America.
In November 2013, he received the Pioneers of Egypt award Synergos Foundation in the United States.
His latest productions include The Last Supper – which he wrote and directed – deals with the apathy of the Egyptian bourgeoisie and was performed in 2015 as part of the official selection of the sixty-ninth edition of Avignon Festival and at the forty-fourth edition of the
Festival d’Automne in Paris. It has been touring the world ever since.
Before the Revolution 2017, is a show aimed at bringing to the spectator the oppressive atmosphere prior to the Egyptian revolution of 2011. This 45-minute performance mixing between stage, writing, and musical rhythm was performed several times in Egypt and Europe.
El Attar is currently touring internationally with his latest theatre play entitled Mama which was premiered at the 72nd edition of Festival D’Avignon in July 2018.
This performance is concerned with both the role and the impact of ‘the mother’
and women in general, especially in light of Egypt’s traditional family structures
and its patriarchal society.
In 2018 Attar was presented the title of a “Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters” by the French Ministry of Culture for his significant contributions to theater.