🎭 In the heart of Downtown Cairo, tucked away in an alley behind Cinema Radio, sits Rawabet Art Space. Once a gritty run-down garage owned by the Townhouse Gallery, it’s now the black-box beating heart of Egypt’s independent theater scene — a “third space” that exists somewhere between state-sponsored theater and commercial TV and movie glitz.

The crowd that gathers outside waiting to purchase tickets at the tiny box office window is diverse to say the least. A mix of young trendsetters, older intellectuals, upscale professionals, and well-to-do Cairenes who are curious and searching for new experiences beyond the malls and shopping centers of Zayed and New Cairo.

EnterpriseAM sat down with Ahmed El Attar, the godfather of Egypt’s independent theater, whose theater production company, Orient Productions, runs Rawabet, Studio Emad Eddin (a workshop and rehearsal space), and the Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival (D-CAF). We also spoke to the creative entrepreneurs behind two of Egypt’s up-and-coming theater troupes, Kenoma and Stage Left Productions, to discuss the evolution of theater in Egypt and how they are making art and managing what are essentially small startups in the performing arts space.

The origin story

In the 1960s and 70s, Egypt had a thriving national theater scene. This golden era saw Egyptian playwrights like Tawfiq Al Hakim and Youssef Idris create original works exploring social and political themes. Comedic theater also thrived, with beloved plays like Madrassit El Moshaghbeen (1973) and Al Motazawigoon (1978) making their way into our cultural heritage, and which are still being played on repeat half a century later.

By the time El Attar graduated from the American University in Cairo in 1992, Egypt’s theater culture was already in a state of rapid decline. “We had no funding, no space to work, and no space to present our work,” said El Attar. “All we knew was that we wanted to make art. When you’re under that kind of pressure, it forces you to get creative, and you start to look for alternative ways of doing things.”

The alternative theater scene emerged in the late 80s and early 90s from a vacuum. On one side sits government-subsidized theater, burdened by bureaucratic red tape and a bloated payroll of actors and technicians on permanent contracts — a model El Attar describes as an “anomaly” that has disappeared from most of the world. On the other side is the purely commercial private sector, driven almost exclusively by money and “instant gratification.”

“Alternative art is the home-cooked meal in a world of fast food,” El Attar explains. “We looked to fill that void left by state institutions that often fail to engage modern audiences, providing a space where social commentary and artistic risk-taking can coexist.”

Getting creative

When there are no rules, you have the luxury of creating your own playbook. Trilingual, entrepreneurial, and unafraid of a spreadsheet, El Attar was able to tap into funding pools and grants that were available through foreign cultural centers, embassies, and institutions like the Ford Foundation. In 1999, he received funding from the Dutch Embassy to produce his first play, Life is Beautiful, or Waiting for My Uncle from America. Today, he is one of the few Egyptian cultural leaders who can speak the language of both the local underground artist and the international diplomat/benefactor, which has allowed his projects to remain financially viable despite economic downturns.

Independent theater continued to rely on foreign funding instead of ticket sales for nearly two decades. “This was obviously not sustainable. Rule number one when it comes to grants for the arts; the money always dries up,” El Attar tells us. Without the luxury of funding, independent theater troupes began to operate as registered commercial entities that rely on ticket sales.

Today, a small handful of entrepreneurial troupes such as Kenoma and Stage Left are breaking even or even seeing net income on productions. The availability of new downtown performance spaces, namely Rawabet and the AUC’s Falaki Theater, accelerated that process.

In 2021, a newly refurbished Rawabet Art Space opened its doors to Egypt’s performing arts community with new owners and new operators, Al Ismaeleya Real Estate Company and Orient Productions. For a flat fee, EGP 12k per night at today’s rate, performers can get access to the 150-seat theater and all its facilities, including technical equipment, staff, box office, and cafeteria. It’s up to the performers to decide how much they charge for tickets, but prices are typically in the EGP 250-450 range. The model has thus far been a huge success. The Rawabet stage operates at approximately 85% occupancy and is usually booked six to eight months in advance.

The new guard: Bootstrapping the dream

While El Attar represents the institutional backbone of the theater scene, companies like Kenoma and Stage Left represent its entrepreneurial future. Kenoma, founded in 2018 by Moustafa Khalil and Ahmed Essam El Shammaa, focuses on culturally nuanced adaptations of international classics like Reservoir Dogs, Waiting for Godot, and the latest, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest (Moristan). El Shammaa, Kenoma’s content director, translates the plays into Arabic, and more importantly, restructures them with Egyptian flavor and social references for appeal to wider audiences.

“I want to make sure our work is entertaining as well as intellectual. We want to challenge the stigma that highbrow art must be boring,” says Khalil, the founder and artistic director of Kenoma. He explains that the word Kenoma means void or nothingness — which is how he felt about the theater industry in Egypt. Kenoma has been doing a good job of filling the void. Moristan’s eight-night run at the Falaki was so successful that Kenoma is planning to bring it back for a second run in the spring.

“An independent theater production doing eight nights is very rare in Egypt, but we need longer runs in order to make productions more economically viable,” Khalil explains. The problem is that it’s very difficult to predict how well a play will do before it opens, which is why companies are reluctant to book and pay for longer stretches of theater space before they have tested the waters.

Stage Left Productions, led by creative director Mahmoud Sayed, has also carved out a niche with its experimental psychological thrillers. The Bedroom, The Bedroom 2, and his latest production, The Dress Rehearsal, are all fearless explorations of human nature that tackle subjects that were previously taboo on the Egyptian stage. Sayed, an engineer by training, treats each production with the soul of an artist and the precision of a business project, and that’s why his plays work. He made the artistic choice of staging The Bedroom series inside an actual bedroom of a downtown apartment, with audiences scattered around the actors, giving them the unique feeling of being inside the action — even intruding on it.

“We are interested in utilizing locations that are not usually set to receive performances — that is even more difficult than gaining access to normal theaters,” explains Sayed. The Dress Rehearsal is his largest and most expensive production yet, combining musical and stage-based immersive theater as it tells the story of a group of artists rehearsing for a play. At any point in time, there are three or four acts happening simultaneously, and the audience gets to choose which act or which storyline to follow. The Dress Rehearsal opened in late December at the Grand Theater at EDNC in New Cairo and is back for an additional six performances starting 12 January.

The funding gap and the “long run”

Sustainability and growth in 2026 mean moving away from the “one-off” production model. “I choose not to have external funding at all for Stage Left,” says Sayed, who still has a day job working for a grant-funded NGO. “I see how [benefactors] have their own agendas. For my theater, I want to be completely independent.”

Instead, the goal is the “long run.” In the 1960s and 70s, Egyptian plays could run for months or years, much like the Broadway and West End models. “We’ve almost forgotten that,” says El Shammaa. Looking to the future, the ambition is scaling up. Kenoma and Stage Left are both looking to someday push their productions into multi-month runs, and having access to more theater or performance space continues to be one of the sector’s biggest challenges.

For El Attar, the future lies in professionalizing the underground scene and working to develop the sector as a whole. “I think those of us who have been at this for a while have a responsibility to help others,” he told us. Through initiatives like D-CAF and Cairo Arts Tech (CAT) — the first Arabic-language professional training curriculum for theater technicians — Orient Productions is building the infrastructure that will allow the next generation of creative entrepreneurs to take the stage.

Independent theater in Egypt has shifted from being a political statement in the 80s to a resilient creative movement that is seeing its audience grow and become more diversified. The revival of Downtown Cairo is inextricably linked to artistic hubs like Rawabet Art Space, which act as an economic catalyst. When a show runs at Rawabet, foot traffic for surrounding venues — from cafes and restaurants to bookstores and high-end boutiques selling “made in Egypt” fashion — accelerates. With the iconic Cinema Radio being repurposed into a high-end cabaret just steps away, we can expect this trend to continue, and we may even be witnessing the budding of a local theater district.

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