Interviewer: Adham James Haddara. Indicated by the letter ‘A’
Interviewee: AUC Graduate and Actress Dalia El Guindy. Indicated by the letter ‘D’
0:00:A: Introduce yourself, who you are, what you do..
0:06:D: My name is Dalia El Guindy, I’m an actress and a singer and I was a teacher for five
years and I..four years..actually longer than that; I just quit recently to focus on my career.
My..what I like to do
0:21:A: What prompted you to do that, to take that decision?
0:24:D: I decided that I’ve given enough of my time and energy towards teaching because it’s
one of those jobs that really sucks all your energy dry and come night or rehearsals for anything
in the afternoon I used to be completely you know finished by then; so I decided that I need to
focus on what I love more and to give it a try so that I don’t regret it when I look back and think I
wasted all this time on teaching.
0:48:A: Well I mean, how did you..how did you get into you know, how did you get into acting?
What drove you to that?
0:58:D: I wanted to be an actor since I was five. First it was like a fascination with like movies
and and just wanting to be..like not famous, but like just being in movies and to do all of these
things and everything that comes with it. But then after a while I realized that’s not what I want
to do. When I went to university I decided I was going to study acting. I wanted to go to
Hollywood originally, I wanted to be a star and make.. get Oscars and all that stuff, but that kind
of fizzled out after I realized how difficult it was. But I went into AUC, I studied Theatre and
and ever since then I’ve been acting pretty much and that’s what I’ve been wanting to do. And I
realized that I like theatre more than I like movies actually and..that ultimately my goal would be
to do Broadway now, so my goals have changed along the years.
1:49:A: Well I mean, of the work that you have do you find..what kind of difficulties do you
encounter when trying to find work, especially in the theatre here in Egypt, because I don’t
believe that there many.. that much in terms of venues to offer.
2:02:D: That’s true. Well unfortunately the first problem was that I was an AUC graduate and
that most of our acting training was done in English and then you leave AUC and you discover
that there’s no English speaking theatre. So you have to deal with a lot of people who first of all
might judge you based on the fact that you are an AUCian. Secondly when I started working in
theatre, I realized that you were either working for the government owned theatres; which were
very specific type of plays..and they had to get specific approvals and you work with specific
directors. Or you would be working with independent theatre directors and that’s what I’m
doing mainly. Of course independent theatre directors have no funding, have no theatres and we
just get what we can..to you know, areas to perform. But if you work with government then you
get the venues, you get the funding, but you don’t necessarily get the quality you get in
independent theatre, not all the time anyway.
3:03:A: Why would that be?
3:05:A: It’s more commercial and like everything in Egypt, a lot of it is based on contacts and
who knows who so the directors that work there are not necessarily the best directors..some of
them are very good, mind you, but some of them aren’t so good. And the writers, again the
scripts are not that great either. I think in Egypt in general we have a problem with scripts; there
aren’t that many interesting, well-written stories to put on either..even in movies. ‘Fa’ (so) it’s a
bit difficult to find that. It’s easier to find it in the underground theatre movement with the
independent artists, but not so much with government owned companies and things like this.
3:47:A: What about production companies? I’ve talked to a few people and they claim that it’s
very much market oriented that it’s more about creating a product rather than creating a piece of
film work or theatre work or some kind of..
4:03:D: Yes, yes. That is the problem, most of the independent artists can’t get funding because
they look at it in a way where they want to present it in a more artistic way and less like a
product like it’s..some of them want to do things that are a work in progress and keep working on
them and improving them and things like this. But major productions and you know people who
get funding from the government tend to be people who are producing things for the masses; so
they cater towards public opinion and they care about appearances more than..do you
understand..I’m not explaining myself very well, I’m not expressing myself very well but..I think
it’s it’s..it’s more commercial. It’s like the difference between a blockbuster movie and an avant
garde film you know it’s that sort of idea.
4:55:A: Well in terms of success..is it based on a success, a merit of success that these
commercial productions are better received, well-received rather than something a little more
experimental, something a little more diverse in terms of material?
5:10:D: I don’t think we have much of an audience for theatre to begin with in Egypt, in general.
Most people prefer to just go to the cinema; so the problem is that with that limited audience that
you have if you’re not..if you’re not giving them what they want or if you’re not providing them
with the usual sort of, like familiar stories and at least one or two stars or people that they could
recognize that would be the formula for success, but if you have a bunch of new actors it is very
difficult for them to succeed without a name attached to them…