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Lenin El-Ramli at The University of Manchester.

06 Feb 2008

Seminar event with prominent Egyptian playwright on 11 February.

6 - 7.30pm, Monday 11 February 2008
G16, Martin Harris Centre for Music and Drama, The University of Manchester

"Comedy transcends reality only to catch it red-handed with the truth" Lenin El-Ramli

"The world's no longer beautiful - that's because the whole world is hiding behind a huge mask. One mask on top of the other & that's the problem. Hypocrites have two faces, liars have four - but us, we have hundreds! The truth, to us, is a sacred duty, but it's lost. Whoever brings it to us deserves a prize & one hundred thousand whip lashes then the gallows. That's the problem" (from Lenin El-Ramli's In Plain Arabic)

Lenin El-Ramli is a prolific playwright and screen writer who has written for commercial theatre, film and television. He has made a highly significant contribution to the development of modern Egyptian and Arabic drama since the mid 1970s. Lenin El-Ramli is perhaps best known in the West for his provocative play In Plain Arabic (initially staged in 1990), a play that explores the polemic and rhetoric of  'Arab unity' as well as the hypocrisy of Western and Arabic nations towards to the conflict in Israel and Palestine.

This is a unique opportunity to meet with a renowned artist from the Middle East and hear him talk first hand about his work.

The seminar will include a presentation of Lenin El-Ramli's work and a question and answer session.

"We are all alike in one respect, we all deceive each other" (from Lenin El-Ramli's In Plain Arabic)

"Some people think I write political plays, I believe I write about the patterns of thinking, our way of rationalising" Lenin El-Ramli.

For more information, please contact:

All welcome!