Why Sallem Nafsak play garnered all that success

CAIRO – 29 May – 2018: “Sallem Nafsak” (Surrender) play is currently being performed at the Creativity Center Theater during Ramadan. With an extremely low budget and a fresh-faced cast, Sallem Nafsak (Surrender) play managed to achieve a booming success with director Khaled Galal’s signature formula that relies on a new approach to tackling realistic ideas, coupled with excellent performances.

“Sallem Nafsak” is directed and written by Galal and staged by 27 students of the Actors Studio, an initiative housed by the Creativity Centre.The play tells the story of a person from Earth who lands in an ideal society, holding all the social diseases Earth carries. People in the ideal society were perplexed by how to deal with him; whether to kill or treat him from the social diseases.

The two-hour-play satirically addresses negative features in the contemporary Egyptian community, including violence against women, harassment, terrorist acts under false religious slogans, consumerism, negative effects of social media and insincere love relations.

These vital society issues have been reflected in 13 sarcastic scenes, mixed with music and dance, giving its actors the chance to showcase their skills and showcase what Egyptians excel at; the ability to make fun of their own problems.

“Sallem Nafsak” succeeded to brilliantly encapsulate the most widespread flaws and problems in the Egyptian society, building a bridge between the audience and the play’s cast.

The actors and actresses are all at the beginning of their acting career, but their catchy, natural and amusing performance proved that we are in front of a group of actors who will be on the top of the acting scene in Egypt in the coming period.

With “Sallem Nafsak”, Galal aimed to create a new opportunity to discover new talents to embrace and nourish as he has been doing for many years now through his Actors Studio. Through his center, he has presented new talents and hit plays like Ahwa Sadda (Black Coffee) and many more. “Sallem Nafsak” ideas were presented by Galal to his students, who improvised them, and then Galal rephrased their improvisations in a theatrical form.

Galal is the only director who follows this theatrical school in Egypt; implementing a play with no previous script and depending mainly on actors’ improvisations, rendering his plays fresh, natural, vivid, realistic and intimate.

The issues tackled by Galal in “Sallem Nafsak” are almost the same themes he discussed in previous performances, and were even repeated in the same order as all his play, but the approach of tackling them differs in each play.

The play has been presented 115 times in a row since its first show in October 2017 and was described by critics as the best theatre show in 2017. Galal had told the media how proud he is of all his students who participated in the play and presented dazzling performances, such as Ola Fahmy, Ahmed Tarek, Ahmed Abdel Tawab, Mohamed Hassan, Rehab Ezzeldin, Mahmoud Abdel Lateef and Gamal Abdel Nasser, among others.

President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi had also invited Saudi Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman to watch the play “Sallem Nafsak” during his three-day-visit to highlight new Egyptian talents. At the end of the show, President Sisi said the scene depicting the mission of defending Egypt has deeply affected him, expressing his thanks to all the actors and the director. “I proudly watched a group of creative Egyptian young people performing in the theater show “Sallem Nafsak” at the Cairo Opera House,” Sisi remarked.