The Egyptian-Italian theatrical show “Goldoni’s Love Story in Venice” relies on re-presenting the traditions of the Italian commedia dell’arte, through an Egyptian experience that the actors participated in making since the first training stage. The show does not present a ready-made text by Carlo Goldoni, but rather takes advantage of his characters and the traditions of the mask and improvisation, while reshaping them within a workshop led by the Italian director and dramaturg Alesso Nardin, so that the project comes to light within the performances of the Cairo International Festival of Experimental Theater.
The show, which was presented on the stage of the Arab Music Institute in Cairo, had an essential role in improvisation, after the participants presented scenes and ideas during the training, and then Nardin worked to rearrange and connect them to form a coherent story. This is a method linked to the nature of commedia dell’arte, which gives the actor a large space for movement, improvisation, and interaction with the audience. Therefore, the actors were not required to memorize ready-made characters as much as they had to discover them through movement, interaction, and group performance.
The story revolves around love, desire and choice, through characters that recall the world of Goldoni and the Commedia dell'Arte. "Aziza", Pantaloni's daughter, appears in the face of her father's desire to marry her to a rich man, while her emotional streak is linked to "Kazem", who tries to reach her with singing and emotional words. Through this relationship, other themes related to family, interests, and personal freedom emerge, while comedy remains present in the way situations are built and characters move.
The show combines the Italian reference and the Egyptian environment, through performance, language, and the way the characters are presented. The play benefits from the basic elements of the commedia dell'arte, but it does not stop at its traditional form, but rather uses it in a new context close to the Egyptian audience.
The show is the product of the “The Mask and Commedia dell’Arte” workshop, led by Aliso Nardin, and participated in its performance by Muhammad Tariq Abu Hindi, Shaima Muhammad Fawzi, Mayar Al-Tarabili, Shadi Muhammad Abdel Salam, and others.
Italian director Alesso Nardin told Asharq Al-Awsat that the festival put out an open invitation to participate in the workshop and work with him, and more than 500 actors applied for it, noting that he was aiming to select only 11 or 12 actors, given that the workshop ends with the production of a theatrical show presented as part of the festival’s activities, and the first qualifying stage took place, before he made the final selection from among about 60 applicants, so that the selection in the end settled on 11 actors.
Nardin stressed that the work did not start from a question about how to bring together Egyptian actors and characters belonging to the world of Carlo Goldoni, because this formula, from his point of view, encapsulates a broader experience, because the project combined Italian mask traditions, performance techniques he developed over years of work, and contemporary Egyptian culture, so that the show gradually emerged from the interaction of these elements within the workshop, and not from an attempt to place one culture next to another.
He added that Goldoni was the starting point to which the project returned to benefit from his experience and characters, and from the transformation he brought about in Italian theater during the eighteenth century, but the show did not treat it as a final text that must be transferred to the stage. Instead, his works and dramaturgy were used as raw material that was reshaped through improvisation and teamwork, arriving at a new theatrical formula.
Nardin pointed out that working with a mask requires the actor to change his relationship with his body. Because the character does not depend on facial features, but rather on the accuracy of movement, rhythm, and way of using the body, which requires the performer to reach what resembles a new physical nature that differs from his daily movement, which required intensive training that lasted a full month, at a rate ranging between 7 and 9 hours of work per day.
Nardin linked his choice of commedia dell'arte and the mask to his long experience in this field, explaining that for him the mask is not just a performance technique, but rather a means through which complex human topics can be addressed in a way that reaches directly to the audience, indicating that love was an introduction to broader questions related to sacrifice, personal freedom, and the choice between the individual's desires and family pressures, while preserving comedy, as a means of communication and opening these questions.
He explained that the show did not take one of Goldoni's dramas and present it as it is, but rather a new dramaturgy was formed that started from improvisation and benefited from characters and ideas that appeared in his various works. The actors became part of the process of creating the material itself.
In conclusion, Nardin stressed that the difference in languages was not an obstacle to the audience’s interaction with the show, pointing out that there were spectators who spoke Arabic, English, French, and others, and yet they participated in the experience and understood what was happening on stage.
He believes that the reason is due to the display's reliance on the body as a language in itself, capable of conveying meaning and emotion even when the complete words do not reach the recipient.
American star George Clooney handed over the Lifetime Achievement Award to Agence France-Presse photographer, Tiziana Fabi, and then personally took over the task of photographing with her camera, in a funny scene during the “Venice Film Festival.”
After receiving the Golden Lion on Wednesday evening, the American star stood in front of a crowd of photographers on the red carpet, accompanied by his girlfriend, actress Laura Dern.
According to the Japan Times, he then went to Fabi, a photographer for Agence France-Presse, which covers the most prominent artistic, sporting, and political events for the international news agency’s office in Rome.
Clooney told her: “I give you the lion,” then added: “And I’ll take the picture.”
Pictures of that moment, along with a photo Clooney took of Fabi smiling and holding the award, spread widely across social media.
Fabi said about her close meeting with the Oscar-winning actor and director: “I don’t know why he chose me.”
She added: “I was very surprised, and at first I felt some discomfort. "He simply put the award in my hands and took my camera."
She explained that Clooney thanked her warmly when he returned the camera to her, while Laura Dern said to her: “Congratulations.”
Clooney arrived in Venice on Wednesday, at the start of the festival, which is considered the oldest film festival in the world, and stood alongside the photographers covering this magical Italian event.
He also received an honor from the Venice Photographers Association, where he stood alongside celebrity photographers and took some pictures using the camera of another photographer from the Italian news agency ANSA.
Fabi said she was impressed by how well Clooney used a professional camera.
She added: “He took 4 pictures, and they were all clear and in focus!” They were picture perfect. Shouldn't we hire him?'
As Switzerland struggles to limit the retreat of its glaciers, researchers are conducting an unusual experiment in the Alps to test whether one of its least appreciated natural resources - sheep wool - can contribute to protecting the ice.
Reuters reported that over the years, areas of ice and snow have been covered during the summer with artificial plastic covers, with the aim of reflecting sunlight and reducing heat absorption, at a time when global warming is leading to the melting of ice sheets that have shaped the features of the high Alps for thousands of years.
However, these covers are usually made of plastic, and their presence may result in microfibers contaminating the environment. The Keep It Wool project, led by the Summit Foundation and the University of Lausanne, uses wool instead of blankets to slow the melting of the Zinfleuron Glacier in western Switzerland.
The rise in temperatures to record levels this summer has led to the melting of snow on the glaciers weeks earlier than usual, which almost inevitably leads to the loss of more ice, which contributes to the exacerbation of rock slides, such as the slide that destroyed the village of Platen in 2025, as well as the sudden catastrophic floods that struck the Himalayan region last week.
Project manager Timothy Steiner said that the team wanted to explore an organically biodegradable alternative, while finding a use for Swiss sheep wool, about 40 to 70 percent of which is disposed of annually.
Four master's students at Swiss universities proposed the idea and tried it out in practice.
In June, two wool blankets, designed by the Swiss company Visolan, were placed on an area of 200 square meters (2,100 square feet) of the Tsinfleuron Glacier. Throughout the summer, researchers compared their performance to that of a traditional geosynthetic cover.
Preliminary results exceeded expectations, and Steiner said that measurements, which were conducted every two weeks, showed that the wool covers limited the melting of ice almost as efficiently as the synthetic covers.
Niklaus Zgeiser, from the company “Visulan”, said that he was surprised by the durability of the material, adding: “I thought it would not be stable enough.”
Student Elliot Gavio said the team wasn't sure what to expect from the experiment. He added: “We now have a result that we can see, and even touch. "It worked amazingly well."
However, the project's supporters confirm that wool blankets are not a solution to the problem of global warming.
Protective covers cover only about 0.02 percent of the total area of glaciers in Switzerland, while scientists confirm that reducing greenhouse gas emissions, most of which result from fossil fuels, remains the only feasible long-term way to slow ice loss.
