Artist Mohamed Ahmed Al-Shaer

Alsir Alsayed

What will come are nothing more than general observations about an experience that glows day after day since the year 1965 until now, which is the experience of the veteran theater artist, Professor Muhammad Ahmad Al-Shaer.
One of the assumptions established by art criticism is that the artistic, and even intellectual, product is inseparable from the overall vision of its creator at the level of its manufacturing methods and at the level of the general path of visions and ideas. That is, there is what can be described as fixed or recurring “themes” in this or that product, and in more words.
The precision of what is meant or known as the “identity of the creative project”, for this or that creator. For example, we will stop while reading Baraka Sakin, Mahmoud Darwish, or Mahdi Amel on the constants and recurrences that represent the identity of their creativity and personality. Based on the previous hypothesis, enter the worlds of the playwright Muhammad Ahmed Al-Shaer.
On a personal level, and perhaps others like me, I have come to know the experience of the poet, who lives in the city of Wad Madani, since the third session in 2002 of the Ayyam Al-Baqaa Theater Festival, when his play (Hais Bais) was presented in honor of the festival. He continued his presence after that as an actor, author, and director in the festival and outside the festival. The festival featured plays:
“A cat has fallen”, “Bebey, did you sleep”, “The Seventh Bottom Ceiling”, “The Streets Are Full of Angels”, “The Slave Is Not Always Black”, “The Night Has Stayed”, “Babkul Al-Ibator”.
This is about the history of my acquaintance with him and perhaps others. As for his theatrical history, he says: His relationship with theater began in the year 1965 as an actor, and in the year 1970 he entered the world of writing when he wrote the play “Destiny,” and then he made his way with passion and commitment and wrote, directed, and acted in many plays, radio and television works, including plays:

-The human being is in the balance
-The protector is the protector
-The boundary between fixed and mobile
-Emergency landing
-One and a half men
-Going out inside
-The other start
-Light at the end of the tunnel
-Rejection outside the circle of history
– Compress with ash
– What about Rana?
-The bathroom
-Cavemen
-The other side of the issue
-The buried one
-The meanings of that day
-Three meanings and a homeland
-The land is lost
As for radio, he wrote the series “Al-Hal Bala” and “Ma’azim Min Al-Tarikh,” and for television he wrote a number of films, including:
-Memory of the Nile.
-Fifth finger.
-Coffee.
Of course, I do not miss mentioning his distinguished experiences as an actor with the persistent, creative directors Walid Al-Alfy and Rabie Youssef.

*Al-Shaer performances:

According to what I saw of his performances at the Baqaa Festival, I can say that his performances often penetrate the silent and forbidden through movement or speech, and they also constantly draw from the dictionary of daily life, so they often touch what we can call the general mood of the audience, including theatrical actors.
It can also be said, in general, that none of his performances are devoid of philosophical tendencies and touches that attempt to touch upon the human being in his social position and the alienation and fragmentation that this position imposes, and at the same time the attempts imposed by this alienation to restore cohesion and resistance. His theater tries to play on strings of the soul with various delicate fingertips.
Greetings and respect to our great artist, Mohamed Ahmed Al-Shaer.