Houti laments lack of ‘perfect text’ to adopt women’s issues

CAIRO: Kuwaiti writer Nermeen Al-Houti speaks during a seminar at Cairo International Book Fair. — KUNA

CAIRO: Kuwait’s female writer Nermeen Al-Houti on Tuesday underlined the necessity of paying much attention to women’s issues at Kuwait’s theater. Speaking during a seminar at Cairo International Book Fair, Houti stressed that theater has always been the reflection of any society. She demanded giving enough spaces to women’s issues at theater similar to social and political issues. Despite the presence of several excellent writers at the Kuwaiti theater, there is no perfect text to adopt women’s issues and depict their problems, she confirmed.

“We should not focus only on negative behaviors committed against women like beating and suppressing them since such acts don’t express the whole society, but are individual cases,” she said. There are attempts in Kuwait to graduate youth playwrights, she added, referring to efforts by Public Authority for Youth in this regard. She also pointed to some schools, which aim to train youth on different fields of theater like singing, music and others.

Houti expressed her satisfaction about children’s theater in Kuwait, saying that there are theatric wonderful performances on this category. She called for rebuilding the school theater to be a strong base for this purpose. Houti confirmed that this mission is not only based on the Ministry of Education but also on the National Council for Culture, Arts and Letters (NCCAL), and the Ministry of Information.

The body tasked with evaluating artistic texts does not prohibited them from being performed or published, but it writes only some notices for re-writing works in proper ways, she made clear. The body reads texts several times during several meetings held every week for the final approval, she revealed. After performing theatric works, a committee is held to make sure that the texts are in line with the agreed-upon rules, Houti stated. She lauded Egypt’s role in enhancing Arab cultural movement, affirming that it has been remaining the cradle of culture, arts and innovation. – KUNA