The upcoming edition of the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre will be dedicated to the late Egyptian theatre director, actor and academic who passed away earlier this month.
Born on 25 January 1943 in a small village in Assiut governorate in Upper Egypt, Sanaa Shafaa moved to Cairo with his mother and father, who was an Al-Azhar scholar, at the age of eight.
Shafaa attended Al-Gamaliya primary school, where he expressed interest in the arts for the first time, joining amateur acting troupes.
He then went on to study acting at the High Institute of Theatrical Arts, where he later on worked as a professor and became dean of the department.
In parallel with his academic work, Shafaa directed theatre plays, and one of his first famous works was Don Quixote, staged in 1975.
To the wider audience, Shafaa was known for his many roles in television series, radio programmes and appearances in film since the 1980s.
His latest appearances were in television series Al-Qamar Akher Al-Dunya (2020), Khat Sakhin (2020), Lyalina 80 (2020), Abu Gabal (2019), Bahr (2019), among dozens of others.
The Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre will run between 1 and 11 September online and in theaters, with an opening ceremony to take place at Cairo s National Theatre.
