Every Brilliant Thing is a play written by Duncan Macmillan in the 2010s. The play has been translated for the first time to Arabic and adapted by the Egyptian director and playwright Ahmed El Attar. The monodrama goes deep into a heartfelt journey through a mother’s suicidal depression and its repercussions on her family, and specifically on the daughter portrayed by Nanda Mohamed. The play features one actor, but the piece is far from a one man/woman show. Instead, it’s a highly interactive piece which heavily involves the audience members, bringing them in as characters part of the story.
The play has been performed in Beirut as part of the Rooftops Connect Festival, in Amman in collaboration with the The International Liberal Theater Festival at the Royal Cultural Center, and in the Amman International School.
Ahmed El Attar is an Egyptian independent theatre director, playwright, translator and cultural manager, is the founder and artistic director of Orient Productions, a leading Cairo-based production company, which provides a range of services for a number of projects in the fields of entertainment, arts and culture.
He is also the founder and artistic director of Studio Emad Eddin, a unique project that provides training spaces for independent artists in the performing arts, the Temple Independent Theatre Company, the Downtown Contemporary Arts Festival (D-CAF), Egypt’s largest annual international multi-arts festival, the The Arab Arts Focus, a project that helps produce and market Arab performing arts around the world, and Maktabi Creative Office Spaces, Cairo’s only creative space for cultural workers.
Attar holds a BA in Theatre from the American University in Cairo (1992) and an MA in Cultural and Arts Management from the Sorbonne Nouvelle (2001).
Attar’s work has been presented at major theatres and festivals in Egypt, Lebanon, Jordan, Sweden, Portugal, Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, France, Switzerland, Luxembourg, Croatia, Montenegro, United Kingdom, South Korea, Singapore, Hong Kong, Russia, United States and United Arab Emirates.
In January 2022, El Attar joined the board of directors of the International Performing Arts Community (ISPA), making him the first Egyptian to join the board of the world’s largest performing arts network.
In 2018, he was awarded the Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et de la Culture by the French Ministry of Culture for his contribution to theatre.
