A History Lesson from the Present. Documenting Female Accounts in Laila Soliman’s Zig Zig

Written and directed by Laila Soliman, Zig Zig (2016) is a play that retells the story of twelve Egyptian women who were raped by British soldiers in 1919 and that reported their testimony in a British military court. Traces of this rare fact exist only in the record of the British Foreign Office, which is the source of the play, while History has forgotten them. The rewriting of this material into the play is sensible to matters such as costumes, translation and the choice of words which could provide an interpretation of the facts. Laila Soliman, instead, tried to leave the interpretation as open as possible, so that the audience can interpret what they see. As a theatre maker, Laila Soliman has clear ideas and masters’ fine techniques to convey them in Zig Zig, marking a substantial difference with the rewriting of History in the Egyptian drama: after the revolution, the citizen must have the right to interpret his past.