There was a time—maybe—when East was East and West was West. But now you can buy a knockoff Barbie, in a burqa, on-line. Cultural signifiers, including dolls, have become global property. Many citizens in both Christian and Muslim countries also share a mood of disillusionment with their fundamentalist religious governments.

In Vancouver, the fascination with a sensibility that is neither here nor there, neither strictly East nor rigidly West, has given rise to neworldtheatre. That company’s latest project, Adrift on the Nile, which runs at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre from Friday (February 2) until February 10, raises questions of humanity and individual responsibility in a conflict that has been dubbed, perhaps melodramatically, a war of worlds.

Vancouver playwright Marcus Youssef derived his script for Adrift on the Nile from the 1966 novel of the same name. The book was written by Naguib Mahfouz, who in 1988 became the first Arabic writer to be awarded the Nobel Prize in literature.

Neworldtheatre, which has also produced shows such as Ali and Ali and the Axes of Evil and Crime and Punishment, received the annual $60,000 Alcan Performing Arts Award to develop this high-profile project. However, when the company premiered the highly anticipated first version of the play—which stuck close to the book—at the Magnetic North Theatre Festival in St. John’s, Newfoundland, last June, the reception wasn’t overly enthusiastic, according to Youssef. Set in the politically complex milieu of 1966, the novel’s arcane politics and conversational style—one translation titled the story Chitchat on the Nile—proved problematic in the theatre. Sitting in the basement of this city’s Russian Hall, where he is taking part in rehearsals for the Vancouver opening, Youssef recalls: “In some sense, it made people feel dumb, which is not what you want.”

For the local run, Youssef decided to change the play’s setting to the present day and to give it a dramatic arc that would be more compelling in performance. In the new script, Anis, an extremely stoned auditor from the Egyptian Ministry of Health, welcomes the audience to a houseboat on the Nile where he is engaged in an apparently never-ending party with friends. Anis feels politically powerless. “There’s troops on the streets and the icecaps are melting and the world’s going to hell in a handbasket,” he says. “And what are you doing? Well, 28,000 keystrokes of data entry if you’re asking me.” When a beautiful young fundamentalist named Samara shows up, Anis falls in love with her. In turn, Samara becomes smitten with a movie actor named Ragab.

However, the real site of conflict in the play—as in the novel—is not between characters but within them. In the central action, Anis and his friends accidentally kill a man with their car on their way back to the houseboat. No one but Anis wants to take responsibility and go to the authorities; even the dogmatic Samara falls victim to self-interest. The difference between Anis and the others is that he recognizes the dead man as a fellow human being. Youssef says that recognizing one another’s humanity is a central concern in the play, and adds a political context: capitalism encourages consumerism without thought of consequences; religious fundamentalism of all stripes demonizes those who believe differently.

The day that we chat, Youssef is undergoing a test of his own responsibility. Thumbing his nose at dogma, he has put a line that will offend some Muslims into the mouth of one of his characters.

“Yesterday in rehearsal we got to that scene,” Youssef says. “It was hot. It got really intense. It was great— although I felt a bit shell-shocked. But what became clear is that that section, which was actually written quite a long time ago, had yet to be connected to the action of the story, so it was starting to feel deliberately provocative and edgy. That was hard for me to hear in a way because I like to push buttons.” Still, he says that, in the end, he couldn’t help but respect the theatrical and political savvy in the room. The artistic team—some of whom voiced protest—includes director Camyar Chai, producer Adrienne Wong, and actors Laara Sadiq, Kathleen Duborg, Alexander Lazaridis Ferguson, Tom McBeath, and Maiko Bae Yamamoto.

Youssef responded to the concerns raised by toning the line down and giving it more context. The new material he has added includes text that insults the Virgin Mary and Moses.

Perhaps all dogma should be questioned equally—because dogma is one of the things that keep us from seeing others as we see ourselves. Asked what he hopes audience members will take from the experience of Adrift on the Nile, Youssef refers to the question Anis poses at the beginning of the play: “What do you think of when somebody says Egypt—the Middle East? Pyramids and car bombs? Fanatics and burqas? Aladdin?” The playwright concludes: “I hope the answers to that question may be slightly altered.”