Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre
Cairo, Egypt — September 2022

UpLift Physical Theatre was honored to be one of only 14 international companies invited to perform at the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theatre (CIFET)—a prestigious event celebrating bold, boundary-pushing performance from around the world.

We presented Through the Waves, our wordless physical theatre piece that weaves together movement, acrobatics, and visual storytelling to explore themes of resilience, grief, and transformation. The piece was awarded the festival’s Prize for Original Application of Physical Language, a recognition of our unique movement vocabulary and collaborative devising process. Performing in Cairo among such a diverse and global cohort of artists was both an honor and a powerful affirmation of the universal language of physical theatre. CIFET remains one of the most meaningful and memorable stops on our international touring journey.

More about Through the Waves: Weaving a poetic vocabulary of acrobatic movement and storytelling, Through the Waves is an award-winning intimate play tells the tale of one woman, lost between the uncharted waters of her grief and the shores of her joyful memories following the disappearance of her soul-mate. Created, directed and performed by four women in residence at the San Francisco Circus Center in 2016, this production has toured to the San Diego Fringe Festival (2018), the Bing Crosby Theater in Spokane, Washington as a keynote performer in the Kennedy Center American College Theatre Festival (2018), the FURYFactory Festival of Ensemble Theater Main Stage program in San Francisco, CA (2018), the Mad River Festival in Blue Lake, CA (2019) and was chosen to represent the U.S. at the Cairo International Festival for Experimental Theater in Cairo, Egypt (2022) where it won an award for “Original Application of Physical Language.” We were honored to represent the U.S. once again at the Pakistan Theatre Festival in Karachi in September 2023 with support by the U.S. Consulate, American Voices, Arts Envoy, and the Arts Council of Pakistan Karachi.