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We Live In Cairo
Graphics, Other
2019—03, 04      
Houston, TX + Denver, CO + Boston, MA 



It was my honor to provide poster art for We Live In Cairo, a very powerful musical about the Egyptian revolution and its aftermath, brilliantly written by Daniel and Patrick Lazour and directed by Taibi Magar. It opens at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, Massachusetts from May 14 to June 23.

The obvious thing to do for a play like this (or pretty much any story) would’ve been to portray the protagonists. Instead I opted to portray what they’re up against. Not the big main villain though, because the characters in this story pretty much take on three big main villains (Mubarak followed by Morsi followed by Sisi, all of who remain unseen). The tools of repression used by all three however are more or less the same, and it is precisely those tools that our characters have to encounter. Said tools being state security forces.

To represent the protagonists though, I decided to use their weapons of choice: camera, spray-paint, cellphone, laptop, paint-roller, guitar, and megaphone. Which makes the composite image not only an apt representation for the play but also a pretty good representation of peaceful resistance in the face of repression more generally. If you look closely, you’ll see alongside those tools of resistance are some Arabic words from the core chant that fueled the Egyptian uprising: “bread, freedom, social justice”.