Mawgat International Audio Festival to Showcase a Roster of Audio Drama from the MENA Region

With podcasts and audio entertainment being all the rage, it's the perfect time to check on this year's Mawgat International Audio Drama Festival – running from June 7th to June 17th -  which will introduce listeners to the often-neglected world of audio drama. The festival is a collaboration between Orient Productions, Studio Emad Eddin Foundation, with support from Arts Council England and the European Union.

As part of the bigger goal to promote audio drama in Egypt and the region, Orient Productions organised a series of intensive workshops - led by local and international audio drama specialists -  to teach Egyptian audio dramatists the basics of script development and various technical skills. Afterwards, the students produced nine audio drama pieces which will be showcased as part of the festival.

“We believe audio drama is very important and something we are missing in this digital age,” Basma Hamed, Orient Productions PR and Communications Manager tells CairoScene, “We’ve been working on this festival for about a year, but it’s coincidentally fitting for these times.”

The festival will also pay homage to the late renowned audio dramatist Youssef Ezzedine which have been re-mastered for the festival, as well as shed light on existing audio drama pieces from the region, such as Syrian Germany-based artist Madar Al-Haggi's pice about a Syrian refugee in Germany, and 'Looks Like a Whisper', a collaborative project where writers and journalists tell stories of their exile, loneliness, identity, death and more.

The festival also invites anyone interested to showcase their creativity by downloading audio soundscapes from their SoundCloud and recording their own audio drama pieces onto them,  and then uploading them onto their social media while using the hashtags #Mawgat and #AudioDrama.

Tune in to the festival – starting June 7th – here, available starting from the 7th until the 17th June.