Versatile drama group Aleateia has been selected to go to Egypt to take part in the prestigious Cairo International Experimental Theatre Festival between September 1 and 11.

Aleateia is the only Maltese theatre group to have been selected by an international panel of CIFET judges.

For the festival, the group is putting up an updated version of their 1999 production 'A Heap of Broken Images'.

This time, six people are invited to a cocktail party in which a reading of T. S. Eliot's 'The Waste Land' is supposed to take place. However, beneath this seemingly innocent reason for throwing a party, there lurk deeper, darker and more decadent thoughts in the host's mind.

Can the six characters ever be the same after the party goes out of bounds?

This daring play presents the bitter struggle between decadence and redemption in uncompromising terms.

In the past, the drama group has dabbled in different kinds of theatre, from farce to the absurd to the surreal.

The group is renowned for making use of minimal set and props, focusing more on voice, movement, expression and poetry which make up each work.

Aleateia's members are Anthony Attard, Antonella Axisa, Simon Bartolo, Dominic Dimech, Anna Formosa, Massimo Farrugia, Sephora Gauci, Chris Galea and Loranne Vella.

The culture ministry has offered financial assistance for the Egypt project.

Courtesy of the Koperattiva Kulturali Universitarja, 'A Heap of Broken Images' will be performed locally on Saturday, August 31 at 8.30 p.m. at the MITP Theatre in St Christopher Street, Valletta.

For more information call tel. 21451208 or 79068044 or write to info@aleateia.org or visit the website http://www.aleateia.org

Aleateia, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary, performed Spettaklu tà Gideb last March at the MITP in Valletta.

In April, the group staged an original production, 'Very Weird Sisters', as part of "Shakespeare Lives" at St James Cavalier in Valletta organised by the British Culture Association.