Despite the fact that the written versions of Daily and Bussy Monologues are censored in Morocco and Egypt, Zitan and Shabayek found alternative outlets on the Web. The following section presents the problems facing female artists in localising The Vagina Monologue and how they managed to overcome such difficulties by employing five strategies of counter-censorship – YouTube videos, Arabicising, self-censorship, adaptation and foreign organisations.
The most effective means of counter-censorship is social media. After Zitan and Shabayk have used all means to avoid censorship, their work is still banned. Finally, they have managed to spread their performances widely via YouTube – one of the most common and influential platforms in Egypt and Morocco. Video streaming, in the words of Russell Southwood (2012), is "the next big wave of online content use in Africa". It is available in all African countries. Luckily enough for Zitan and Shabayek, there is less media censorship regarding theatre in Morocco and Egypt, at least so far. Being censored in most theatres in Morocco, Zitan has uploaded her show, Daily, on YouTube from 2012 onward: https://www.youtube.com/ watch?v=Bs1Q31TKf0I. This gives more popularity to the performance in and outside Morocco, opening the doors for critics to compare Zitan’s version to others. By the same token, Shabayek, with relatively more freedom, set up her own channel, Busy Project via different media platforms as follows: Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheBuSSyProject, Twitter: https://twitter.com/TheBuSSyProject, Instagram: https://www.instagram. com/sondosshabayek/, Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/thebussyproject. These platforms, with their complete openness and lack of regulation, help in the widespread dissemination of these performances.
Nonetheless, while social media provide platforms for wide and uncen sored distribution of content, it can be used to launch severe personal attacks on female creators of artistic products. During and after the performance of Daily, "Zitan and Dialy’s actresses were victims of a violent campaign of denigration by the media, politicians, cultural actors, and anonymous Moroccans" (Hachad 2019, 203). The performance of The Vagina Monologues inside Muslim countries is shocking because it has not been only a challenge to political Islam, patriarchal power and social censorship; it has also raised problematic questions regarding artistic freedom, "clean art" and female respectability. Staging The Vagina Monologues inside Arab countries has not been only a shock for the Arab audience, but for the American media as well. In her Talk of the Nation programme, Martin (2006) considered the performance of Ensler’s play in the Arab world as taboo-breaking: "Well, imagine staging such a play for an Arab audience, in a part of the world where many women spend their lives covered from head to toe. In a country where government censors outlaw even the use of the Arabic word for vagina".
Zitan confesses that it wasn’t an easy task to stage such a play: "We received insults and threats on social media. There were calls to murder us on a Facebook page, which got 5,000 ‘likes", they recall. "Even in the art world, some people disapproved of this subject. Acquaintances advised us to stop, to avoid getting into trouble, but we carried on" (Jardonnet 2015). Actress Nouria Benbrahim comments: "We have been badly criticized and insulted on all means of social media- Facebook, Internet and even mobile. In spite of not seeing the show themselves, people keep asking us why we have accepted such roles" (France 24, 2012, translation mine). Similarly, Shabayek tried to perform some monologues from Bussy Project at women’s car in Cairo Metro, but she was attacked: "Reactions varied. Some were angry and one even tried to beat up Sondos; some women were in tears, while others admitted that this took place in society but wondered what the solution was" (El-Shimi 2012). Like Zitan and her team, Shabayek and her project members are severely attacked by many.