This Blue Cat in Alexandria is Making Offline Marketing Cool Again

On the streets of Alexandria, a blue cat roams wild. Well, not quite; the cat is not the result of some laboratory experiment or ill-fortuned experience with hair dye. She’s human, and she’s here for an elaborate offline marketing campaign. Marina Magdy - the blue cat in question, who is in reality a professional costume designer and makeup artist in theatre and media - decided Instagram was too slow for her, and decided to take to the streets to make her skills known.

Magdy imagines a world where our world does not have to be just what it is, and perhaps more significantly, where cinema does not have to reflect only boring human people (and their complexities or whatever). Instead, she transforms make-up into a tool for fantasy, introducing more worlds than we can imagine to theatre and the silver screen. The artist’s journey began after secondary school, when she applied to the Faculty of Fine Arts to no avail. Instead, she went into law.

“I couldn’t keep myself away from art,” Magdy tells CairoScene. “I started applying for all the art-related extracurriculars I could, and eventually stumbled upon a very talented girl who did SFX make-up for movies - but blood and wounds weren’t my things. I wanted to create characters.”

In her second semester, Magdy was kept home because of COVID-19. So, she decided to create a character for the virus, at the time crafting a mask only out of tissue and glue. She continued to grow and grow in online social circles, until a girl in a Facebook group told her that she had to apply for the Higher Institute of Theatrical Arts, which, at the time, she didn't even know about. A true girl’s girl, though, Magdy applied and got in.

After four years of rigorous study, Magdy became a pro at character-constructing makeup, with her work making it into multiple plays, and even films, within the scope of Alexandria. “Here in Alexandria, not many people see you,” Magdy says. “People in Alexandria are now familiar with my work and with my name, but on a national level, I still don’t have a name for myself.”

Frustrated at the prospect of starting at square one again to create a name in the big capital, Magdy wracked her brain for ideas to publicise herself instead of just heading off to Cairo and restarting her career as an assistant. Briefly, she took to social media, but then decided the algorithm moves too slow. So, Magdy skipped the robots and made an alliance with the aliens (well, the aliens she becomes) on the streets of Alexandria.

“I’m not in the streets to scare people,” she jokes. “All I do is walk in the street, start conversations and elicit curiosity. It’s a form of immersive theatre.”

Magdy receives many types of reactions to her walks, mostly shock, as one would ironically expect. Occasionally, she’d get a few compliments on her skill, and fascination from little children, whom she’d try to acquaint with her makeup. “I’m the type of person who gets their energy from other people. These walks enable me to see how believable my makeup is, and whether people like it. They give me an ego boost.”

“Some of my favourite reactions are when two police officers saw me and started joking around with me, or when two young girls immediately exclaimed, ‘Wow! That’s so nice,’ upon seeing me,” Magdy recalls.

To Magdy, makeup has never been about correction or subtle beautification; her makeup is truly and entirely an art, a performance. “This type of makeup allowed me to take the paintings I used to make and put them on my face. It allowed me to wear my art on my face, sleeve - on my entire body.”

With entire albums of future looks up her sleeve, Magdy looks forward to being on the street again, this time showcasing her costume design and décor abilities alongside her makeup. “I want people to see this for what it is - a comprehensive art. Besides, a big part of why I’m doing this is to prove to other people that it is possible. When I first started out, I had no idea what to do, I didn’t even know what colours I should get. I want the new generation to have it easier.”