• Tue 23 – Sat 27 06 2015 •
Theatrical performance series Rabih Mroué, Lina Majdalanie


with RABIH MROUÉ, LINA MAJDALANIE

How do you apologize for something that you haven’t done? How do you tell a story to forget what the story was about? Such questions are characteristic of the work of internationally renowned playwright, director, and artist Rabih Mroué. Walking a fine line between documentary, performance, and video art, his plays, lectures, and installations deal with issues swept under the table by the current political situation in Lebanon, blending fact and fiction, historical tragedy and biographical poignancy, conceptual complexity and earthy humor. The Academy is proud to present a mini-retrospective of three early plays by Rabih Mroué, offering insight into his emergence as one of the strongest voices in theater today.

Tue 23 06 2015
20:00
Biokhraphia
Arabic with English subtitles

How does theater position itself vis a vis sexuality and censorship in a society with strict social and political taboos? Rabih Mroué’s early work Biokhraphia makes no pretence of providing an answer. Attacking conventions and confounding the evident, it manipulates eternal and sacred truths, standing at the edge of the abyss of doubt, ambiguity, uncertainty, and true and false, where a biography – the story of a life – might become “kharaphia”: Arabic for delirium, legends, senility, and shit…

Thu 25 06 2015
20:00
Looking For A Missing Employee
In English

Where is RS? Last Wednesday, this employee of the Ministry of Finance deserted his family, and now his wife wants to know who is holding him. The disappearance of RS is not only a tragedy for his immediate family but also shows a total lack of respect for other citizens, including his parents. The theater piece by Rabih Mroué explores this troubling police case and its related political-economic factors that are based upon real events, using newspaper cuttings to trace the “truth”.

Sat 27 06 2015
20:00
Who's Afraid Of Representation?
Arabic with English subtitles

Why is it near impossible in the Middle East to imagine the kind of body art so popular in the West in the 1960s and ’70s? In a script made up of short monologues by performance artists retold and enacted by actress Lina Saneh, and against the background of violent events drawn from recent history such as the civil war in Lebanon, Rabih Mroué juxtaposes the cruel struggles of this group of artists fighting for their individuality with the true story of Hassan Ma’moun, who gunned down his colleagues in an office in Beirut.

Events in the frame of PLURIVERSALE II.
Venue: studiobühneköln, Universitätsstraße 16a, 50937 Köln
Tickets: 15 €, reduced 7 €
Combined ticket: 35 €, reduced 18 €
Tickets at studiobuehnekoeln.de or 0221 470 4513