the tangible

PERFORMANCE IN ARABIC, FRENCH AND ENGLISH

text  Etel Adnan, Samih al-Qasim, Mourid Barghouti, John Berger and Mahmoud Darwish
a performance by and with Eid Aziz, Tale Dolven, Liz Kinoshita, Federica Porello, Rojina Rahmoon and Frank Vercruyssen
visual material by Ruanne Abou-Rahme and Yazan Al Khalili

with the participation of  Jolente De Keersmaeker
interpreter  Lore Baeten
translation  Tania Tamari Anasir, Lore Baeten and Martine Bom

production tg STAN
coproduction by Ashkal Alwan (Beirut, Lebanon), Théâtre de la Bastille (Paris, France), Festival d'Automne (Paris, France), Théâtre Garonne (Toulouse, France), Teatergarasjen (Bergen, Norway), Black Box Teater (Oslo, Norway), Teatro Maria Matos (Lisbon, Portugal)

premiere  April 7th 2010, BIT Teatergarasjen, Bergen (NO)

The starting point of the tangible is, on the one hand, the Fertile Crescent* with Palestine as its epicentre, and on the other hand the people who create this performance and their various realities.

There are three dancers: Tale Dolven from Stavanger, Liz Kinoshita from Toronto and Federica Porello from Genoa.
There are three actors: Rojina Rahmoon from Damascus, Eid Aziz from Nablus and Frank Vercruyssen from Antwerp.
There is visual material by Ruanne Abou-Rahme and Yazan Khalili, two artists from Ramallah.
There may be music by Checkpoint 303, Al Maslakh, Sublime Frequencies, György Ligeti...
There are texts by John Berger, Etel Adnan, Mourid Barghouti, Mahmoud Darwish and Samih al-Qasim.

This performance is perhaps a declaration of love to the wounded, downtrodden and abused cradle of civilization, which invariably rises again from the ashes, a reflection that goes beyond opinions, an abstract and personal testimony about people rather than about parties, about loss and injustice and their antonyms rather than about points of view.
Or perhaps it is simply a balancing act, a search for a way to speak about the Middle East without resorting to a simplistic, patronizing or neo-orientalistic attitude.


    * The ‘Fertile Crescent’ or ‘Al Hilal Al Khaseeb’ is a waxing moon-shaped area, also called 'The cradle of civilization', which once encompassed the Orient, Old Mesopotamia and Ancient Egypt. Today the area roughly corresponds to modern Egypt, Israel, Palestine, Lebanon and parts of Jordan, Syria, Iraq, Kuwait, south-eastern Turkey and south-western Iran.

The next day I accompanied him to the ruin.  There were several epicentres where everything had been reduced to dust, surrounded by tiny fragments.  Except for pipes and wires no recognisable objects remained.  Everything which had been assembled during a lifetime had gone without trace, had lost its name.  An amnesia not of the mind but of the tangible.
(a quote from the book From A to X by John Berger)