Image
A cluttered desk on a black stage in front of a large screen projecting an image of an old Facebook profile.

33RPM

Rabih Mroue
Saturday, April 19, 2014, at 8PM
Studio 1—Goodman

“They are to Beirut what the Wooster Group is to New York: a blend of avant-garde innovation, conceptual complexity and political urgency, all grounded in earthy humor”

– The New York Times

This semi-documentary performance without actors reconstructed the final moments of a young Lebanese man who takes his own life and, in a farewell letter, declares that his reasons are personal and have nothing to do with politics. The young man is dead, but everything in his bed-room lives on—the television, the answering machine, the computer—vibrating and communicating. Time pauses and begins anew; history is pieced together—never constructed, of course—from so many fragments of communication.

Mroué is a Lebanese actor, director, and playwright whose work draws attention to issues and events in the Middle East. Winner of the 2010 Spalding Gray Award, his work pits facts against made-up truths and propaganda imbued with a visual sensibility honed from years as a visual artist. Saneh is a theater maker, who in addition to collaborating with Mroué, writes and directs works utilizing physical theater as a way of addressing how our bodies are imprinted by sociopolitical conflicts and contradictions in the Middle East. 

In Other Words included six artists who delivered lecture-performances, juxtaposed with talks by six thinkers in order to cross boundaries and make dialogue a continuous process of renewal. 

This performance is presented in conjunction with Thomas Keenan’s talk New Media, New Documents.

Dates + Tickets

Performance
33RPM
Rabih Mroue
Saturday 19
8:00 PM
April 2014
Event Type
Discipline
Contemporary Performance

Season

Curator
Production Credits

Co-produced by Ashkal Alwan, the Lebanese Association for Plastic Arts (Beirut), Festival d’Avignon, Festival delle Colline Torinesi (Turin), Kampnagel (Hamburg), Kunstenfestivaldesarts (Brussels), La Bâtie – Festival de Genève, Malta Festival (Poznan), Scène Nationale de Petit-Quevilly/Mont-Saint-Aignan (Rouen), Stage – Helsinki Theatre Festival, Théâtre de l’Agora – Scène Nationale d’Evry et de l’Essonne, and Steirischer Herbst.