RICARDO FRAYHA
producer

SO LITTLE TIME

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In his new theatrical work, So Little Time, Rabih Mroué explores the myths, self-portrayals and images of martyrs. What happens to a person who re-encounters their images as a larger-than-life myth? And what remains of them when their story is overwritten by political propaganda? This performance is an attempt to investigate the relationship between personal identity and public memorial in times of war and post-war. For So Little Time, he collaborates again with his long time partner Lina Majdalanie, with whom he developed their theatrical concepts and worked together with for numerous projects like 33 RPM And A Few Seconds (2012), Photo-Romance (2009) and Biokhraphia (2002)… among others.

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Written and directed by: Rabih Mroué | Performed by Lina Majdalanie | Collaborative writers: Yousef Bazzi and Lina Majdalanie | Set designer: Samar Maakaroun | Graphics and assistant Director: Abraham Zeitoun | Research assistant: Andrea Geissler | Portuguese version: Patrícia Lopes | Subtitles: Yvonne Griesel | Music: Kari’atal-funjan – Abdel Halim Hafez (composed by: Mouhamad Al Mouji, Lyrics: Nizar Qabbani) | Rabih Mroué’s production with Co-production of Théâtre de la Bastille, Festival d’automne, Wiesbaden Biennale and HAU Hebbel Am Ufer.

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PIXELATED REVOLUTION

“Syrians are filming their own death”, that is how the Pixelated Revolution begins, aiming to study the employment of mobile phone and social media during the first years of the Syrian revolution. Rabih Mroué examines the use of photos and videos to mobilize and inform people during the war, and the ability to make those media go viral. The Lebanese artist looks at how the Syrians record those images live, connecting the act of registering with the issue of death. It also deals with how we absorb these testimonies.

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Performer: Rabih Mroué | Text English version: Ziad Nawfal | Text Portuguese version: Patrícia Lopes | Co-produced by: Berlin Documentary Forum – HKW/ Berlin, DOCUMENTA 13, Kassel, The 2010 Spalding Gray Award (Performing Space 122 in New York, The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburg, On the Boards in Seattle and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis).

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RIDING ON A CLOUD

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Pictures; one disappears and another appears. Most of the time, he doesn’t understand the connection between a picture and the one next to it. He needs someone who knows him well to tell about it and set the picture in motion, so it’s not still anymore. When memories in head are like still pictures with no scenes from the past, how does the memory work? The theatre piece of the director Rabih Mroué is an impressive combination of the personal and political: For Riding on a Cloud he invites his brother Yasser to play the role of a character that resembles him personally. A person, who was injured in the Lebanese civil war and lost his ability to use words, Yasser began to shoot videos, which fuse with his recounted memories on stage to form a subjective picture of the political developments in Lebanon. Riding on a Cloud also describes the fragile construction of biography, which emerges between political reality, memories, facts and fiction. For Mroué this is always the starting point for artistic self-reflection, which he then transposes for the theatre and exhibitions.

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Written and directed by: Rabih Mroué | Performer: Yasser Mroué | In Collaboration with: Sarmad Louis | Assistant Director: Petra Serhal | Assistant: Janine Baroud | Portuguese version: Patrícia Lopes

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RABIH MROUÉ

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The work of the Lebanese Rabih Mroué, actor, playwright and visual artist, born in Beirut in 1967, lies at the frontiers of theater, performance and video. He is known for his subtle deconstruction of images. In his work, they become narratives of contradictions. He reveals them to the audience layer by layer, creating moving reflections of our world that blur the lines between fiction and documentary, between imagination and manipulation. The conflicts in the Middle East of the last decades, especially in Lebanon, serve as material to the artist. In the film Je veux voir (2008) by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Rabih has met with Catherine Deneuve in Beirut and drove through areas devastated by the conflict. Rabih Mroué currently resides in Berlin. He is co-founder of the Beirut Art Center; a contributing editor of TDR: The Drama Review (NYC); and theater director at Münchner Kammerspiele (Munich). He was a member of the International Research Center “Interweaving Performance Cultures” / Freie Universität in Berlin in the years of 2013 and 2014.

Production in Brazil: MITsp
Local producer: Ricardo Frayha
Local technical team: Julio Cesarini, Rodrigo Campos, Rodolfo Jaquetto, Mariana Mastrocola, Fernando Zimollo

Realization: MITsp, Sesc São Paulo
Sesc Vila Mariana

São Paulo, SP, Brazil

14 to 19/03/2017