Hartaqāt (Heresies)

“Hartaqāt” (Heresies) by Lina Majdalanie and Rabih Mroué features stage accounts written by three Lebanese performers, each with their own experiences and memories. These three portraits, based on texts by Rana Issa, Souhaib Ayoub and Bilal Khbeiz and framed by music by Raed Yassin, bear witness to the courage and suffering of those who cross borders – whether they are of countries, genders, languages or social classes. Through their stories, they tell of oppression, the weight of the past and the violent abuses of an ailing society, but also of paths to survival and futures to be invented beyond borders.

Lina Majdalanie and Rabih Mroué probe the history of their native country, Lebanon, with characteristic ironic distance, sense of deconstruction, simplicity and inventiveness. Their work is the fruit of collaborations – not only of different writers, but also of dance, music and visual art. Together they explore the points of intersection and friction between reality and fiction, in the same breath questioning history and its myths, power and the way it is enacted, Arab and European consciousness.