Opening Concert:  « CHABABEEK BEIRUT » with TANIA SALEH

Samir Kassir Square – 26 May at 9 P.M./ LEBANON

Music and lyrics by Tania Saleh

Tania Saleh will perform her  album material for the first time exclusively at the Beirut Spring Festival.

Tania's lyrics have always been able to express the reality of the Arab youth in a simple everyday dialect and never short of dark humor. Her musical style can't really be defined because of its continuous evolution towards an unexpected form, challenging herself again and again to deliver new sounds. Her influences are so eclectic ranging from the Egyptian "tarab" and the Lebanese "mawwal" to folk, funk, gospel, alternative rock and jazz, not to mention French singers/songwriters of the past century.

Few words about TANIA SALEH...

Tania Saleh is a Lebanese singer/songwriter who has been paving her own path in the Arabic underground musical scene since 1990. Her voice is wise and true, a soft mix between the traditional Arabic music she was raised on and the western sounds she chose to follow. She writes about the daily worries of a troubled society, of love and hate and what’s in between. Her music follows the rhythm of her daily life and mirrors her changing mood, creating a boiling pot of tunes, feelings and love for innovation. Her visual style also helped to create a unique artistic image that made her stand out from the Arabic commercial musical scene.

Theatre: FRANCE - CANADA

«INCENDIES / SCORCHED» by Wajdi Mouawad

Al Madina Theatre, Hamra

27 & 28 May at 9 P.M.

Arabic Subtitles

Written & directed by: Wajdi Mouawad

Cast: Annick Bergeron, Eric Bernier, Gérald Gagnon, Reda Guerinik, Ginette Morin,  Marie-Claude Langlois, Catherine Larochelle, Isabelle Roy, Richard Thériault

Scorched is an exploration of  “the questions of origins”.  The story centers on twins, a brother Simon and sister Jeanne, who are summoned to the office of a notary to hear the last will and testament of their mother, Nawal. They are both handed a letter written by their mother; one is to be delivered to their brother and one to their father, and the mystery begins. Both thought their father was dead and never knew of a brother. The letters send them on a journey into their mother’s past; to a Middle Eastern country engulfed in a civil war where she was a political activist and then later, a prisoner of war.  The play also follows the life of Nawal from her youth and her liberation through education, to her final years spent in silence. Through poetic language and startling imagery, the play connects the origins of these three members of a family in startling and unforgettable ways. 

Writer and director, Wajdi Mouawad, has said: "There is a certain reticence these days to tell our stories, a tendency to position the story as a trap for intelligence, so that the latter can only be expressed through formalism pushed to the limit. History tells us that the story has often been the cradle of dictators -  as such it must be rejected, banished. What, then, are our stories today – or, to put it another way, what stories can we trust to provide a gathering place for our individual and collective souls?"

Critics’ Extracts:

Keith Ecker, Chicago Theater Blog: 

Scorched, which is receiving its Chicago premier, was written by Lebanese playwright Wajdi Mouawad. If Scorched is a testament to his talent, then the reputation is most definitely deserved. The story is one of the most compelling I have seen .… I will refrain from giving anything away, but I will say that this play has one of the best climaxes I have ever seen.... If you want to see a great story beautifully told, see this show.

Cooper Robb, Philadelphia Weekly:

Wajdi Mouawad’s brilliant play Scorched is astonishing.… Mouawad does a masterful job of showing us a nation caught in an endless cycle of violence. Scorched is one of the finest modernizations of Greek tragedy, with a purity that’s rare in contemporary theater .… Mouawad’s story is a mythical play of epic proportions. A work of raw power, Scorched is delicately lyrical and unforgettable.

Kelly Nestruck, Globe and Mail:

If the gods were just, this heart wrenching wonder would then tour on forever. In fact, Mouawad argues that every story is both - it just depends where you start and stop telling it. He also employs humor subversively, wielding it like the double-edged sword it is. Since Sophocles’ Oedipus Rex, I've rarely seen the cycle of revenge depicted as complexly or compassionately as it is here.… This haunting work may be the best piece of theatre this country has produced this millennium.

Richard Ouzounian, Toronto Star: 

Theater: FRANCE - CANADA

«LA SENTINELLE / THE SENTINEL» (Monologue) with Jane Birkin by Wajdi Mouawad

Roman Baths, Beirut Central District

May 29 at 9 P.M.

Written & directed by: Wajdi Mouawad

Performed by Jane Birkin & Wajdi Mouawad

Artistic & technical crew

Lighting designer & operator: Eric Champoux

Hair, make-up & costumes: Angelo Barsetti

Stage operator: Eric Le Brec’h

Jane Birkin in a few words …

Jane Birkin was born in 1946 in London and started her career as an actress at the age of 17. Three years later, she garnered recognition in the film Blow-up by Antonioni, featured at the Cannes Film Festival, where she met Serge Gainsbourg, regarded as one of the most important figures in French popular music. That was  the beginning of their mythical love story in Paris in 1969. They collaborated on an album, featuring the song Je t’aime moi non plus, that sold millions of copies in just a few months. After they broke up in 1981, Gainsbourg wrote her several songs found on his golden album des Dessous chics.

In 1985, she acted in her first play La fausse Suivante at the Theatre des Amandiers of Nanterre, under the direction of Patrice Chéreau. She then dominated the stage as a singer at Bataclan, after the release of Lost Song in 1987. In 1990, Gainsbourg dedicated a new  album to her called Amours des feintes before his death the following year.

At the end of her tour at Francofolies de la Rochelle in 1992, she indulged herself in writing and dedicated her time to humanitarian work. Notably, she sang for Amnesty International, directed a  short film on the fight against AIDS, and went to wartime Sarajevo on behalf of the Paris-Sarajevo Association.

After Jane Versions in 1996, Arabesque in 1999, Rendez-vous in 2004, Fictions in 2006 and a return to the theatre in the role of Electra of Sophocles, Birkin created her first feature film as both a director and actress; Boxes was presented in the official selection of competition at the Cannes Film Festival in 2007.

Until April 2008, Birkin was on a world tour featuring Gainsbourg’s songs and her own from previous albums. After acting in the last film by Jacques Rivette, 36 vues du Pic Saint Loup, screened at the Venice Film Festival, she released the album Enfants d’hiver for which she wrote the lyrics, for the first time in her career. She performed the show Live Jane at the Palace in 2009 and in parallel, continues to pursue  humanitarian engagements through projects including Burma, sans papiers, Haïti …

When Jane and Wajdi met…

When Jane Birkin and Wajdi Mouawad met, both affected by their artistic journeys and open-hearted struggles, the mutual appreciation was immediate, urgent, complete and linked to the same humanity. The playwright specially wrote a text for both the comedian and the committed woman, who showed great compassion for the world and for men: The Sentinel.

 “Fragile voices remain, to say things otherwise, to sing when things cannot be said. A living voice longing to console the dead. Jane Birkin’s silky voice is one of these. When there are no possibilities left to bring the unfairly dead people to life, a possible dignity remains. That of the cantata, the singing, the oratorio, the simple phrasing, made out of words to say the world’s ills, the words’ ills, the ills’ words, entwined, interlaced, folded, refolded, unfolded and implicated in a necessarily complicated manner, to be only heard and understood by those who share the same sensitivity unheard by men and women dying in vain in the unbearable solitude of mass graves.” - Wajdi Mouawad, summer 2009.

Theater: FRANCE - CANADA

«SEULS/ALONE» A solo by Wajdi Mouawad

Théâtre Monnot, Achrafiyeh

30 & 31 May at 9 P.M.

Arabic subtitles

Written, directed and played by Wajdi Mouawad

Artistic and technical crew:

Dramaturgy & thesis writing: Charlotte Farcet

Artistic counselor: François Ismert

Assistant Director: Irène Afker

Scenography: Emmanuel Clolus

Light designer: Eric Champoux

Costumes designer: Isabelle Larivière

Sound designer: Michel Maurer

Music composer: Michael Jon Fink

Video designer: Dominique Daviet

Stage manager & operator: Jean Fortunato

Sound operator: Olivier Renet

Light operator: Eric Le Brec’h

Stage operator: Hakim Driss

Artistic operator: Alain Roy

Subtitles operator: Uli Menke

Production: Maryse Beauchesne Abé Carré Cé Carré, assisted by Mariane Lamarre

&Arnaud Antolinos Au Carré de L'Hypoténuse

General secretariat: Marie Bey

Press liaison: Dorothée Duplan 

About the play:
Harwan, a student from Montreal at the point of defending his thesis, is found locked overnight in a room of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, after a series of banal events. The night will last more than two thousand years and lead to the bedside of his mother tongue, forgotten within the deep layers of everything that is multiple in him.

Wajdi Mouawad raises an intriguing question concerning the fate of the mother tongue when everything begins to operate through another language, one that is monstrously acquired. How to proceed when there is someone else to become that which you were? This pathway is intimately linked to the body, to the voice and to being; only the author-director can discover the essence of things through performing a solo.

Critic's Extract:

Maïa Bouteillet, Libération:

Christian Saint-Pierre, Voir: 

In Alone, Wajdi Mouawad stretches the boundaries of his art with compelling courage and introspection…On stage for 120 consecutive minutes, Mouawad completely inhabits the character he has created, commits absolutely to the demands of a genre that, here more than ever, examines issues of introspection, questioning, and the search for identity.

Sylvie St-Jacques, La Presse:

In the manner of Harwan's thesis subject, Wajdi Mouawad brings off this stunning one-man show by creating the illusion that we have shared the story and the experiences of a whole host of characters. But the tragedy, the blood, and the violent visual impact remind us that in Wajdi's case we are still at war, and childhood is still a knife in your throat.