b Wael Ali and Chrystele Khodr
An old audio cassette is found among some abandoned belongings in a family home in Beirut. The cassette was recorded in 1976 during the Lebanese Civil War, in Uppsala in Sweden. The recording is the voice of exiled people who have just arrived to Europe and are telling other family members – the future emigrants, about their new life, including details about administrative procedures they have to carry out, their discovery of a new culture and their nostalgia for the country they had left behind. Chrystèle Khodr and Waël Ali have used the cassette as the starting point to question the history of migrations and migrants from the Ottoman Empire of the early 20th century until the years 2000 in Europe. Titre provisoire (Temporary Stay) creates a space of crossed views that allows to deal with the question of migration as a common history. “The story of children who can see the places of their birth slowly fading from view and softly disappearing."
Conceived and Written by Chrystèle Khodr and Waël Ali
Directed by Waël Ali
Performed by Chrystèle Khodr, Waël Ali, Hassan Al Balkhi, Toni Geitani, Khaled Yassine
Set Design Bissane Al Charif
Music & Sound Composition Khaled Yassine
Light Design Hasan Al Balkhi
Video Artist Toni Geitani
Original Version: Arabic (French & English subtitles)
Production : Festival Sens Interdits
Coproduction : Zoukak Theatre Company & Cultural Association (Lebanon), Institut français du Liban, Les Subsistances, Laboratoire international de création artistique (Lyon), Festival Les Rencontres à l’échelle, Les Bancs Publics (Marseille)
With the support of DRAC Auvergne- Rhône-Alpes, Mophradat, AFAC (The Arab Fund for Arts et Culture), Ettijahat-Independent Culture, Goethe-Institut Libanon, ONDA (Office National de Diffusion Artistique), Tandem Scène Nationale (Douai), Focus Liban 2016
Born in Beirut in 1983
Chrystèle Khodr is a theatre performer, writer and a regular artistic collaborator of Zoukak Theatre Company. She graduated in Performing Arts from the National Institute of Fine Arts in Beirut and was trained in physical theatre at the International School of Theatre LASSAAD in Brussels. She co-created “Bayt Byout” in 2008 and wrote and performed the solo "2007, or how I crushed my bubble envelopes". In 2012 she wrote and directed “Beirut Sepia”. In the framework of her work with Zoukak she performed in the company’s devised performances: “He who saw everything” (2014), “Death comes through the eyes” (2014) and “The Battle scene” (2015). Since 2008 she leads theatre workshops and social interventions with different publics across Lebanon. Chrystèle Khodr took part in the “Sundance Theatre Lab 2016” and “New Writing from Syria – Sundance Berlin 2017” as a dramaturge.
Waël Ali is a Syrian writer and director born in 1979. In 2004 he graduated from the Higher Institute of Arts in Damascus. He obtained then his Master degree in Performing Arts from the University of Lyon II, where he is currently writing his doctoral thesis. Between 2003 and 2006, he was involved in the “Interactive Theatre Project” in Syria where he co-directed and conducted trainings in various Syrian provinces. During the same period, he collaborated in Damascus as a playwright with the collective "Studio Theatre", on the performance «The Show». In 2014, he created the piece «I do not remember» which was presented in several venues and festivals in Beirut (Sunflower Theatre), Berlin (Maxim Gorky Theatre), Paris (House of Europe and East) Antwerp (Toneelhuis) and Tunis (Carthage Theatre Days). Waël Ali is currently working on a production “Baybars, imaginary cities” with Francis Guinle based on the popular epic "Sirat Baybars", the first version was read in the “Echangeur” theatre in Paris in January 2016.
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