Barzakh Art for Culture in cooperation with Literaturhaus Berlin would like to bring contemporary Arab theater to Berlin, with the project [Qa f]: Six selected plays written by young Arabic speaking authors, which discuss social upheavals since the Arab Spring of 2011, will be presented in scenic readings. The year 2011 was a turning point in the Arab world. The Arab Spring raised the hope for transformation, including the hope to produce art without censorship. This hope was quickly disappointed. As a result of war and unrest, countless authors from the Arab world have emigrated and their work has remained unpublished for reasons such as fear of persecution or lack of financial means. With the scenic readings, [Qa f] wants to give the German-speaking audience an insight into contemporary Arab drama, which is confronted with the fate of war and migration, but at the same time has tackled the shaping of the future in a very varied manner. Most importantly the international team of [Qa f] developed a new concept, which focuses on the cooperation of Arabic and German speaking artists, in order to meet with the diverse and multilingual reality of the cultural city of Berlin.
In Exactly this Moment Based on actual events – Alec and Karim are two characters looking for a past that is said to be buried. But they are characters who are condemned to remember, interpret, and resist forgetting. They turn memory into a game that is constantly repeated in a country whose collective memory has…
Eid Banquet The play tells the story of Eid, a history teacher with wife, son and daughter who lives in a world in which reality and madness are in direct conflict: the woman prevents him from relieving himself in the toilet, because in her opinion, the toilet is not ment for faeces, but for the…
The Suitcase The suitcase is a tragicomedy piece that tells the story of the couple Razan and Samer trying to leave their country with their bag and see themselves waiting somewhere … Where are they? Are they allowed to cross? What can you take with you? And what did they forget to pack in their…
Short Sentimental Film Wessam visits his hometown Damascus after two years of leaving to study in Germany. During his short visit, he faces new boundaries between him and his old friends, based on the fact that he left Syria on early stages of the Syrian Revolution. In Damascus, his ex-girlfriend is shooting an experimental documentary…
Sinking Damascus. Father and son face each other. Their conversation transcends the themes of everyday life and their personal limits – and becomes a dialogue between two generations. The father has suffered the defeats of the twentieth century, the son experiences the current defeat after he found himself, a freedom activist, held captive in wars…
Gangrene The piece plays in Damascus of the past years. A family leaves home because of war to move to a less dangerous suburb of Damascus. During their move, they encounter difficulties of a material and idealistic nature. The father loses his job, so the mother becomes the sole provider of husband and son. She…
