DATE AND VENUE

23.11.2017, 20.30
24.11.2017, 20.30
25.11.2017, 20.30
Zorlu PSM Drama Stage

Lasts app. 120’; no intermission.
French with Turkish surtitles.

LA COLLINE-THÉÂTRE NATIONAL

• Co-Produced by: Au Carré de L’Hypoténuse, Abé Carré Cé Carré Compagnies de Création, Espace Malraux Scène Nationale de Chambéry et de La Savoie, Le Grand T théâtre de Loire-Atlantique, Théâtre 71 Scène Nationale de Malakoff,Comédie de Clermont-Ferrand Scène Nationale, Théâtre National de Toulouse-Midi Pyrénées, Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui-Montréal
• Written, Directed & Performed by: Wajdi Mouawad
• Set Design: Emmanuel Clolus
• Light Design: Éric Champoux
• Original Music: Michael Jon Fink
• Assistant Director: Irène Afker
• Dramaturgy: Charlotte Farcet
• Costume Design: Isabelle Larivière
• Sound Design: Michel Maurer
• Video Production: Dominique Daviet
• Artistic Collaboration: François Ismert
• Voice Over: Nayla Mouawad (Layla), Michel Maurer (Professor Rusenski), Isabelle Larivière (Bookseller), Robert Lepage (Himself), Abdo Mouawad (Father), Éric Champoux (Doctor)

Wajdi Mouawad is a Lebanese-Québécois playwright, director, actor, and the artistic director of La Colline National Theatre in Paris. Many theatregoers and cinephiles are familiar with Mouawad as the author of Incendies, a 2003 drama adapted to screen by seminal director Denis Villeneuve in 2010, which received an Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film. Born in Lebanon in 1968, Mouawad’s life and oeuvre carries the traces of migration, identity quests and cultural estrangement in the midst of his family’s refuge to France and later to Canada when the Civil War broke out in Lebanon and struck the country for the 15 years to come.

Seuls is a striking, colourful, almost cinematic one-person play about different aspects of solitude; fury, suspicion, rebellion and potential for creativity. Wajdi Mouawad, the writer and director of the play, is face to face with the audience as he plays Harwan, a doctorate student. Harwan is a man trapped in his own mind, writing a thesis on Robert Lepage, a theatre director whom he admires, at the department of “sociology of the imaginary”. At the same time, as he confronts his father’s death from cerebral hemorrhage, he takes a mental journey from his hazy life in Montreal to the vivacious streets of Lebanon, a place still vivid in his memories even though he can no longer remember its language. Spare a night for Seuls, which became a sensation at NAC and Montreal Théâtre d’Aujourd’hui after premiering in 2008 in France.

WRITTEN, DIRECTED & PERFORMED Born in 1968, author, actor, and director Wajdi Mouawad spent his early childhood in Lebanon, his adolescence in France, and his young adult years in Quebec before settling in France, where he now lives. In 2005, he established two companies, Abé Carré Cé Carré, in Quebec, with Emmanuel Schwarts, and Au Carré de l’Hypoténuse in France. Meanwhile, in 2000, he served as artistic director for the Théâtre de Quat’Sous in Montreal, a position he held for four seasons. He and his French company, Au Carré de l’Hypoténuse were associate artists at Espace Malraux, Scène nationale de Chambéry et de la Savoie, from 2008 to 2010. In 2009 he was artist in residence of the 63. edition of the Festival d’Avignon, where he staged the quartet Le Sang des Promesses. From 2007 to 2012, he served as artistic director for the French Theatre of the National Arts Centre of Ottawa. He has been associated artist at the Grand T- Nantes from 2011 to 2016. He was appointed at the head of La Colline national theatre, in April 2016.

His career as stage director began with the Théâtre Ô Parleur, with whom he staged his own works, published by Leméac/Actes Sud-Papiers in French to be performed: Partie de cache-cache entre deux Tchécoslovaques au début du siècle (1991), Journée de Noces chez les Cromagnons (Wedding Day at the Cro-Magnons’, 1994) and Willy Protagoras enfermé dans les toilettes (1998), followed by Ce n’est pas la manière qu’on se l’imagine que Claude et Jacqueline se sont rencontrés co-written with Estelle Clareton (2000). In 1997, he wrote and staged Littoral (Tideline, 1997) which he also adapted and directed for cinema in 2005. Following closely were Rêves (Dreams, 2000) and Incendies (Scorched, 2003) which he staged in Russian for the Théâtre Et Cetera in Moscow (and was then adapted for cinema by Denis Villeneuve in 2010, nominated for “Best Foreign Language Movie of the Year” during the 83rd Oscars Ceremony, and performed in a staging by Stanislas Nordey at La Colline national theatre in 2008 and at the National Theatre of Strasbourg in 2016), Forêts (Forests) appeared in 2006. In 2008, he wrote, staged and played Seuls, a show which is still touring in France and abroad. In 2009, he worked to putting together the quadrilogy Le Sang des promesses, which included a new version of Tideline, as well as the shows Scorched, Forests, and Heavens. He created the play Temps in 2011 at the Schaubühne in Berlin.

He is now devoted to staging Sophocles’ seven tragedies in three productions: Des femmes, which brings together The Trachiniae, Antigone, and Electra (2011); Des Héros, and Oedipus the King (2014); the complete version entitled Le Dernier jour de sa vie was presented in the frame of Mons 2015, European Capital of Culture and then Des mourants freely adapted from Philoctetes and Oedipus at Colonus which was presented at the Théâtre national de Chaillot in May 2016. With his newest cycle Domestique, he pursues his research around themes which are familiar to him, he created Seuls in 2008 and Soeurs in 2014, which are both still touring, and will soon, create Frères with Robert Lepage, followed by Père and Mère. Upon an invitation by the Opera of Lyon and the Canadian Opera Company (Toronto), he staged The Abduction from the Seraglio by Mozart in June 2016 at the Lyon Opera (musical direction by Stefano Montanari) Wajdi Mouawad has received many awards for his works, amongst which the prix de la Francophonie from the Société des auteurs et compositeurs dramatiques (SACD) for the entirety of his works and artistic output. He is Chevalier de l’Ordre National des Arts et des Lettres de France (2002), Officier de l’Ordre du Canada (2009), and Chevalier de l’Ordre National du Québec (2010). His plays and novels have been translated in more than 20 languages, and have traveled the five continents, being produced and presented in theatres around the world, amongst which: Japan, Brazil, Korea, Scandinavia, Germany, Spain, Morocco, Britain, the United States, Mexico, Argentina, and Australia.