ABOUT
ABOUT
Politics is always a performance.
In 1947, Bertolt Brecht sat before the House Un-American Activities Committee and ran rings around it: playing dumb, parsing translations, denying he had written what he had written, until the chairman thanked him for his cooperation. Rabih Mroué and Lina Majdalanie take that hearing, already a theatrical encounter, and turn it into a piece of theater. What they build from it is funny in a bleak way and pointed in a serious one: a look at how an artist talks his way out of a room, and what it costs him.
Mroué and Majdalanie are Lebanese artists who spent years making theater in Beirut before the pressures of working there drove them to Berlin, and they set that departure alongside Brecht’s. His evening in Washington starts to mirror their own exile: two generations of artists weighing what they can say against what it will cost them. What does a person tell the state when it demands an answer, and what do they surrender to keep speaking?
LANGUAGE
Performed in English, with German songs with English surtitles
RUN TIME
1 hour and 40 minutes
Three reasons to go
Three reasons to go
GENRE-DEFYING – A work that is as funny as it is rigorous, leavened by live music and Mroué and Majdalanie’s signature playfulness.
PREVENT THE FOMO – A rare North American appearance by artists whose work has profoundly shaped contemporary international performance.
THE PAST IS PRESENT – One electric historical document opens onto urgent questions of free speech, exile, and artistic resistance.
Performance Dates + Times
Performance Dates + Times
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Thursday Oct 227:30 PMOpening Night
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Friday Oct 237:30 PM
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Saturday Oct 247:30 PM
THE ARTISTS
THE ARTISTS
Rabih Mroué
Rabih Mroué, born in Beirut and lives in Berlin, is a theatre director, actor, visual artist and playwright.
He has created a complex oeuvre spanning different disciplines and formats between theatre, performance and visual arts. He addresses the immediate reality of issues that have been swept under the rug in the current political climate of Lebanon and the region there, relating to the enduring consequences of the Lebanese Civil War and recent political events in his region. He was a fellow at The International Research Center: Interweaving Performance FU/Berlin since 2013-2014.
His works include: Four Walls and a Roof (2024), Hartakāt (2023), Sunny Sunday (2020), Borborygmus (2019), So Little time (2016), Ode to Joy (2015), Riding on a cloud, (2013), 33 RPM and a Few Seconds (2012), The Inhabitants of images (2008), Who’s Afraid of Representation (2005), looking for a missing employee (2003) and others…
He has performed and exhibited internationally including dOCUMENTA (13) – Kassel, CA2M Centro de Arte Dos de Mayo – Madrid, The ICP Triennial and MoMa – New York, Centre Pompidou – Paris, SALT – Istanbul, Reina Sofia… among others…
Lina Majdalanie
Lina Majdalanie, born in Beirut and lives in Berlin, is an actress, director, and author. She has conceptualized numerous productions, including “Biokhraphia” (2002), “Photoromance” (2009) and the film “I had a dream, mom” (2006). Her “Lina Saneh Body-P-Arts Project” is a digital project as well as an installation. Majdalanie was a member of the curriculum committee for the Home Workspace Program Ashkal Alwan. She has taught at the Haute Ecole d’Art et de Design in Genf, at DasArts in Amsterdam, and at Johann-Wolfgang-Goethe-Universität Frankfurt. In 2009, she was the recipient of a scholarship from the International Research Center “Interweaving Performance Cultures” at Freie Universität Berlin. In her works, Majdalanie explores the variations of political language in our times of globalization and digital technology. She curated the program “Beyond Beirut” at Künstlerhaus Mousonturm Frankfurt am Main in 2016. She taught at HEAD (Geneva), DasArts (Amsterdam), Goethe University (Frankfurt), HFG-Karlsruhe, Universität Leipzig, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, and others.
Her works include: Four Walls and a Roof (2024), Hartaqāt (2023), Second Look (series of video, 2020), Sunny Sunday (2020), Borborygmus (2019), Do I Know you? (2017), 33 rpm and a few seconds (2012), Photo Romance (2009), Appendice (2007), I Had a Dream, Mom (video, 2006), Biokhraphia (2002), and others.
CREATIVE CREDITS
CREATIVE CREDITS
Written and directed by: Lina Majdalanie and Rabih Mroué
Performed by: Henrik Kairies, Lina Majdalanie and Rabih Mroué
Dramaturgie: Sandra Noeth
Technical director: Thomas Köppel
Coproduction:
Festival d’Automne à Paris; CENTQUATRE-PARIS; Berliner Festspiele within the festival „Performing Exiles“ (Berlin); HAU Hebbel am Ufer, (Berlin); Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm, (Frankfurt); Residenz-Schauspiel (Leipzig); Kampnagel Internationale Kulturfabrik (Hamburg); Kustenfestivaldesarts, (Brussels); Forum Freies Theater (Düsseldorf); Supported within the framework of the Alliance of International Production Houses by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.
All songs composed by: Hans Eisler
Written by: Bertolt Brecht
Additional music composed by: Henrik Kairies
Legal Mention:
Foto: Elisabeth Hauptmann
Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Bertolt-Brecht-Archiv, Fotoarchiv 1/86
Thanks to: Brecht Archives, Julia Hartung, Yvonne Büdenhölzer
CENTQUATRE-PARIS – Künstler*innenhaus Mousonturm, Frankfurt
Joana Hadjithomas – Khalil Joreige – Urs Koerner – Nikolaus Müller-Scholl – Ludmila Pogodina – Walid Raad – Ivan Txaparro – Anna Wagner – Maximilian Zahn – Andrei Zavalei.
GALLERY
GALLERY
Photo by Christophe Berlet
Photo by Christophe Berlet
Photo by Christophe Berlet
Photo by Christophe Berlet
BEYOND THE STAGE
BEYOND THE STAGE
Indefinite Articles
Rabih Mroué & Lina Majdalanie: Four Walls and a Roof
Zachary Samalin on “Four Walls and a Roof”
Censorship, the political persecution of speech, deprives a culture of its language, exiling its words.
Learn More
Study Guides
Rabih Mroué & Lina Majdalanie: Four Walls and a Roof
Prep School: Four Walls and a Roof
PRESS
PRESS
SUPPORT
SUPPORT
NYU Skirball’s programs are made possible in part with support from the National Endowment for the Arts; New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; and the Howard Gilman Foundation; Dance Reflections by Van Cleef & Arpels; Culture Ireland; New York Community Trust; The Shubert Foundation; Collins Building Services; Fan Fox & Leslie R. Samuels Foundation; Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation; Goethe Institut New York with support from the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany; Adam Mickiewicz Institute; Polish Cultural Institute; Villa Albertine and Albertine Foundation through the Theatre & New Forms program; Consulate General of Switzerland in New York; Harkness Foundation for Dance; and Marta Heflin Foundation; as well as our valued donors through memberships, commissioning, and Allies for Arts Access Fund support.
This project is made possible in part with support from Goethe-Institut New York, with additional support from the Foreign Office of the Federal Republic of Germany and the Hagop Kevorkian Center for Near Eastern Studies, New York University.
