Wiener Festwochen 2017: Während ich wartete

Wiener Festwochen 2017
While I was waiting
Omar Abusaada, Mohammad Al Attar
Theatre
Arabic with German surtitles

Location: HALLE G

In the drama by Mohammad Al Attar (author) and Omar Abusaada (director), the hospital room as twilight zone between life and death becomes a symbol of today's Syria.

The young Taim is beaten up at a checkpoint in Damascus and is put into a coma at the hospital because of the serious injuries he has sustained. What exactly happened is unclear. One by one, family members and friends arrive at his hospital bed. While his relatives are confronted with the brutal present and abysses of their family history, Taim observes, comments on, and documents on another level the development from the initial revolution against an autocratic regime to the military devastation of the present.

The various strands of action represent, as it were, life and survival strategies. They weave into a complex network of hope and despair, rebellion and powerlessness, of small and big flights, of love and violence. In short, a report from the interior of a country that is in a coma.

Abusaada and Al Attar have been working together since 2007, experimenting with the intersection of fiction and documentation in their performances. Al Attar, who now lives in Berlin, has become a voice of Syria torn by civil war. Abusaada lives in Damascus. His internationally successful productions cannot be staged in Syria. The Syrian music producer Samer Saem Eldahr aka Hello Psychaleppo creates the sound to the piece.

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