Zoukak Sidewalks 2018 - The Festival presents:
Two Heads and a Hand
Performance
By Zoukak Theatre Company
Friday 9 of November 2018 at 9:00 p.m. at Zoukak Studio
Tickets: 25 000 L.L.
Tickets available through Ihjoz.com and at the door.
Free Entry for students (upon presenting their Student ID), unemployed citizens, migrant domestic workers and people working in the artistic field (artists, technicians, administrators...). Those benefiting from the free entry are asked to show at the venue 30 minutes before the start of the event.
Synopsis
Shakespeare’s savage political commentaries on the government made of him a major political thinker. Since his early works, he asked his audience to consider questions that interrogate leadership: what does it mean to be a king? When should a ruler be obeyed, or disobeyed? How is political power acquired and maintained? What is the difference between violence and brutality in leadership? In this way, Shakespeare’s plays constitute a reflection on the concepts of leadership and power, like in any political or historical argumentation. In reading his plays, especially the histories, it is clear that political issues are at their core.
In most parts of the Arab world, individual power has been the norm of leadership. Dictators and certain political figures have been ruling over people’s lives for decades. Even in Lebanon, a country that has not experienced dictatorship, personality cults around certain leaders and male figures who have long been in government are imprinted on our culture. After the revolutions and the regimes that resulted from them, and the wars that followed and continue, and in the context of governmental inadequacy in Lebanon, power is shifting towards multiple and unexpected coalitions. And yet figures of patriarchy are still moving and shaking the region, which seems to be clinging on to images of ruthless authority.
In this developed version of Two Heads and a Hand, we are interested in asking Shakespeare’s questions today, in order to analyze and question the dominant archetypes of patriarchy in our context.
Credits
Based on texts by Shakespeare
Devised and directed by Lamia Abi Azar, Omar Abi Azar, Junaid Sarieddeen and Maya Zbib
Performed by Lamia Abi Azar, Junaid Sarieddeen and Maya Zbib
Assistant director: Sari Shrayteh
Scenography: Jean Francois Garraud
Graphic design and digital art: Maya Chami
Produced by Zoukak Theater Company
Supported by Drosos
This performance was first presented in 2016, with the support of the British Council and Al Madina Theater and in collaboration with Nadim Deaibes on light and scenography.
Zoukak Sidewalks – The festival 2018 is supported by: Drosos Foundation, AFAC – Arab Fund for Art and Culture, the Sundance Institute, the Goethe Institute, the British Council, the French Institute – Paris, the French Institute – Lebanon, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung, Beirut Office, Salon Du Livre Francophone.
