Riding on a cloud

Rabih Mroué

An image disappears, another one turns up. But he doesn’t understand the connection between the first one and the second. He needs someone to tell him about it, to set the film in motion. How does memory work, if the scenes of the past are split up into still images?
In a very personal, poetic and touchingly affectionate work, the Lebanese theater director, film maker and visual artist Rabih Mroué, who lives in Berlin, invites his brother Yasser on stage to play a character that is very similar to his own: A person, who lost the ability to recognize reality in words and on pictures, because he was heavily wounded as a child in the civil war in Beirut. While he’s able to identify objects in his daily life without any problems, the images on photographs, drawings or in movies don’t mean anything to him. Representation does not mean anything to him any more.
On a doctor’s recommendation, Yasser began to make countless videos after his recovery, to train the ability he had lost. On stage, these films mingle with his memories and they themselves draw a picture, one that almost doesn’t distinguish between fiction and facts. “Riding on a Cloud” is a subjective story of Lebanon and its political turbulences as well as a fragile autobiography, where reality and representation can never completely be harmonized.

ON

FRIDAY, JUNE 19 7.30pm Mülheim an der Ruhr
Language AR with German and English ST Ringlokschuppen Ruhr
Bühne 3 Tickets
SATURDAY, JUNE 20 9.30pm Mülheim an der Ruhr
Language AR with German and English ST Ringlokschuppen Ruhr
Bühne 3 Tickets

Written and directed by: Rabih Mroué
Assist in direction: Sarmad Louis
Performed by: Yasser Mroué
English translation: Ziad Nawfal,
German translation: Francesca Spinazzi

Kindly supported by Fonds Podiumkunsten, Prins Claus Fonds, Hivos & Stichting DOEN – (The Netherlands). Special thanks to Lina Saneh, Frie Leysen, Mroué’s family (Souad, Ahmad, Ammar, Ziad, Maha, Mazen, Nabil and Fatima Bazzi), Ahlam Awada, Samar Maakaroun, Janine Broud, Karma and Nadi Louis. Thanks to Hito Steyerl, Manal Khader, Eric Baudelaire, Paul Khodr, Lamia Joreige, Joanna Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige, Fariba Derakhshani, Mohamad Hojeiry, Matthias Lilienthal, Ali Zuraik, Louis Family, Petra Serhal, Hagop Derghougassian, Ziad Mroué, Christine Tohmé and Ashkal Alwan.

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