EXISTENZ | كينونة

Drama about the inconceivable of war

In Wihad Suleiman’s text we meet four people who are thrown back on their naked EXISTENCE in the midst of war. We experience with them what it means when everything they take for granted is obliterated before their eyes. These are places of the past, present and future where people struggle to comprehend their own existence in the face of the loss of loved ones, possessions, dreams and freedom in a dramatically changing world. With powerful imagery and language, the young author Wihad Suleiman - directly on the scenes of violence, directly in scenarios of death - deals with the effects of war on the psyche of the individual. She takes the characters to nameless places, into rapturous states that are full of rage and doubt, hope and longing. And asks: what does it mean to simply exist? Suleiman writes about the excesses of war as it has always happened, and could happen anywhere. She finds words for the intangible and, at the edge of existence, the moments that make us cling to life. The text was written as part of workshops at London’s prestigious Royal Court Theatre. Wihad Suleiman, born in 1988, graduated from the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts in Damascus. In 2015, spon- sored by the Goethe-Institut, she spent six months at the Theater an der Ruhr.

In February 2017, her version of »Medea« had its premiere at the Großes Haus of the Theater Oberhausen.

Lydia Ziemke is directing the world premiere of the text in German and Arabic.