LOOKING FOR A MISSING EMPLOYEE
Their faces are displayed in the subway and in the newspapers. They have disappeared. People are searching for them. All that remains of them is an image that does not age, misleading souvenirs of a presence that is now absent. Every day, men and women disappear in war-torn countries and in occupied territories, while those close to them wait in vain for their return. What has happened to them, to those we thought we knew but who have slipped away to another reality? On the theatre stage too lurk unreal apparitions, ghostly beings, illusions of life that nonetheless appear to be real flesh and blood.
Based on real research on people who have disappeared and the way the media present these private and political stories, the playwright, director and actor Rabih Mroué explores the porous border between presence and absence, between truth and lies. His presence onstage is both real and assumed, and his dramatization of disappearance is a magnificent existential and social metaphor.
TEXT AND DIRECTION
RABIH MROUÉ
(BEIRUT)
SET DESIGN
SAMAR MAAKARON, TALAL CHATILA
VIDEO INTERVIEW
MOHAMED SOUEID, PAMELA GHONEIMEH
CAST
RABIH MROUÉ
HATEM IMAM
PRODUCER
ASHKAL ALWAN
BEIRUT
