The director of the Grec, Cesc Casadesús, proudly presented the first “polyphony of acts by the same artist”, thanks to the involvement of the festival with Barcelona, ??which has allowed “to connect many spaces in the city”. The artist who is the object of this special cycle is the Lebanese Rabih Mroué, whose theatrical piece Riding on a cloud can be seen at the Teatre Lliure, and a film and some shorts are underway at the Filmoteca, performative conferences at the Filmoteca and Macba, and a workshop at Fabra and Coats. They are acts that he calls “non-academic classes”.
“I am not here to explain our history, that of Lebanon, nor to give explanations – declares Mroué in the presentation of the cycle. What I try to avoid is hierarchy and I want it to be reciprocal. I come with my backpack and I try to make it understandable with my own stories, and not to simplify it. Our personal lives are much more complex and we have to maintain them.”
Of all his artistic manifestations, on the Lliure stage this Monday and Tuesday you will be able to see perhaps the most personal piece, Riding on a cloud, based on the story of his brother, badly injured in the war. “This is a personal and very sensitive story. My brother was shot during the war and survived. The problem was how to tell this story without falling into pity. I wanted to speak from the tragedy of history to a more philosophical level, to make us reflect on history: language, because my brother lost his speech. How to perform a performance when the characters match the actor? Is it him or is he an actor? These are questions I raise. What people will come to see is not a documentary, it’s theatre.”
Mroué also explains that it was his brother Yasser, who takes part in the piece, who encouraged him to do Riding on a cloud: “My brother wanted to do this piece and I thought about it for a long time, because it is very personal, sensitive, and there was a tragedy that wanted to go to another level. When I accepted, he gave me everything: the photographs, the objects… I felt like I had a bomb in my hands and I didn’t want it to blow up in both of our faces, but I think we managed it.” . And he adds: “We’ve been doing it together since 2013 and he wants us to do another one and I don’t know what else to do.”
The curator of the cycle, Pablo Martínez, considers Mroué “one of the most relevant artists of our time: not only does he tell us about the conflict in Lebanon and the Middle East, but he is important because of the form, because of the way he approaches se to the images in a performative way: the visual arts”.
