Four Walls and a Roof
Lina Majdalanie & Rabih Mroué
Four Walls and a Roof
Performance/Theater
“What is home? What is a safe place for artists, space to think and for their emotional worlds? Are the four walls and a roof of the title sufficient for this? [...] In a comprehensive meditation, the audience [...] is drawn into their feeling of homelessness.“ Eberhard Spreng, Theater der Zeit, February 2025
In 1947, in exile in the United States, Bertolt Brecht was summoned before the House Committee for “Unamerican Activities” (HUAC), which was established to combat Communist activity. For his hearing, Brecht had written an explanation which he was not permitted to read out. This test of the German writer, playwright and director’s sympathies and his rhetorical excellence of his ambiguous answers to the committee’s questions in halting English are extremely well documented. The Lebanese artists Lina Majdalanie and Rabih Mroué, who for many years have created inspiring and internationally sought-after theatre evenings through over-writing, varying and modulating contemporary historical documents, re-examine Bertolt Brecht’s memorable hearing and combine it with their own experiences in their new work ‘Four Walls and a Roof’. Their study of Brecht’s statements before the committee evokes resonances of current political and social issues, ideological aberrations and forceful confrontations between irreconcilable opinions. Maintaining a playful approach to theatre that Majadalanie and Mroué have consistently followed, in their painfully critical yet amusing interrogation the two artists interweave the historical documents with fantasies and digressions and with the piano music and live renditions of the songs of Brecht’s fellow traveller Hanns Eisler. Lina Majdalanie and Rabih Mroué, who share with Brecht the experience of exile, decisively reject ready-made opinions of any kind.
Tickets
Regular price: 16 €
Reduced price: 11 €
Supporters' price: 25 €
Minimum price: 6 €
Venue
Ringlokschuppen Ruhr, Mülheim an der Ruhr
Duration
120 minutes
Discussion
The performance will be followed by an aftertalk (in English).
Language
English with German surtitles