Rabih Mroué - Lina Saneh

With Lina Saneh

Set design: Ali Cherry

Production: Ashkal Alwan

In this performance, which takes the form of a self-interview, Rabih Mroué and Lina Saneh confront with biting irony the questions of the artist's identity, sexuality and censorship in today's Lebanon. Blurring the line between reality and fiction, they also question the codes of theatre and the place of art in a globalised world.

Biokhraphia, a neologism inspired by biography, plays on the phonetic ambiguity of "khraphia", an invented word evoking in Arabic terms such as "delirium", "senility", but also "shit", and sets the tone for this satirical and acerbic theatrical performance. Using a tape recorder, Lina Saneh conducts an attempt at an interview with her double, in this case her own recorded voice, which plays the role of a cruel and persistent inquisitor. By multiplying images of the artist like so many layers, Rabih Mroué and Lina Saneh invent a device that loses the viewer and places him on the precipice of doubt and ambiguity. Through a subtle game of pretense, constant back and forth between reality and fiction and satirical shifts in representation, Biokhraphia dismantles the codes of theatre. If Biokhraphia must be understood as a play dealing with the social and political taboos of today's Lebanon, it also sends us back to our own demons. In a globalised world, the questions of the place of the artist and art in society, of censorship and privacy concern our Western societies as much as post-civil war Lebanon.