REALIA (Bucharest-Beirut)
2013
Solo performance, 60 minutes
Realia (Bucharest/Beirut) is a performance that combines temporal layers, real and fictional events from the life of a character that simultaneously has two identities: Mihai Mihalcea, born in Bucharest and Farid Fairuz born in Beirut. The dramaturgy is build upon the tension created through a construct that mixes very personal and powerful memories from Bucharest and fictional elements from Beirut and the other way around. With a physical appearance that he maintains for all the occurrences he takes part in (black, long, shaggy hair and beard, at times a golden cape, as well as a transformed voice with an accent somewhere between Arab and Yiddish), Farid Fairuz warns us: “A few years ago I had to invent myself a character so I can still exist. Now I’m Farid Fairuz and I tell you two things: The Ottoman Empire did not disappear. A part of it has for sure remained inside me; everything in life is connected to pain and pleasure, otherwise I cannot explain myself anything from all this.”
In Realia (Bucharest/Beirut) Farid Fairuz questions the frail limit between the real and the fictional, thus emphasizing a discourse based on the construction of multiple identities. His approach underlines the ability of today’s culture to impose the unreal and the fictional as realities, as components of a realm in which the line between the possible, the virtual and the real no longer function as they once did.
The work has been presented in the frame of Rencontres Choreographiques Internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis, Good Guys Only Win In Movies festival at Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) Berlin, Temps d’Images Festival in Cluj-Napoca, in Dance House Limassol, at the National Dance Centre Bucharest, Theatre - Alfred Ve Dvore/Motus, Prague, Theatre Laboratory “Sfumato”/Antistatic Festival Sofia.
Review by Noémie Coudray
Review by Christophe Candoni
Review by Agnès Izrine
Review by Andrew Haydon
artistic direction & performance: Farid Fairuz / text, costumes & set design: Farid Fairuz / music: Dhafer Youssef, Brent Lewis, Karpov not Kasparov, P. I. Ceaikovski, Margareta Paslaru / technical support: Mircea Andrei Ghinea / production: Solitude Project & Caminul Cultural / project financed by The National Cultural Found and supported by Colectiv A
2013
Solo performance, 60 minutes
Realia (Bucharest/Beirut) is a performance that combines temporal layers, real and fictional events from the life of a character that simultaneously has two identities: Mihai Mihalcea, born in Bucharest and Farid Fairuz born in Beirut. The dramaturgy is build upon the tension created through a construct that mixes very personal and powerful memories from Bucharest and fictional elements from Beirut and the other way around. With a physical appearance that he maintains for all the occurrences he takes part in (black, long, shaggy hair and beard, at times a golden cape, as well as a transformed voice with an accent somewhere between Arab and Yiddish), Farid Fairuz warns us: “A few years ago I had to invent myself a character so I can still exist. Now I’m Farid Fairuz and I tell you two things: The Ottoman Empire did not disappear. A part of it has for sure remained inside me; everything in life is connected to pain and pleasure, otherwise I cannot explain myself anything from all this.”
In Realia (Bucharest/Beirut) Farid Fairuz questions the frail limit between the real and the fictional, thus emphasizing a discourse based on the construction of multiple identities. His approach underlines the ability of today’s culture to impose the unreal and the fictional as realities, as components of a realm in which the line between the possible, the virtual and the real no longer function as they once did.
The work has been presented in the frame of Rencontres Choreographiques Internationales de Seine-Saint-Denis, Good Guys Only Win In Movies festival at Hebbel am Ufer (HAU) Berlin, Temps d’Images Festival in Cluj-Napoca, in Dance House Limassol, at the National Dance Centre Bucharest, Theatre - Alfred Ve Dvore/Motus, Prague, Theatre Laboratory “Sfumato”/Antistatic Festival Sofia.
Review by Noémie Coudray
Review by Christophe Candoni
Review by Agnès Izrine
Review by Andrew Haydon
artistic direction & performance: Farid Fairuz / text, costumes & set design: Farid Fairuz / music: Dhafer Youssef, Brent Lewis, Karpov not Kasparov, P. I. Ceaikovski, Margareta Paslaru / technical support: Mircea Andrei Ghinea / production: Solitude Project & Caminul Cultural / project financed by The National Cultural Found and supported by Colectiv A
