Heavens
Synopsis and Significance:
Heavens closes the chapter of historical research we started in 2012 with Perform-Autopsy. Through this research, we gained insight into the private-public relationship with history. It revealed our incomplete historical empire: the curse of repetition and echoes, our fragile reality and selves, the breath-constricting anxiety when we attempt to bury the rubble of the past in denial and reconstruction, the fear, hatred and self-loathing at the thought of our murderers and reality silencers – and our victims, anxiousness over our struggles, actions and betrayals, nostalgia that sinks us in past events somehow linked to us.
In this work, we come to a self realization as individuals. We have become what we lost and we have lost what we have become. Our history has reduced us to numbers that fuel a destructive controversy. We challenge that which paralyses us and denies us a future. Between the here and the there, the now and the then, recollecting our memories and our losses. On stage, we stand up so we can see, we speak out so that we may hear, we tell our stories so we can realize ourselves.
Playwright’s Country of Origin:
LEBANON
Production History
Co-produced by Zoukak in partnership with War Child – Holland in 2013, in partnership with the Sustainable Democracy Center (SDC) and the Citizenship and Peace Youth Clubs, with funding from the Liberty Foundation. Performed in February 2014 and in December 2015 at Zoukak Studio and in February 2016 at the International Theater Festival of Kerala, India. An audio version was produced and published in 2016 along with the text. The Audio version toured on radios and online platform from the Middle east and north Africa and Europe during April and May 2020.
Name of the Creator(s) in English
Year of Writing
Year of the First Staging (if applicable)