DEADLIFT

"It is impossible to write a synopsis for this performance. It simply cannot be done.

I write these words as Bashar Murkus, the creator of this work, after being commissioned by Al-Harah Theater, in partnership with Boy Jonkergouw Producties, with a remarkable mission: to create a theatrical piece in dialogue with the works of Palestinian painter Suleiman Mansour, one of Palestine’s most prominent artists and the creator of its most enduring symbols. I was to begin with his painting ‘Camel of Burdens’ - a portrait of a porter carrying an entire city on his back.

No sooner had I agreed to the project than the genocide committed by the Israeli occupation against Gaza - erupted once again, and it continues unabated as I write these words. What city do we carry in this performance, when our cities are being erased and our souls collapse with them? How can we embody a porter who endures the burden while our people die and we stand by, merely watching?

In this visual performance, I place my outcry, my shame, my fear, and my questions. This may not make for a perfect synopsis, but it has made for a performance bristling with questions—testing the limits of the human body’s endurance, and trying, from a heap of rubble, to piece together questions about the future. Not only the future of Palestine. 

What does the rubble teach us?"

Boy Jonkergouw focust zich als regisseur en producent op mensenrechten en sociale rechtvaardigheid. Hij ontwikkelde lesmateriaal over genocide en geeft samen met genocide overlevenden gastlessen genocide aan zowel geschiedenisdocenten als leerlingen HBO en VO.

Journalist Admira Fazlic (Prijedor, Bosnië-Hercegovina 1981) werkte jaren op de redactie van de NOS en was correspondent voor meerdere internationale media.