Brahim Jumaa

This participatory performance art production is based on the exchanges of correspondence between a Syrian director and a Tunisian performer. It examines the importance of the written message as an artistic medium and the need for works to preserve imagination in a world dominated by the increasingly rapid onrush of taped sounds and videos. Two cities – Tunis and Damascus – are united by words. The performance expresses this meeting and the changes in our cities over the years by means of the body and individual self of each of these two artists.

This performance follows freely Harold Pinter’s play “The Dumb Waiter”, which he wrote in the late 1950s, and repositions it in the reality as lived in Syria now and here. The main objective of this production is to investigate into the transformation of young Syrians as they become vicious defenders of their privacy – given the current circumstances. This, despite the similarity in the pressure faced and that turns them into mirrors that break in the course of confronting each other. The play focuses on the concept of individual privacy that has become an absurd attempt in their strive to stay alive. Because, all individual thoughts, collectively, that surround our lives today equally derive their solidity and fragility from the complications inflicted upon the sensory through daily details.