With a subtle dark humour, Stephanie recounts this journey towards unknown icy lands, where memories of home and family lead to a possible forgiveness for the world's failures.
Choreographer Stéphanie Kayal and composer Abed Kobeissy rely on fiction for this attempt to come to terms with what they describe as hyperreality: “The performance take place in a parallel universe, where, following decades of crimes and corruption, a dancer antihero and her sidekick musician form a cheaply equipped and loosely organized crime-fighting couple to take revenge. With good intentions but no experience, they constitute a mediocre summary of the contemporary reality in Beirut.”
Concept, artistic direction, performance: Stephanie Kayal and Abed Kobeissy
Musical composition: Abed Kobeissy
Performers: Stephanie Kayal, Abed Kobeissy, Pôl Seif
Lighting design: Pôl Seif
Coproduction: Common Stories, a Creative Europe programme, with Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles and Alkantara Lisbon
With support from: orkspacebrussels I Kaaitheater Brussels I Koon theatre Beyrouth I Zoukak theatre Beyrouth I ISAC
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Touring dates
- November 2025 (premiere)
Théâtre National Wallonie-Bruxelles, Brussels - November 2025
Alkantara Festival, Lisbon
Abed Kobeissy
Holder of a Masters in Advanced Studies on the semiotics of music in Arabic cinema, and formely lecturer at the Lebanese American University, Abed Kobeissy has been creating music from various tools and composing for various genres: cinema, theatre, with a focus on dance. Using the Levantine buzuq as its main instrument, his music holds a strong local identity while being unapologetically rooted in the confusion of the present, inspired by local urban soundscapes and exploring subjects often related to family and home.
Kobeissy received various commissions for music composition by partners such as The Berlin Biennale & The Berlin International Film Festival (2018), the UNESCO as part of the Haneen Exhibition (2018), the CTM Music Festival in Berlin (2020), the Huddersfield Contemporary Music Festival in UK (2021), among others. In 2020, he became a fellow at The Sundance Institute’s Theatre Lab.
