Petra Poelzl: Hi, Ali, nice to finally meet you in person! In your work, you have created a language inspired by Arab mythology and by the political, social and religious context of Lebanon. Your piece “Iza Hawa” is part of a trilogy about love. Before talking about that trilogy, you also did a trilogy on grieving.

Ali Chahrour: The grief and death ritual trilogy comes from a very personal perspective. I come from a Shiite family. They have a long tradition in the aesthetic of lamenting and the importance of keeping the memories of the people that left this world through the poems that they wrote to them. I'm very inspired by my mother. My father passed away 20 years ago. And I can still visualize him, because his memory is always present through my mother’s voice, through her stories, through the way they lamented him. Beside this very personal aspect, I'm so fascinated by the funerals, especially in the Shiite sect. There are countless rules and taboos about the way that we mourn the people that we love. I'm always impressed how in this very intense emotional situation, individuals are able to break the taboos of society, break the taboos of religion and politics as if this death opens the door of freedom of expression. In the mosque or the religious places where they hold the funerals, you can see women removing their veils, falling into each other’s arms. I was very intrigued by this extreme love situation. It's like a political statement. And that's what led me to do a love trilogy.

PP: How do you incorporate these aspects into your artistic work?

AC: The first performance was “Fatima” in 2014. Fatima is the name of my mother. The performance is inspired by the poem that she wrote for my father when he passed away. Also, Fatima is the daughter of the Prophet Muhammad. The piece is also inspired by Fatima Umm Kulthum (1908–1975), the famous Egyptian singer that used to sing about love, sex, and passion. Everyone was so taken by her beauty that she could pass all their messages that usually nobody was allowed to talk about. In 2015, I did “Laila’s Death”, for which I invited Laila the mourner. Laila’s main job is being a “pleureuse”: When someone died, she was invited to a house to sing and make people cry. She’s the one that mourned my father when he passed away. Ten years later, I invited her to sing on stage. In “Laila’s Death” she was talking about her story and how she became a “pleureuse”. In that piece she is surrounded by two musicians and myself as a performer and dancer. Today, the job of the “pleureuse” doesn't exist anymore. No one is inviting a mourner to sing the death of a beloved one.

PP: How did tings continue after this production?

AC: It was not the only collaboration with Laila. The third part of the trilogy was “May He Rise and Smell the Fragrance” (2017), which is inspired by the male presence in the funerals and the fragility of masculinity. It comes from a very personal impression I had during my father's funeral. My older brother was travelling abroad, he was in Germany and I was the only male in the family that had to be strong. I had to stand tall and shake hands. But I didn't want to. I just wanted to be fragile. Then my mother took over and she carried everything.

PP: You just said that these lamenting songs are political. And you also mentioned before that love is political, it is being romanticised and simplified in our capitalistic world, but it carries great political power. An aspect that the festival “Love is a Verb” also aims to highlight, especially in this binary world we are living in right now. Could you tell us more about the idea of love in the Arabic mythology and how you are linking it to contemporary realm?

AC: My work is inspired by the Arabic myths, but also by our contemporary stories. I'm very much interested in looking to those hidden stories and voices in the alleys of Beirut that no one wants to talk about or is interested in. I personally feel the need of telling stories, especially the stories of the people who left this world without getting the justice that they deserve, with my own artistic approach. After the economic crisis in Lebanon, the port explosion in Beirut, all the misery of this country, the only thing that is left to us – it sounds very cliché, but it's very real ¬– is love. This is the only thing that's left. And articulating this loudly became a political aspect: I want to talk about individuals. I want to question love. I want to gather small gestures, like gathering a team in a rehearsal room, creating a new family. It became a political aspect. Roger Assaf, the performer in “Iza Hawa”, said something very touching to me in the rehearsal room. He said that what we are doing in this space of rehearsing, is creating a very small community of how we would love the world outside to be.
To go back to the death trilogy, with the performance “Told By My Mother” from 2021, we practically managed to save a life through love. Abbas, a young man, was brainwashed to go and be a fighter. He signed the paper to be a martyr. I invited his mother to dance with her son on stage. It was a very long process, but we succeeded to convince him. And I still remember the moment when he came. I told him, take your time, think, decide, or you come to dance with your mother, or you go fight and most probably will die. And he came and he took the paper that he signed and he tore it apart in front of the team. So his life was protected by theatre and the power of dance. And in parallel, we have the story of my aunt Fatima. She lost her son. Her son is still, until now, missing in Syria.
After that, I created “The Love Behind my Eyes” (2021), which is a story of a mufti in the Abbasid period who fell in love with a guy from Isfahan. The performance is inspired by his poems. Because he couldn't live his passion, he wrote beautiful poems for his lover. And he died very young. They say that he died from a broken heart. It's also inspired by many other love stories and an end of the relationship because of what the society or the situation imposed on this love, there is no ground for love to bloom. It's a toxic ground. This was supposed to be the three performances. And then it was extended, because I developed an interest on topics about ageing.

PP: In the festival we also talk about age and ageing and especially about women after the phase of reproduction. That’s when they are becoming unseen to a certain extend in our very male dominated, capitalist world. So, in “Iza Hawa”, you invite Hanane Hajj Ali and Roger Assaf, two icons of Arab theatre, to the stage.

AC: Recently, I have been thinking a lot about aging and what it means to be ageing in a city like Beirut? I was thinking a lot about fathers and mothers who witnessed so many things in this country. The civil war, the Israeli war, now the economic crisis. They should have the right to just sit and feel safe. What can I do to protect my mother? What can I do to make her feel more comfortable? I invited Roger and Hanane, my teachers at university, to collaborate in a project about love and ageing because they have been a couple for 35 years. They are very attached to the city, so there is the love to the city. They are known figures in this city. They give so much to this country, to Lebanon. And there is a parallel to their own love story, about the way their relationship is transforming. They have children, but they are working abroad. They are a couple alone in the city. I always imagined them standing and witnessing from above, the collapse of not only Beirut, but all the area, all the region. One of the first times I met Roger, talking about the project, he said very casually that he was thinking for the first time in his life about leaving Beirut. To leave Lebanon. Simply because he cannot handle another winter in Lebanon with no heaters and no electricity. And he's worried about his health. That would mean not only a separation from the city that he loves, but also a separation from his wife because she wants to stay. I was so touched by what he said, it opened all questions of belonging. And at the same time, there is the collapse of the city that we all love. It's quite a toxic relationship, our relationship with Beirut, because we love Beirut, we want to leave, but we cannot leave. So, “Iza Hawa” is a love letter from a wife to her husband, from a husband to his wife. And also, a love letter to the city, to all the fallen cities that we love.

PP: How would you translate “Iza Hawa”?

AC: It was a decision not to translate the title. It's quite impossible to find words in another language. “Iza Hawa” means “if he will fall”. Also “Hawa” means love. If you will fall in love or if we will fall in love. The word “hawa” also means “air” or “wind”. The performance is based on the possibility that they might physically fall on stage, especially Roger. I usually push the limits of the performers in the rehearsal room. I pushed the limits of Roger, but at the same time, I was respecting him a lot. In the first scene, his wife takes his walking cane that he uses for support and he continues all the performance without his stick. And it was a magical moment, because it became hard for him to walk in daily life. In the performance, he's doing it for one hour – based on the risk that he might fall. That's why me and Chadi Aoun, the assistant director in this creation) are on stage in case anything happens.

PP: As a choreographer, being that person who is holding, giving structure to these bodies is also quite a gesture. That's also an act of caring, an act of loving, of holding the space for the others to be there.

AC: Yes. The choreography was organically created without thinking about care, because in this performance we had a lot of appreciation about being present together, more than with any other performance. So, I had a lot of appreciation that I'm still able to touch, Roger and Hanane and my team, the people I work with. That's what I mean: Small gestures become political.