Readings of Temporary Stay: A Play by Wael Ali and Chrystele Khodr at MINA Forum

Director Wael Ali participates in the MINA Forum through theatre readings of his play entitled Temporary Stay, starring the Lebanese actress Chrystele Khodr. The play is one of the projects supported by the Laboratory of Arts program, and is shown on Sunday, December 3^rd, at 9:00 pm, Salle Montaigne Theater, the French Institute in Lebanon.

An old audio cassette is found among some abandoned belongings in a family home in Beirut. The cassette was recorded in 1976 during the Lebanese Civil War, in Uppsala in Sweden. The recording is the voice of exiled people who have just arrived to Europe and are telling other family members – the future emigrants, about their new life, including details about administrative procedures they have to carry out, their discovery of a new culture and their nostalgia for the country they had left behind. Chrystèle Khodr and Waël Ali have used the cassette as the starting point to question the history of migrations and migrants from the Ottoman Empire from the early 20th century until the years 2000 in Europe. Titre provisoire (Temporary Stay) creates a space of crossed views that allows to deal with the question of migration as a common history. “The story of children who can see the places of their birth slowly fading from view and softly disappearing."