TOT

Wael Ali (Syrian Arab Republic) - Under a Low Sky

How to make theater in a period of war, in which reality is subject to constant and violent change, and we are not even there? What is the context of the theater we create, and who do we create it for?
Forty-year-old Syrian cinematographer Jamal is obsessed by the sense he is losing his past. He’s been living in France for more than a decade and is confronted with the fact that places in his memory are being abandoned or destroyed, while he and friends are scattered all over the world. How can I look at the present, if I don’t have access to a past that belongs to me?
He decides to go on a quest for this past and the people who used to inhabit that world. He weaves fragments and snippets of narratives he finds on the way into a reflection of his loss. In counterbalance to this very personal journey, the protagonists decide to delve into the colonial archive. Using fragments from letters, documents, pictures and maps created by the French administrators and military situated in Syria at the beginning of the nineteenth century, the play revisits the birth of the State: An imagined and rebuilt State. Under a Low Sky weaves intimate with political writing, seeking and questioning the limits of both.

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