Wajdi Mouawad's Cruel Theatre: From Incendies to Anima

Wajdi Mouawad, a Lebanese-born French-language playwright based in Quebec, continues to push the boundaries of theatre with his upcoming projects. In May, he will discuss his novel 'Anima' in Nantes, and in March, he performs his monologue 'Seuls' at the Théâtre national de Chaillot in Paris. In June, he returns to Lebanon for the Samir Kassir festival, staging 'Incendies', 'Seuls', and 'La Sentinelle'. Mouawad's work is deeply influenced by Antonin Artaud's Theatre of Cruelty, aiming to create a visceral, dangerous connection with reality. His acclaimed quartet 'Le Sang des promesses' premiered in full in 2009 at the Cour d'honneur in Avignon. Mouawad's childhood trauma—witnessing a massacre in Beirut in 1975 at age seven—shapes his writing. He believes theatre is a way to mend a broken world. His polyphonic, dialogic style incorporates elements of Greek tragedy, and he often uses the four elements (water, earth, fire, air) in his productions. In 'Incendies', he employed a 'polygonic' structure, where family relationships form geometric patterns. Mouawad's recent monologue 'Seuls' marks a turn towards silence and physicality, as he performs in his underwear, exploring loss of language and memory. His educational project 'Avoir 20 ans en 2015' takes fifty teenagers to read in Athens, write in Lyon, count in Auschwitz, speak in Africa, and think at sea. The project began in 2011 and continues with a trip to Poland in July 2013.