المتحف

By Bashar Murkus
Khashabi Theatre 
Premiere 14 November 2019 Khashabi Theatre, Haifa. 

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He was sentenced to death by lethal injection, after committing a mass shooting in a museum of contemporary art. 49 children and their teacher were killed. His original plan, to be killed by the police inside the museum, has failed. He was arrested, interrogated, and sentenced to death. For the execution to be carried out, he had to wait for seven years.

A week before the execution, he insists on meeting the detective who investigated his case. He convinces him to be the last person he meets and to join him for his last supper.

At the final evening the two men meet alone in a locked room in the building where the capital punishment will be carried out.

The prisoner wanted his death to be an artwork that would discredit the state on the walls of the museum. Now the state, at its turn, wants his death to be a work of art, but a legal one, using law to nurture its authority. It is the last battle in a war in which the victorious is the one who succeeds in creating the last painting that the audience will see. But the moment the two men meet in front of the audience in this closed room, these two poles become equal. The law loses its ability to formulate morals, desires lose their consequences, actions are freed from their results, and the human instinct becomes the authority.
This meeting allows them both to play risky and manipulative games. Games that can only be played

at a last night.
Games in which they search for the meaning of the death they desire.

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CAST / CREATIVE TEAM

Written and Directed by | Bashar Murkus
With | Henry Andrawes, Ramzi Maqdisi
Co-researcher | Majd Kayyal
Dramaturgy | Khulood Basel
Scenography | Majdala Khoury

Music production | Nihad Awidat
Light Design and Technical Director | Muaz Aljubeh
Translation | Lore Baeten
Assistant Director  | Samera Kadry
PR | Mustafa A. Qablawi
Produced by | Khashabi Theatre
Producer | Khulood Basel

Co-Production with | 
Schlachthaus Theatre - Bern, Switzerland
Moussem Nomadic Arts Centre - Brussels, Belgium Arts Centre
Vooruit - Gent, Belgium
 

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THE MUSEUM

Was developed, in part, at the 2018 Sundance Institute Theatre Lab in Morocco.
And the 2018 Sundance Institute Theatre Lab at MASS MoCA Museum in North Adams.

90 minutes
(In Arabic with surtitles)

This play contains scenes with full nudity and violence.

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