Director Ofira Henig—most recently seen in Berlin with her productions The Bees’ Road and KIND OF at the Schaubühne’s Internationale Neue Dramatik Festival—and actor-dramaturg Khalifa Natour have developed a new piece for the Pierre Boulez Saal that blurs the boundaries between theater, music, and poetry and between different cultures. The Queen Commanded Him to Forget is based on a novel by Lebanese writer Elias Khoury and also draws inspiration from Brecht’s Mother Courage, Mahler’s Kindertotenlieder, and the tale of Hansel and Gretel. At the center of the story is the character of Umm Hasan, who will do anything to protect her children in times of war. The piece explores the role of literature as a preserver of memory and as part of a process that eternalizes forgetting.

In Arabic with German and English surtitles

Supported by the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung