By Sawsan Bou Khaled and Hussein Baydoun (Lebanon)
Performance in Arabic on Friday April 26 and Sunday April 28.
Performance in English on Saturday April 27.
6 :00 PM – Duration: Approx 60 minutes.
Ticket price: 20 LE (10 LE for students)

About the performance
ALICE is a performance that flirts with the edge of the abyss, where time stops and then accelerates, where realities, fantasies, and hallucinations come together to give a true look of the storm inside the brain of the most intense state of wakefulness, and an equally intense state of absence.
ALICE is an intimate performance designed to be presented in unconventional spaces.

Scientists have conducted various experiments on cats as part of research into the source of dreams in the body. Focusing on the spinal cord, they removed small parts, bit by bit, to discover an area than when dissected, would prevent further dream activity in cats. This part proved to be incredibly small: 4mm long, 2mm wide. and 2mm thick. Once this tiny thing is removed, a cat will not dream anymore…
Ten percent of the human life is made up of the imaginary life of dreams, accumulated in small sequences from many years of sleep. We even spend one-third of our life sleeping in bed.
The performance ALICE pays tribute to the many states taken by a bed: as a place to sleep, to rest and warm oneself, a bed of dreams, of nightmares, of sickness, of paralysis, a sick-bed, a love-bed, and finally a death-bed…
A single woman, alone in her bed. The bed is in a room, the room in a space, in nothingness. There, inside the bed exists no notion nor absence of notion. Curled up in her bed, she glimpses into an infinity of worlds, indulging in her dreams and hallucinations. What is imaginary becomes material, locking her into her seclusion. She swings between wakefulness and sleep, as if walking a tightrope between emptiness and infinity, between consciousness and unconsciousness, and even insanity. She unleashes her imaginary friends, and dare not set foot on the ground, for the monster hiding under her bed waits to grab her by the foot and pull her into the abyss.

About Sawsan Bou Khaled
Director, author, and performer of her own creations, Sawsan Bou Khaled is an artist born in 1975 who lives and works in Lebanon.

Starting with her studies in Performing Arts at the Institute of Fine Arts at The Lebanese University, she moved to France in 2000 to pursue an M.A. in Theatre and Performing Arts at University of Paris III. She then worked on her doctoral thesis on “The Modern Criminal in Theater.”

After collaborating as an actress with numerous Lebanese and French directors, Sawsan Bou Khaled made her directorial debut in 2006 with “Cryptobiosis.” Alone on stage with a human-sized puppet, Sawsan Bou Khaled ties her personal narrative to that of over 17,000 families that disappeared during the Lebanese civil war. A play about loneliness, absence, and waiting, “Cryptobiosis” takes place in a subjective reality and resists against an established view of the world and reality.
In 2010, Sawsan Bou Khaled produced her second play, “Vessels,” where she directed Swedish performer Ove Wolf, with set design by Hussein Baydoun. This piece was produced by Angereds Theater in Gothenburg (Sweden), where she was artist-in-residence for three months. “Vessels” was then taken to the Monnot Theater in Beirut. On the day it was staged, the culture page of the famous Swedish newspaper “Göteborgs-Posten” carried the headline: “In Vessels at Angereds Teater joyous confusion meets high quality performing arts.”

In parallel to her personal creations, Sawsan Bou Khaled also designs and produces costumes and props for other directors. Her signature work was seen in Issam Bou Khaled’s “Archipelago,” “Maaaaarch,” and “Banafsaj,” as well as “About Othello or Who’s Afraid of William Shakespeare?” by Ahmed El Attar.
Sawsan Bou Khaled regularly collaborates with artists from diverse backgrounds, such as sculptor Samir Khaddaje, set designer Hussein Baydoun, choreographer Yalda Younes, and designer/animator Ghassan Halwani.

At the heart of her theater work is the body as a site of struggle swinging between fiction and reality. The body often develops further into “set-machinery” creating an organic universe, both epidermal and sensory.
Her new work, “Alice,” is scheduled for production in April 2013.

About Hussein Baydoun
Born in 1972 in Beirut, a city at war, and under constant destruction and reconstruction, a city of architectural and urban chaos, Hussein Baydoun was inclined early on to questions relating to space, both private and public, and their boundaries and overlaps.

In 1996, he graduated from the Institute of Fine Arts in Beirut with a degree in Interior Architecture. After six years of experience as an interior designer, he decided to devote himself to the visual arts and design.

In 2000, Hussein Baydoun moved to France to live there for two years. Taking up the invitation by ESAD, he took the opportunity as an artist in residence to perfect his technique in etching, silkscreen printing, and other arts. While in Paris, he also worked on the production of many experimental films with Samir Khaddaje.

Since 2002, Hussein Baydoun lives between Beirut, Paris, and Cairo, collaborating with many acclaimed film and staage directors or exhibiting his installations and private work.

Hussein Baydoun’s designs and art installations are based on architectural constructs. He has always been fascinated by mechanics and the simple machines he uses to transform his spaces. He designs sets so that functional works of art move in the same direction as the dramaturgy. He has produced work to resonate with the vision of many directors including Issam Bou Khaled, Ahmed El Attar, Sawsan Bou Khaled, Catherine Boskowitz, Eva Bergman.

In cinema, he has been artistic director of several short and feature films, “Waiting,” that was screened and won awards at many festivals, Fadhel Abbas’ “Dawn of the World” released in French cinemas in June 2008, and Anne-Marie Jacir’s “When I Saw You” produced in 2012, also screened and awarded in many festivals.

Hussein Baydoun’s work was presented in several international events and festivals including Berliner Festespiele, Göteborgs Dans & Teater Festival, Piccolo Teatro di Milano, Venice-Days, Arab World Institute, Le Tarmac de la Villette in Paris, Theatre Days in Amman, Carthage Theatre Days, Festival of Experimental Theatre Festival in Cairo, Europa Festival in Lisbonne, Eurokaz in Zagreb, Kampnagel in Hambourg and at Das Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin.

Credits:
A performance created and performed by Sawsan Bou Khaled
With the collaboration of Hussein Baydoun

Text references: “Le Monstre” of Agota Kristof and “La Tueuse du Jardin d’Hiver” of Fernando Arrabal