As well as work by the Birmingham-based Stan’s Café and by the winner of the last BE FESTIVAL Out of Balanz (DK), this year’s BE FESTIVAL comprises a week of new performances presented in a unique format. Audiences are given the opportunity to see four 30-minute shows each evening and to have dinner with the theatre-makers and performers in the interval. It is an opportunity for people to engage with the great diversity of European theatre and each show is designed to inspire them no matter what language they speak.
Mokhallad Rasem’s Moussem / Toneelhuis coproduction Wachten is one of 23 performances selected for the festival.
In June 2013 Mokhallad Rasem created a one-night festival on the theme of ‘waiting’. How do an Arab, Serbian, Turkish and Dutch theatre-maker view the situation in the world? What does waiting mean? Mokhallad Rasem asked four other theatre-makers from different backgrounds - Lotte van den Berg, Yousif Abbas, Kristian Al Droubi and Gökhan Shapolski Girginol - to look at Beckett’s Waiting for Godot through contemporary eyes. He gave them Beckett’s play to read and asked them to make a 20-minute show about what waiting means to them personally.
The BE FESTIVAL chose to stage Mokhallad Rasem’s own contribution to Wachten at its festival.