Montblanc & Salzburg Festival Young Directors Project
Mokhallad Rasem • YDP III • Romeo and Juliet
based on Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare and others
Guest performance of the Toneelhuis Antwerpen
In Dutch with German surtitles
Print programme (PDF)
Mokhallad Rasem, Concept and Stage Director
Jean Bernard Koeman, Scenography
Erwin Jans, Dramaturgy
Saad Ibraheem, Omar Alani, Paul van Caudenberg, Music Montage
With Gilda De Bal (actress), Vic De Wachter (actor), Eleanor Campell (dancer), José Paulo dos Santos (dancer) and two children
Mokhallad Rasem is an Iraqi theatremaker with a bold physical and visual style. His plays usually feature a range of different languages as this reflects the world in which he – and we – live. He was born in Baghdad in 1982 and directed at his country’s National Theatre before settling in Antwerp in 2006. The first theatre he created in his new home employed actors he had met in the streets as these were the only collaborators he could find. However, following the success of works such as Monde.com and Iraqi Ghosts, he has been invited to become a resident theatremaker at the city’s prestigious Toneelhuis alongside such internationally acclaimed artists as Guy Cassiers and Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui.
Romeo and Juliet marks his debut with the Toneelhuis company and features leading Belgian actors such as Gilda De Bal and Vic De Wachter. It presents pairs of lovers from three different generations and will include love poems from both European and Arabic traditions. Asked what drew him to Romeo and Juliet, Mokhallad Rasem says: “Every culture and every age has its Romeo and Juliet story. You find parallels everywhere. For me it is a very special theme because it is so universal. Every culture has suppression mechanisms as regards love.”
David Tushingham