Rabih Mroué is an internationally renowned Lebanese actor, director and playwright whose work often probes into representations of the real in an age of digital narratives — particularly in the context of conflict and revolution in the Middle East. His work is marked by its continual reworking of the technologies and structures involved in the production and reception of media today.
He returns to Festival/Tokyo next week with three provocative new pieces, all radically different in their presentation, but connected through the theme of "absence."
The works comprise "33rpm and a Few Seconds," created in collaboration with his partner and fellow Lebanese artist Lina Saneh, on the life of an Arab Spring activist; "The Pixelated Revolution," which dissects a scene from citizen-journalist video footage of the war in Syria to question the act of looking; and finally "Riding on a Cloud," a semi-autobiographical piece performed by and about his younger brother, Yasser Mroué.