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 as well as between different cultures. The Queen Commanded Him to Forget is based on the novel My Name Is Adam. Children from the Ghetto by Lebanese writer Elias Khoury and also draws inspiration from Brecht’s Mother Courage and the tale of Hansel and Gretel. At the center of the story is the character of Um Hassan, 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.

The project was originally scheduled to premiere at the Pierre Boulez Saal in April 2020. Over the past two years, the artists have continued to meet in Haifa, their hometown, to further develop the piece in a process that also included a rehearsal open to audiences. With these world-premiere performances, the project finally returns to the place where the creative process began.

In Arabic with German and English surtitles
Supported by the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung

We would like to point out that the performance includes the depicition of war-related actions and the sound of gunfire, which some audience members may find disturbing.