ABOUT THE PERFORMANCE

In 1947, Bertolt Brecht stood trial in the United States before the House of Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), charged with combating communist activism. Brecht had written a statement that he was forbidden to read. The minutes of the trial, as well as this statement, form one of the focal points of this lavish show. 

Exile, subversion trials and the humanist haven of an untraceable elsewhere are all themes that run through this new creation by the Majdalanie-Mroué duo. Through their own itinerary of voluntary emigration from Beirut to Berlin, and echoing the most topical political and social questions, faced with ideological confusion and violent confrontation of opinions in a tormented world, the two artists examine the misadventures of the idealist Brecht as he struggles with the repression of freedom of expression.  

ABOUT THE ARTISTS

Lina Majdalanie
Lina Majdalanie is a Lebanese actress, writer and director living in Berlin. She has written and directed several plays, including Biokhraphia (2002), Appendice (2007), Photo-Romance (2009), 33 rpm and a few seconds (2012), Borborygmus (2019), Sunny Sunday (2020) and Hartaqāt(2023) in collaboration with Rabih Mroué. She also made the video I had a dream, mom in 2006 and Lina Saneh Body-P-Arts Project, a website project (2007) transformed into an installation in 2009. Her work questions citizenship, the place of the human being in the public space and, more specifically, that of the body in the age of globalisation, the Internet, the virtual image and the surveillance society. Lina Majdalanie has also curated projects such as Motion-Less (Tanz-quartier, Vienna, 2009), Vues (Kunsthalle, Mulhouse, 2015), Beyond Beirut (Mousonturm, Frankfurt, 2016), Relatively universal (HAU, Berlin, 2017) and No One’s Land (Claiming Common Spaces V, Mousonturm-Frankfurt, 2023). She has taught at various universities in Beirut and at the Haute Ecole d’Art et de Design in Geneva from 2008 to 2013, at DasArts in Amsterdam in 2012 and at Goethe University in Frankfurt in 2016 and 2021.

Rabih Mroué
Rabih Mroué was born in Beirut, Lebanon, in 1967 and currently lives in Berlin. Actor, director, visual artist and playwright, he has written and directed several plays, including Who’s afraid of representation (2005), How Nancy wished that everything was an April fool’s joke (2007), Photo-Romance (2009), 33 rpm and a few seconds (2012), So little time (2016), Borborygmus (2019), Sunny Sunday (2020) and Hartaqāt (2023) in collaboration with Lina Majdalanie. His work, at the crossroads of theatre, performance and the visual arts, blurs the boundaries between reality and fiction, using videos, photographs and historical documents to challenge the hegemony of the archive. He is also a contributing editor to The Drama Review (New York) and co-founder of the Beirut Art Center (BAC). Rabih Mroué was also a member of the International Research Centre: Interweaving Performance Cultures, Freie Universitat in Berlin in 2013-2014. Then, from 2015 to 2019, he was a director at the Münchner Kammerspiele in Germany. His work has been presented in many countries, including the Reina Sofia Museum in Madrid, the MoMA in New York and the Centre Pompidou in Paris.

TOASTER PERFORMANCE BIENNALE

In April 2026, Toaster presents Denmark’s first international performance biennale, taking place across Den Frie and Husets Teater.

The biennale offers a current portrait of the performance field within both visual art and performing arts – and the many intersections between them – which are rapidly evolving nationally as well as internationally. The focus is state of the art: taking the temperature of the field right now.

Experience more than 20 performances, including 10 entirely new works created specifically for the biennial. The artists range from established performance practitioners to emerging talents – sometimes within the same work.

The programme encompasses works rooted in dance, text, costume, sound, light, music, and space. Performance is here and now – it is the time we live in, and the time we choose to spend together.