The End of the World Is Taking Its Time

In The End of the World Is Taking Its Time, Wael Koudaih / Rayess Bek opens a black box of Lebanese memory. Audio cassettes exchanged between Beirut and Paris during the civil war re-emerge on stage, haunted by cinematic images, forgotten archives, and an electronic soundtrack that is as fragile as it is violent.

Blending live music, ghost cinema, and a sensory journey, the performance dissolves the boundary between the intimate and the political. Voices tremble, tapes hiss, images flicker. What emerges is the sound of a vanished Lebanon, not the Lebanon of history books, but that of apartments, waiting, silences, and confidences shared across distance.

Drawing on excerpts from Cercle of Deceit by Volker Schlöndorff, Rayess Bek creates a hypnotic work in which personal archives and cinematic fiction contaminate one another, blurring any certainty about what was lived, reenacted, or invented.

Note of intent

My fascination with the movie “Circle of Deceit“ by Volker Schlöndorff began long before seeing the film. What first struck me indeed, was the incredible story of the shooting. To make the movie in the torn Beirut of the 80s, the director succeeded in meeting the crazy challenge to suspend the war just for the time necessary to the shooting. For this purpose, German production got all belligerents to achieve a cease-fire. The existing factions: Palestinians, Syrians, Phalangists, and others, lent themselves to the game, given that the extras played their own roles. A district of Beirut downtown is secure. War is suspended for the time of filming.

Wael Koudaih : Script, Music Composition and Performance
Rima Ben Brahim : Lighting
Benjamin Dessaint : Sound
Sébastien Lepotvin : Dramaturgy
Production : Cie Rayess Bek

Partners : Théâtre de la Cité, Théâtre de l’Oeuvre, Marseille