JOGGING: THEATRE IN PROGRESS
Hanane Hajj Ali (Lebanon | France)
Date : 16–17 January 2019, 8pm
Venue : Esplanade Theatre Studio
Length : 80 min with no intermission
Cost : $27 | $19* (*Concessions for students, senior citizens, NSF and PWD card holders)
Performed in Arabic with English subtitles
Advisory 16 (Mature Content)
In January, the M1 Singapore Fringe Festival will host the Asian Premiere of a French-Lebanese collaboration Jogging : Theatre in Progress.
The M1 Singapore Fringe Festival is an annual festival of theatre, dance, mixed media and visual arts created and presented by Singaporean and international artists. Themed differently each year, the Festival aims to bring the best of contemporary, cutting-edge and socially engaged works to the Singapore audience.
For 2019, the Festival will take place from 16 – 27 January around the chosen theme of Still Waters.
Directed by Eric Deniaud, Jogging :Theatre In Progress depicts Hanane, a fifty-something year old Lebanese actress and citizen. Hanane exercises daily to avoid osteoporosis, obesity, and depression. As she takes walks through both secluded and open spaces in Beirut, she revisits dreams, desires, hopes, disillusionments, characters, and roles—most of which reveal themselves to be contemporary Medeas with whom she shares some commonalities. The effects of this daily routine of jogging are contradictory. Her body is stimulated through exercise with two hormones, dopamine and adrenaline, both alternating between destruction and construction. Their natural cycles within Hanane – woman, wife and mother – echo that of her city, one that destroys to build and builds to destroy.
Jogging : Theatre in Progress was presented at the Festival Off d’Avignon in 2018 and won the Vertebra Prize for Best Actor at Summerhall/Edinburgh Festival Fringe.
Concept, Text and Performance – Hanane Hajj Ali
Born in Lebanon, Hanane Hajj Ali is an actress, author, researcher, and cultural activist; a prominent figure in the cultural and artistic scene in the Arab region. Her artistic career started in 1978 as a founding member of the Hakawati Theater (Lebanese Theatre of Storytellers) and she has performed in prestigious theatres and festivals, completing several regional and international tours.
Director and Scenography Designer – Eric Deniaud
Eric Deniaud is the Director of French puppet company ExtraMuros and also a Co-Founder of Collective Kahraba in Lebanon.
For the past ten years, Eric has been working as an actor, set designer, and director in various international projects, including the National Puppet Theatre of Vietnam and Le Conservatoire National Supérieur d’art Dramatique. Since 2011, he is also the co-director of Nehna wel Amar Jiran, a multidisciplinary festival in Beirut, and has been working as a puppeteer and actor with S’appelle Reviens since 2015. Recently, he directed Collective Kahraba’s Landscape of our Tears that toured France and Lebanon in 2016.
M1 Singapore Fringe Festival full programme
