The theatre director and playwright, Wajdi Mouawad, will be presenting his play ´Incendie` or ´Scorched` again in the Matadero contemporary art complex in Madrid that was a sweeping success in the box offices when it premiered in Spain two years ago. This Lebanese author, who has settled in Canada and was forced to flee as a child from the conflict in his native country, reflects this pure tragedy in his works which relate Greek tragedies instead.
His play, Scorched, brings to mind the life of Antigone, with a recent death that knows no end, or King Oedipus, but with another focus, and the tragic hero is not princes of Thebes, nor a lonely traveller, or a thief. In fact, the main character is Nawal, a representation of any woman from any country ripped apart by war, humiliated, raped and inseminated by the enemy.
Scorched is a deep look into human nature. A woman dies and opens the door to the secrets of her past, leaving in her will a green cloth dress to her twin children, a notebook, and two envelopes. They are two Pandora boxes themselves as they unleash evils and marvels, and their content plunges them into a fabulous odyssey that drags them to a far away continent, towards an unknown past, and where they are born again.
Scorched is an impressive work of art that shows us rebirth through destruction, fires that at times must be started, the terrible and the painful journey that you sometimes have to take to find yourself. Because this inner journey is necessary, this rebirth and metamorphosis to rediscover that “we are houses inhabited by tenants that we weren’t aware were there.”
Wajdi Mouawad`s Scorched will be showing from the 22nd of September to the 3rd of October in the Matadero art complex in Madrid.
Claudia - Marketing Team