Mahmoud is Egyptian. Nini is French. Mahmoud is black, Nini is white. Mahmoud is a man and Nini a woman, Mahmoud speaks Arabic, and Nini French. We could keep adding to this list of opposites, which might at first glance be endless sources of misunderstanding. Except that through the mediation of director Henri Jules Julien, actors Virginie and Mahmoud met in a train station and decided to create a show based on this encounter. “We’ve tried to go as far as possible with the questions we each had about the other, and to express our curiosity and our prejudices without being afraid of empathy or mistakes.” From identity clashes to ideological doubts, from clichés to clumsy platitudes, from misunderstandings caused by inaccurate translation to the tricks used to try and get a glimpse of who we are and who the other is: the twists and turns of language and of being are the very material of Mahmoud & Nini, a show which explores this “cross-cultural encounter” and its complications, when one sincerely wishes to meet the other.
14, 15, 17 July and 20 to 22 July at 15h
Performance in Arabic and French, surtitled in French and Arabic
