A blog by Natalia Sedeleva

And I said to myself what a terrible world

Once upon a time, two Lebanese artists agreed to create a performance about Poland. It came out quite political. Or it didn’t.

Performance Sunny Sunday tells the story of one political event that took place in Poland in 2016 in a very colourful, yet minimalistic way. During the performance, a spectator is watching two artists changing roles accompanied by a photo, video, and audio sequence. Despite minimalism (which is expressed in the absence of any props or costumes), artists manage to demonstrate versatile extents of the story, moving from one extreme and exaggeration to another, from traditional storytelling methods to hilariously entertaining satire.

Fiction or non-fiction. To trust or not to trust. As artists highlight it themselves, “based on true events, this performance is purely fictional”. And yet, it can open your eyes to the ways political agenda or propaganda is being made in a very real way. By creating what can be called a one big theatre caricature of the creation of lies, Rabih and Lina show how truth can be twisted even when facts were clearly documented. To the point of one character saying, “And I said to myself what a terrible world”, since he was shocked to what extent his expectations were disappointed by the media creating a completely different image of the event. The truth as a metaphor accompanies performative characters as ghosts, reflecting as well on a fairytale tradition of storytelling, showing how the same story can be distinctively told by different people.

Was it really a sunny Sunday? Or maybe it was a snowy Friday? The audience could decide for itself during the after talk organized by the performance philosopher. And from the feedback that I’ve heard it doesn’t matter whether it was Poland, Lebanon, Hungary, or Russia chilling or stressing on a snowy sunny Monday – similar stories can be found anywhere for everyone to relate to as media will mostly always have influence created by political agenda. But of course, you always can come and watch it to decide for yourself.

You can read more about Sunny Sunday and the “was/wasn’t” narrative here.