Street performance, performances of a street / a street’s performance
When I first decided to do this project my mind was flooded with images related to Hamra street, the site of this performance. Images from lived experiences but also images of events I had heard about filled my head in telescopic succession. I had heard for example that some hippies had run naked in Hamra street three days before the civil war erupted on April 13, 1975. This scene, which I never witnessed, was the key image of the performance.
I used to frequent Hamra street during the war. When I was fourteen I saw the movie Hair at cinema Eldorado, one of the street’s many movie theaters at the time. The film was a revelation to my adolescent self. While I had thought it impossible to live on my own terms, there was a new world unfolding in front of my eyes that had nothing to do with what I had so far learned of human relationships, sexual liberation and women’s emancipation. Hair told me that it was indeed possible to live a life of one’s own choosing, and Hamra was the place to make these choices. To me, the street was the “scene” where I could imagine being one of the film’s characters.
Before Hair, I had seen Saturday Night Fever at cinema Sarroulla, with John Travolta who made the girls of my generation dream, as they aspired to one day free themselves from the chains of tradition and from the dread of war. I think that film is what made me want to dance.
Other images surfaced of my life in embattled Beirut in the 80s. I saw us, my mother and I in her red Honda driving the streets of Hamra against traffic at terrifying speed while the bombs whizzed over our heads. We were going to bring my sister back home. It was the day of the so called “battle of the banners”, we were sometime in 1986, and the war raged among parties supposedly belonging to the same side. My sister who was a medical student had decided to stay at the American University Hospital to help her colleagues, but my mom could not bear not having her with her. We had to cross Hamra to reach her. On that day I saw Hamra, THE destination for all those seeking some liberty, the “small people” like myself and the “big people” like the intellectuals of the time, completely empty. The battle of the banners had literally transformed it into a terrifying place where invisible and murderous monsters had seized power to chase away the pipe dreams of independence of my friends, the “revolutionaries”. I felt that this battle was annihilating whatever remained of the idealism that the Palestinians and the members of the Patriotic movement still enjoyed after the failures of the revolutionary attempts at the beginning of the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990). In the year 2000, Hamra Street no longer resembled itself. But it remained a distinctive part of town, and the birthplace of my political awareness.
In this performance I pay homage to key sites on the street, which have since been divested of the functions that were theirs when I used to frequent them. To this end, I chose the sites of Modca café, Café de Paris and café Wimpy, as well as cinema Colisée, cinema Hamra, cinema Eldorado and cinema Strand. The cinemas were in a state of decrepitude and about to be closed down. The cafés were being replaced by other, “international” chains. In 2000 these places, the secret, forbidden destinations of my adolescence, remained “mythical”. With my friend Assaad, we cut classes to go watch films there, the cinemas offered morning screenings, or else we hung out for days on end in the intellectuals’ cafés, smoking Malboro reds before we discovered Chesterfields. One time later on, Assaad met me with a pack of Lucky Strikes, which were then the image of cool. Me, I found it super cool.
In addition to the places mentioned above, I chose four others, emblematic of ruptures and continuities: a house with green windows which had always intrigued me. I had never seen its inhabitants but I envied their luck, living in the heart of Hamra street. And three other commercial places, still “vibrant”: the timeless Librairie Antoine, contiguous to the house with the green windows; the Red Shoe, a pre-war shoe store that outlives changes and fashion trends; Starbucks café, the American brand that has definitively replaced the multiple references of the older cafés.
The performance played out in three movements and required diverse choreographic approaches and reference- objects. The first movement was anchored in my memories of the street’s locations. The second movement anchored itself in reference objects on the street, the poles and the threes. The final movement approached the street in its quality as a crime scene. The three movements played out simultaneously. The actors were creatures of human-like, but ghost-like, form.
Movement 1
Lovers in a struggle:
4th floor of the cinema Hamra building. Seen from the street, the bay window of the apartment balcony is transformed into a kind of screen on which we watch two creatures playing a scene. Shadows intertwine. Do they make love or war? It cannot be confirmed.
Intellectuals in conversation:
Café de Paris. Two creatures are communicating. The movements of their bodies are intended as complex, but devoid of meaning.
Declarations:
Modca, Wimpy, Café de Paris: A creature distributes silver papers, the ones found inside cigarette packs. Written down on them are provocative statements, patriotic poems and fragments of absurd political speeches.
Image of the soul leaving the body:
Facing the Red Shoe, a creature is producing live birds from its chest. The birds fly. Allegory of emotion or The Sweet Suicide.
A tribute to martyrs:
A creature lays a white rose on a placard. It’s the one with the name of Khaled Alwan, martyr of the Patriotic Movement in 1982. It is laid on the sidewalk next to Wimpy café.
The gaze of the other:
Two creatures provoke the clients of Starbucks café through their bizarre attitude. Mute, they stare people in the eye and mimic their reaction to this stare.
The show must go on:
A creature sits on a high chair facing the deserted site of cinema Eldorado. On the cinema poster it is still written: “two movies in one screening”.
Movement 2.
Crime scene
One of the creatures climbs the electric pole facing cinema Strand, takes off its costume. At the same time, the other creatures gradually gather around the same spot, remove their costumes, and lay them on the street, then mark their contours with white spray, turning the street into a kind of crime scene.
Final (scene)
Free from their white costumes reminiscent of shrouds, the actors run back to their point of departure, cinema Colisée, located on a street perpendicular to Hamra street. Having become “mortals” again, passers-by no longer pay attention to them.
………………
Reactions of passers-by
Passers-by avoided making eye contact with the actors when one of them approached them a bit too closely. Others changed sidewalks or hastened their steps. Some of them tried to provoke the actors; the latter completely ignored reactions. “Who are these people?” “They are definitely communists.” “Actually I’ve heard of the girl doing this: She’s a communist for sure!!” “They’re patients who ran away from the American hospital. They’re insane”… “ No come on… they’re just actors…” “ But what do they want?”
May be they wanted to wake up the memories of the dead of Hamra street?