MARAH HAJ HUSSEIN

Between documented self-fiction and a freeform theatre, Language: No Broblem looks closely at what happens when a mother tongue is encroached upon, transformed and ultimately silenced. Marah Haj Hussein grew up in Kofor Yassif in occupied Palestine before leaving for Belgium to study dance and theatre. A polyglot as a result of her journeying, she moves between her native Arabic, Hebrew, the official language of the country where her family lives, Flemish, and English. In this piece, Hussein treats multilingualism not as a cosmopolitan asset, instead as a survival mechanism, and the shifting of internal boundaries as a mirror of a colonial balance of powers. In a world tinged with humour, intelligence, and absurdity, she dissects the influence of the settlers’ language on Palestinian Arabic, playing subtly on the boundaries between what is said in one language and not in another, and what gets translated and what doesn’t, thus following the trajectory of her quest to the point of the unspeakable. In revealing the underground currents of annexation and terror that shift the tectonic plates of language, she brilliantly reclaims language as a means of resistance.

Performance in Arabic, Hebrew and English with French surtitles.