Honig, شمس & de l’Or
The Play
Honey, شمس & de l’Or is a monodrama written by Yasser Abu Shaqra, performed and directed by Rimi Sarmini, which was staged in Tunisia in 2021. Inspired by Hector Malot’s novel Sans famille, the Syrian author, director and actor Rimi Sarmini transposes the play into today’s reality. He tells of his flight from Syria in 2016, escaping the war, and his wanderings around the world in search of a safe place to live and work. His search relates to his “minority status” as a migrant and refugee as well as his sexual orientation and the impossibility of living his love openly. The loss of a home and a loved one creates a bridge between the “two Rémis” and brings humor and a poetic distance to this highly emotional, autobiographical play.
The Project
We would like to apply the methods of the European laboratory Instant MIX for “translating in the act” and test two different versions of the text without surtitles for Germany and France, each containing German or French respectively, and which we additionally cast with a local actor (in Berlin) or actress (in Paris). This proposal was submitted and selected as part of the Perform Europe program to experiment with more inclusive and sustainable forms of touring.
In both countries, there is a translator and a dramaturge who will work with the Tunisian-Syrian team on the realization of the bilingual version. In Germany, dramaturge Henning Bochert is a founding member of Drama Panorama: Forum für Übersetzung und Theater e. V., in France it is Anne Bérélowitch, founder of Instant Mix and a specialist in multilingual dramaturgy.
The production will be brought to Paris and Berlin as a theater laboratory in two different versions, where selected scenes will be performed bilingually.
The second actor in Berlin will be Kinan Hmeidan from the Maxim Gorki Theater ensemble, who himself comes from Syria and with whom Rémi was actually in contact at the time the story is set.
https://www.gorki.de/en/company/kinan-hmeidan
In France, another actress, Mélody Pini, who will be joining the team, completed her acting training at the TNS (2019) and has a personal relationship with the Arabic language, which she has been studying seriously for two years.
https://www.theatre-contemporain.net/biographies/Melody-Pini
We are seeking opportunities to stage the entire play in multiple languages in a next step. We would be delighted to hear from interested partners in Germany and France.
Dates
25 and 26 April 2025
8 pm
Theater unterm Dach, Berlin
21-23 June 2025
Jeune Théâtre National, Paris
The Team
Rémi Sarmini is a freelance theater and film director and actor who graduated from the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts in Damascus in 2015. He founded the theater group Tajroubeh (2011) and co-founded the association ARTVEDA in Brussels. In Damascus, he has performed in Hysteria (2014), Anton Chekhov’s The Wedding (2015) and Eugene O’Neill’s The Sign of the Cross X (2015), in the United Arab Emirates in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2016) and in Beirut in Death and the Maiden (2018). He staged One Minute in Erbil (2017) and works such as Honey, Sun and Gold in Tunisia (2019-2023). He also taught acting at the “Teatro” theater in Tunisia between 2019 and 2023 and took part in the opening of the Sharjah Theater Festival as an assistant director (2018).
Yasser Abu Shaqra is a Palestinian author and theater maker. He was born in Damascus in 1985, where he received his training at the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts. Between 2010 and 2014, he supervised numerous cultural projects in Damascus and rural areas. His text Before Dinner has been translated into English and Japanese and performed in Beirut, Baghdad, San Francisco, New York, Tokyo and Paris. A collection of his poems has been translated into Danish. He is the author of the original version of Honey, Sun and Gold. His latest play, Unsettled, was performed in public readings in Berlin (bilingual Arabic and German version) and will be published in Arabic and English in the US in fall 2025. He currently lives in France.
Anne Bérélowitch has worked as theatre director / writer and teacher for 25 years. She is the artistic director of the Instant MIX Theater Lab (founded in 2016). Instant MIX is a European and Mediterranean collective for the creation and production of multilingual shows, in Europe and beyond. It involves translation “in the act” and innovative productions of classical and contemporary plays, multilingual devising and writing, and research on creative uses of multimedia to make linguistic diversity entertaining and accessible to all types of audiences.
Multilingual productions directed by Anne Berelowitch include: Noz I Melem (Adieu Europa), adapted from Danilo Kis and Von Horváth (in Serbian, French, Hungarian, German, and Yiddish); Mountain Language, by Harold Pinter (in French/English, Arabic, and Amazigh); In the Shadow of the Cathedral, by Alfred Sant (French, Italian, Maltese, and English); Alceste’s Nightmare, adapted from Molière’s Misanthrope and English versions of the play; Natale in Casa Cupiello, adapted from De Filippo (French and Neapolitan).
Henning Bochert has worked for over 25 years as an author, dramaturge, lecturer and translator from English and German, including works by Susan Glaspell, Dawn King, Eve Leigh, Carlos Murillo and George Brant. He runs a translation agency and is involved in Drama Panorama: Forum für Übersetzung und Theater e. V., raum4-netzwerk für künstlerische alltagsbewältigung e. V. and Weltlesebühne e. V. He has been conducting artistic research into multilingual theater for several years and has led workshops and published brochures on the subject.
Mélody Pini, born in Siwtzerland, graduated from the French acting school TNS in 2019. She loves languages and traveled to Brazil, Burkina Faso, Senegal and Morocco. She acted under Stanislas Nordey, Pascal Rambert, and Jean-Pierre Vincent. In 2021, Loïc Touzé created a solo for her at the Paris Opera. She also played in Hamlet and Paysage directed by Audrey Bonnet. In 2024, she performed in Switzerland in L’Amour ne cogne que le cœur and Il n’y a que les chansons de variété qui disent la vérité. In 2026, she’ll be in Rien n’est sut and Épitaphe.
Kinan Hmeidan was born in Damascus in 1991. He studied acting at the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts and graduated in 2014. Hmeidan was part of the “Open Border” ensemble at the Münchner Kammerspiele in the 2017/2018 season, but also appeared in the film Zeugen (2016). Before that, he worked with some of the independent directors who were still active in Syria (Osama Ghanam, Samer Omran, Jihad Sa’eed) and appeared in TV series and films. Hmeidan has been a permanent member of the Maxim Gorki Theater ensemble since the 2020/21 season. He is currently on stage in Bühnenbeschimpfung by Sivan Ben Yishai, directed by Sebastian Nübling, which was voted Play of the Year 2023 and nominated for the 48th Mülheimer Theatertage. He can also be seen in Dämonen (Berlin) by Boris Nikitin and Sebastian Nübling.
Leave a Reply