Perform Sharjah returns for its third season with a new series of performances, running from late October 2024 until early January 2025. The programme seeks to create spaces of encounter between the local public and contemporary artists from the region and beyond.
This year’s performances examine the current state of performing arts in the region, while offering local artists a chance to feature in new productions. In its third iteration, Perform Sharjah puts a firm emphasis on the history of Arab theatre and its continuing presence within contemporary works as well as its articulations within the city, whether on land or on sea.
Sharjah is known for its active theatre scene. In addition to its numerous local theatre festivals, theatre companies and organisations, the emirate is now also home to the Sharjah Performing Arts Academy, considered the first of its kind in the region. This season, Perform Sharjah engages with local actors and dancers by creating opportunities for collaboration with other artists from the region, while continuing to introduce audiences in Sharjah to new and exciting productions from around the world.
Perform Sharjah’s third edition offers the following performances:
Mute by Sulayman Al Bassam
27 October 2024, Sharjah Performing Arts Academy
Produced in collaboration with Hala Omran and the music band Two or the Dragon, Mute uses music, singing, prose and audiovisual experimentation to express the kind of thoughts that take hold of our minds in the moment of silence that follows an explosion. The performance unfolds like a poem about pain, art, theatre and reflects the artist's engagement with the political situation, while foregrounding silence as an act of resistance against despair or denial.
Reminiscencia by Malicho Vaca Valenzuela
2 and 3 November 2024, Al Qasimiyah School
Reminiscencia gathers fragments of intimate recollections alongside accounts of collective struggle to explore possible representations of memory and its attachment to certain places. Audience members are invited to stop chasing time and listen to the voices within, to cling to what may still remain of a memory.
The Vertiginous Story of Orthosia by Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige
9 November 2024, Bait Gholoum Ibrahim Al Mureijah Square | 10 November 2024, Jameel Arts Centre
Through storytelling, video, photography and installation, The Vertiginous Story of Orthosia imagines what may lie underground and questions the narratives surrounding the discovery of the ruins of a Roman city in a refugee camp in north Lebanon.
La Nuée by Nacera Belaza
8 December 2024, Sharjah Performing Arts Academy
Inspired by the rituals she saw after a research visit to the First Nations Dakota tribes in North America, Nacera Belaza started developing her recent performance, La Nuée. In French, the title holds two meanings: a dark cloud and a dense flock of birds.
In addition to seven professional dancers from her internationally acclaimed dance troupe, Belaza collaborates with three students from the Sharjah Performing Arts Academy, who participate in a special version of the performance in Sharjah. The 10 dancers move in a pitch-dark space in a performance that unfolds like a painting being drawn on a black canvas. The successive moving tableaux becomes visible under very precise jets of light that appear and disappear in tandem with the rhythm of a distinctive and singular soundtrack.
Living with a Piece of Furniture by Nicolas Fattouh
14 and 15 December 2024, Dar Al Nadwa, Calligraphy Square
Set in a Christian village in Mount Lebanon, Living with a Piece of Furniture revolves around the daily lives of the inhabitants, focusing on their relationships and disagreements. The audience is drawn into the village gossip and the heated competition amongst its older women to be the president of a local Christian association, as if the outcome might spell the end of their small world.
Through comedy, the performance profoundly examines the family and the village as essential components of Arab societies, while also touching upon the influence of religion and its impact on our lives.
Solos on the Barge by various artists
20, 21 and 22 December 2024, Perform Sharjah Barge
In collaboration with the Sharjah Ports, Customs and Free Zones Authority, Perform Sharjah presents a new performance format. Solos on the Barge will feature artists from diverse disciplines, who will share their works aboard a floating platform.
For three days, the barge will host several short performances and monologues from classical Arab theatre by professional actors from the Arab world. The barge will also host workshops, meetings and reading groups in a library focusing on prominent works of Arab theatre.
A Writer on Honeymoon by Ahmed El Attar
4 and 5 January 2025, Sharjah Institute of Theatrical Arts
Ali Salem’s famous play Madrasat Al-Moshaghbeen (The School of Mischief) continues to be an international hit even after its author has been widely rejected in the Arab world for his reprehensible political views. In a special commission for Perform Sharjah, theatre director Ahmed El Attar collaborates with renowned actor Sayed Rajab to adapt a one-act by the controversial playwright. Setting aside Salem’s political position, El Attar reclaims his play A Writer on Honeymoon, which was published in the early 1970s. In this contemporary adaptation, the plot revolves around a prominent writer whose honeymoon with his much younger wife gradually descends into an intractable mess due to his constant suspicions that he is being monitored by an intelligence agency.
Visit sharjahart.org for more information. Free admission, however, booking tickets is encouraged.
Sharjah Art Foundation is an advocate, catalyst and producer of contemporary art within the Emirate of Sharjah and the surrounding region, in dialogue with the international arts community. The Foundation advances an experimental and wide-ranging programmatic model that supports the production and presentation of contemporary art, preserves and celebrates the distinct culture of the region and encourages a shared understanding of the transformational role of art. The Foundation’s core initiatives include the long-running Sharjah Biennial, featuring contemporary artists from around the world; the annual March Meeting, a convening of international arts professionals and artists; grants and residencies for artists, curators and cultural producers; ambitious and experimental commissions and a range of travelling exhibitions and scholarly publications.
Established in 2009 to expand programmes beyond the Sharjah Biennial, which launched in 1993, the Foundation is a critical resource for artists and cultural organisations in the Gulf and a conduit for local, regional and international developments in contemporary art. The Foundation’s deep commitment to developing and sustaining the cultural life and heritage of Sharjah is reflected through year-round exhibitions, performances, screenings and educational programmes in the city of Sharjah and across the Emirate, often hosted in historic buildings that have been repurposed as cultural and community centres. A growing collection reflects the Foundation’s support of contemporary artists in the realisation of new work and its recognition of the contributions made by pioneering modern artists from the region and around the world.
Sharjah Art Foundation is a legally independent public body established by Emiri Decree and supported by government funding, grants from national and international nonprofits and cultural organisations, corporate sponsors and individual patrons. Hoor Al Qasimi serves as President and Director. All exhibitions are free and open to the public.
Sharjah is the third largest of the seven United Arab Emirates and the only one bridging the Arabian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. Reflecting the deep commitment to the arts, architectural preservation and cultural education embraced by its ruler, Sheikh Dr Sultan bin Muhammad Al Qasimi, Sharjah is home to more than 20 museums and has long been known as the cultural hub of the United Arab Emirates. In 1998, it was named UNESCO's 'Arab Capital of Culture' and has been designated the UNESCO ‘World Book Capital’ for the year 2019.
Alyazeyah Al Marri
alyazeyah@sharjahart.org
+971 (0)6 5444113
