Where does ignorance end and responsibility begin? What can we learn from the silent voice? Come to Yara’s Wedding. Coming to your area soon.
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
“An amazing evening of theater.”
– NRC
Yara’s Wedding is an interdisciplinary (almost) musical directed by Guy Weizman, with lyrics by Antigone Akgün, Rasit Elibol, Mohamedou Ould Slahi Houbeini and Rik van den Bos. Together, inspired by the complex relationship between the ‘East’ and the ‘West’, this unique group of writers wrote a performance about framing the other on the basis of origin, colour, orientation, social status and cultural conflicts. The result is a performance about how privilege influences your perspective on the world. About how being poor determines your perspective. About how thinking you’re entitled to something determines your perspective. And about the great consequences these uncomfortable truths can have.
In this (almost) musical, music obviously plays a major role. To capture the relationship between ‘East’ and ‘West’ in music, musicians from Asko| Schönberg and Slagwerk Den Haag worked together intensively with Loradeniz and singer Karima El Fillali, who plays the role of Yara. Both live and create at the crossroads of cultures. Loradeniz was born in Istanbul and lives in Amsterdam, as a singer and producer of electronic music. Karima as a Dutch Moroccan who blends her great interest in, and knowledge of, traditional Arabic music in beautifully into her work.
LANGUAGE NO PROBLEM
Yara’s Wedding is performed in Dutch, German and Arabic, with Dutch and English surtitles.
SPOILER ALERT
Yara, Greta, Sebastian and Tony are childhood friends. They grew up in the same neighborhood and spent long, rainy summers together. They were inseparable until that one night. The night the mansion burned down. That night it seemed as if in one fell swoop all members of the friend group stood on the opposite sides of a great divide, and the illusion of who they thought they were together bursts like a bubble.
Flashforward to 12 years later: Yara marries Sebastian. Marking the occasion, (old) friends and family go on a trip. Far removed from their familiar surroundings, new bonds are forged, and old conflicts come to light. In the carousel of confrontations, encounters and situations at the wedding, everyone slowly becomes so drunk and emotional that no one wants to go to bed until everything that needs to be said or done, has been said or done.
ABOUT NITE
In a search for meaning in a rapidly changing world, NITE (national interdisciplinary theatre ensemble) creates performances that are as spectacular and interwoven as the world itself. After SALAM, Brave New World 2.0, Before/After and The Underground, NITE now plays Yara’s Wedding.
Yara’s Wedding is a coproduction of NITE, Club Guy & Roni, Slagwerk Den Haag en Asko|Schönberg and Schauspiel Hannover.