The Search for Power
Tania El Khoury
- Price
- $27*
- Genre
- Theater
- Season
- Winter/Spring 2025
- DATE
- MAY 29-JUN 8
- TIME
- Performances:
5/29-5/31, 8:30 PM
5/31-6/1, 3 PM
Installation:
6/4-6/8, 12 PM-6 PM - RUNTIME
- Approx. 75 minutes, no intermission
* Discounts available for REDCAT members, students & the CalArts faculty and staff
Join the conversation in the REDCAT LOUNGE
About
On a night with a sudden electricity outage in Beirut, artist Tania El Khoury and her husband, historian Ziad Abu-Rish, promised each other to research the history of power outages in Lebanon. Born during the Lebanese Civil War, the artist had grown up with the understanding that the problem with electricity in Lebanon began during the war. The historian, however, recalled finding ███████████████ that announced scheduled electricity outages across Beirut. The two decided to research the history of power outages in Lebanon. The Search for Power, a performance that places the audience in an intimate gathering, delves into the intersection between public utilities infrastructure, people’s relationship to the state, and various popular mobilizations to shape both. In time, they reach as far back as the introduction of electricity in Beirut before █████████████████████. In space, they collect documents across Lebanon and beyond its borders, visiting the archives of ██████: Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, and the United States. What they find is a transnational story that locates electricity at the intersection of colonial legacies, the machinations of political and economic elites, and everyday acts ███████████████. The Search for Power is an intimate performance and installation featuring the artist, the historian, and ██████.
The Search for Power can be experienced as a ticketed live performance or as an open installation without ticket or reservation. In the open installation, the audience is invited to listen through headphones to a pre-recorded text and explore the archives box in their own time.
Tania El Khoury creates interactive installations and site-specific performances to question the hidden aspects of History and share knowledge that is difficult to access, with an aesthetic and political objective of repair and reappropriation.
—
Marion Boudier, théâtre
REDCAT and the Fisher Center at Bard co-present Tania El Khoury’s The Search For Power.
A Co-Production with the Fisher Center at Bard.
Co-commissioned by Anti Festival and Shubbak Festival. Supported by Arts Council England and brut Wien.
Tania El Khoury is a 2024 - 2026 Fisher Center LAB artist in residence with lead support from the Mellon Foundation. Fisher Center LAB is the signature residency and commissioning program of the Fisher Center at Bard.
about the artistS
Tania El Khoury is a live artist whose work focuses on audience interactivity and its political potential. She creates installations and performances in which the audience is a witness and an active collaborator. Tania’s work has been translated to multiple languages and shown in 32 countries across six continents in spaces ranging from museums to cable cars. She is the recipient of the Herb Alpert Award in the Arts, the Soros Art Fellowship, the Bessies Outstanding Production Award, the International Live Art Prize, the Total Theatre Innovation Award, and the Arches Brick Award. Tania is Distinguished Artist in Residence of Theater & Performance and the Director of the OSUN Center for Human Rights & the Arts at Bard College in New York. She holds a PhD from Royal Holloway, University of London. She is associated with the Forest Fringe collective of artists in the UK and is a cofounder of the urban research and live art collective Dictaphone Group in Lebanon.
Ziad Abu-Rish is a scholar of the modern Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region. His research centers around state formation, economic development, and popular mobilizations, particularly in Lebanon and Jordan. He earned his PhD in History from the University of California Los Angeles, and his MA in Arab Studies from the Center for Contemporary Arab Studies at Georgetown University. Abu-Rish is coeditor of The Dawn of the Arab Uprisings: End of an Old Order? (2012), among other edited volumes. He is the author of several articles and chapters, including “Garbage Politics in Lebanon,” “Municipal Elections in Lebanon,” and “Lebanon Beyond Exceptionalism.” He serves as coeditor of Arab Studies Journal and Jadaliyya e-zine, and codirector of the Lebanese Dissertation Summer Institute. Abu-Rish is Associate Professor of Human Rights and Middle East Studies at Bard College, where he also directs the MA Program in Human Rights and the Arts.
cast & creative team
Creation: Tania El Khoury in collaboration with Ziad Abu-Rish
Performance: Tania El Khoury, Ziad Abu-Rish, and Petra Abousleiman
Production Design: Petra Abousleiman
Research: Ziad Abu-Rish with support from Owain Lawson
