Language: no broblem

Moving between languages, geographies, voices and imaginations, Language: no broblem is an attempt to investigate multilingualism. When speaking more than one language becomes like a navigation compass, we can become absorbed by the underlying power relations at play between the languages. How do they interlace in one's mind in an oppressive environment? How could embodying them shape our understanding of frontiers and displacement?  

We follow the reflexive, yet strange, story of a train journey in Belgium, wherein the protagonist comes across intriguing encounters. Her personal narrative is weaved with the ones of her family members living under occupation. Their voices speak about how they relate to Palestinian Arabic, their spoken mother tongue, in relation to Hebrew, the official state language of where they live. It offers a space to listen to one of the oft-silenced endeavours of colonialism: the active yet subtle machineries that progressively and slowly, through generations, make sure the settler's language prevails over the native.  

Marah Haj Hussein reveals the layered forms of pressure, violence and domination a language can exert on another, causing it to continuously transform and alter. The theatre becomes thereby a stage for confusing and intersecting antagonistic realities to be put in friction. With humour, anger, love and absurdity, the performance foremost embraces the limits of translatability of a language, to keep thinking about processes of resistance. 

On Wednesday 18 September, there is Wonders of Multilingualism #6: (un)learning languages, a collaboration with Passa Porta. After Marah Haj Hussein's performance, you can attend a free debate and lectures on the links between migration, power and language (acquisition) at the Kaaistudios. Find more info here. 
 

• Marah Haj Hussein (b.1998) is a dancer, actress and maker from Kofor Yassif in occupied Palestine. She is currently based in Antwerp, where she graduated in 2021 with a Bachelor of Dance at the Royal Conservatoire of Antwerp. In June 2023, she completed her master's degree in Drama at KASK in Ghent. By merging these two disciplines, Marah challenges the delineation that separates text from movement, while simultaneously searching for possible ways to allow both into the performative space. 
In her work, Marah investigates the concept and definition of mother tongue while exploring the power dynamics between languages. This focus resulted in the performances Kilma Hilwa & Zayt Zaitoun (2021), In Exile (2022) and Language: no broblem (2023-2024). In addition to her own work, she works with with Alain Platel & Bérengère Bodin, Action Zoo Humain & Chokri Ben Chikha, Frank Dierens and Jitse Huysmans and Tuur Marinus. She won the Roel Verniers Prize by Het Theaterfestival 2023 with her project proposal for Language: no broblem.