The Arts

When Rabih Mroué performs, he is usually armed with a cache of photos, videos, news stories, government documents.

This paper and digital trail and the projection screens that display it are central to the Beirut-based performance artist's unusual shows — which, wrote one Lebanese critic, sit "on the thin razor edge that lies between the real and the imaginary."

Mroué is part of Beirut's sophisticated experimental-arts scene, and has toured to Europe, Asia, Canada. He's on his first U.S. tour and comes to On the Boards with his piece "Looking for a Missing Employee."

By phone from Beirut, Mroué discussed the "lecture-performances" (his term) that won him a Spalding Gray Award — an annual prize for "fearless innovators of theatrical form, who reach into daily experience and create resonant, transcendent work."

Q: What is"Looking for a Missing Employee" about?

A: A missing worker who was accused of stealing money from Lebanon's Ministry of Finance. I followed the case in the newspaper, it became a big scandal. I tell the story with all its branches, going in all directions.

Q: What about it intrigued you?

A: Almost everyone in my country engaged in some way with the case. It speaks to our politics and society, and at the same time, I use it in my piece to examine and reflect upon how the daily news media works. It's not at all accusing the media — just a reflection, to be aware and study how that mechanism functions.

Q: Do you consider yourself a multimedia artist?

A: I come from a theatrical background. I had a theater company ... for me it's through theater that one can talk about philosophy, politics. But (my art) also comes from my doubts about theater. I started to question it and why I'm doing it, how theater should be today, how an actor should be with an audience. These questions make me open to other disciplines.

Q: How do you use public documents in your shows?

A: I'm interested in documents to question them, not to use them as evidence. For me it's material to question, to doubt, to construct another narrative.

Q: You're also previewing a new piece here, "The Pixelated Revolution."

A: It will be about the Syrian revolution, the protesters and how they've used the mobile phone. I take, for example, a few videos protesters put on the Internet, and raise ideas and questions about them. It's a reflection on representation, the meaning of images, the relation between an image and real death, the subject and object.

Q: How are the uprisings in the Middle East affecting your own country's democracy?

A: We're a very small country surrounded by much bigger ones, so we're affected by such big events ... mainly by what happens in Egypt and Syria. Syria controlled Lebanon for many years, and is still engaged in our world. What happens to the regime (of Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad) will affect Lebanon very directly. Our government is on hold, waiting, with high tension, to see what happens.

Q: What do your audiences take away from your shows?

A: I just want them to come out and not expect they will learn anything. I'm not going to teach anything. I'm going to share some of my concerns and thoughts and ideas.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com