Four Walls and a Roof @ Studio Theatre

Four Walls and a Roof immediately feels like academic theatre. Lebanese artist Rabih Mroué taps a microphone. He poses the questions that the House Un-American Activities Committee asked German playwright Bertolt Brecht during his trial for alleged communist affiliations in 1947.

Brecht's books were banned for being undeutsch (un-German) and he fled his homeland in 1933. Almost a decade and a half later, as a playwright in exile, he found himself on trial for being un-American. Mroué and fellow artist Lina Majdalanie also have a story of displacement to tell. After migrating from Beirut to Berlin, they are forging lives in a country and continent witnessing the rise of the far right.

Four Walls and a Roof is impeccably researched. This is an intellectual performance built on historical detail, with moments of humour and satire. Are we surrounded by the wrong four walls? Should we be in a lecture theatre? It does not matter. This is a vital exploration of emigration, censorship and freedom of expression, drawing parallels between the repression of post-war America and now.

Is censorship, state or self-imposed, ever for our own good? For our own protection? If the two artists say the wrong thing on stage, will the audience divide? Will the division spread? One of the most connective moments of the show comes when the duo sit in silence for a few minutes to test these ideas. Powerful connections are built as they probe shared ideas of what home means – notions of Heim (home) and Heimat (homeland). Photos of Palestinians holding keys to houses they hope to one day return beg the question: What does home mean? Is it more than four walls? A roof?

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Four Walls and a Roof, Studio Theatre, run ended