1979

1979 addresses you not as a zapping Westerner, but as a person. Your stomach understands what your head cannot.– Wouter Hillaert, De Standaard.

The year 1979 brought two events which helped trigger an eight-year war. In Iraq President Al-Bakr resigned and was succeeded by Saddam Hussein. In Iran Ayatollah Khomeini returned from enforced exile to assume power after a successful Islamic revolution. Apart from murdering, torturing and oppressing their subjects, these two new leaders also waged war on each other. The human and economic toll was huge. Besides countless casualties, a million people died, Iraqis and Iranians, soldiers and civilians. But 1979 is not about facts and figures. Two artists, born while war was raging around them, bring the audience into a state of ‘being’ with an ‘installation-dance–performance’.

In ‘1979’ they say nothing of facts or numbers, but introduce you to the horrors hidden in the cellars of their minds, where once a human life was worth less than a dog’s.

This production was premièred in June, but was then developed and extended with Duraid Abbas, who now makes his début as an actor.