Memento by Hala Moughanie: A staged reading

A stranger shows up in the main square of a village. He’s expecting to buy the land on behalf of his company, which plans to turn it into a profitable rice field. As he waits for the seller who was supposed to meet him there, he talks with a woman whom he takes to be the caretaker of this land where the vegetation is inexplicably dying. She’s a rebellious woman who speaks in enigmatic language, and makes clear that she feels herself viscerally connected to the earth—a perspective incompatible with the stranger’s project.

Memento by Hala Moughanie, translated from French (Lebanon) and directed by Neil Blackadder, Program in Translation Translator in Residence, features Megan Pan ’23 and Jay White ’24 and is stage managed by Milan Eldridge. This fable explores the possibility of a true meeting between two beings who are fundamentally opposed to each other.