A Beautiful Ending
Drama
Mohamed El Khatib

A Beautiful Ending

Mini theatre Ljubljana, Ptuj City Theatre and New theatre Zagreb

Mohamed El Khatib is a French dramatist, performer and director of Moroccan roots. He wanted to write a play based on the interviews he had made with his mother. In 2012 her early death suddenly ended the planned project. 

A Beautiful Ending

The remaining of the unfinished project was a patchwork of the newspaper clippings, electronic and telephone messages, conversation transcriptions, videos, shot dialogues with his father, all of which El Khatib combines in a new piece of work, a hybrid of fiction and documentary elements. This meticulous patchwork opens the questions of family, the state, the mother tongue, as well as of the memories and of the grief. In the end, a moving autobiographic narration, at times cuttingly painful, but often also funny, subtly interweaves the personal with the universal. The renowned director Ivica Buljan emphasises that El Khatib "puts us on both sides of an invisible line that divides those who have lost from those who will lose their mother and suffer for it.” In 2016 the text was awarded the big Francophone award for dramatic literature (Grand Prix de Littérature Dramatique) and the current El Khatib's plays are frequently staged in Europe.

Director, Literary director, Choice of music

Ivica Buljan

Translator

Suzana Koncut

Set designer

Mark Požlep

Play reader

Mateja Dermelj

Play reader’s assistant

Špela Kopitar

Photographer

Mark Požlep

Designer

Zoran Pungerčar

Cast

Robert Waltl