Canadian playwright Wajdi Mouawad debuts his opera ‘Tideline’ in Girona

Girona (ACN).- The Canadian playwright and stage director Wajdi Mouawad is presenting his opera ‘Tideline’ at ‘Temporada Alta: The Autumn Festival of Catalonia’. The opera debuted today at Girona’s Municipal Theatre. The piece chronicles a young man named Wilfrid’s journey to find his identity when travelling back to his hometown to bury his father. “Tideline is a reflection on friendship, love and death from a poetic point of view”, explain the actors.

With this version, Mouawad is using a completely renovated stage design, incorporating painting as a stage element. The opera is performed in French with Catalan subtitles.

15 years after the opera was made into a film, the playwright is once again bringing it to the stage. In its Catalan debut, Mouawad is reinventing the piece. The director chose to use painting as a key element to the renovated opera.

The opera takes the spectator through a journey of love, friendship and death through the story of Wilfrid, a young man who returns to his native village to bury his father. While the story is a difficult one, the actors insist that the audience read the story positively. “While it is a tragic situation, there are also very humorous moments”.

One of the actresses of the opera, Marie Eve Perron, said that “it is necessary to look for the most essentials elements of the text”. As the other actors explain, ‘Tideline’ is a piece that asks the public to make “reflections on their selves and their own lives”.

The opera debuted today at the Municipal Theatre of Girona. Playwright and stage director Wajdi Mouawad was born in Lebanon during the height of the civil war. He later moved to Canada and settled between Canada and France.  As associate director of the Avignon Festival in 2009, Mouawad once again brought the piece to the stage. He has directed over 20 works in both Canada and France.

‘Tideline’, together with his earlier works 'Scorched' and 'Forests', the director is working on a tetrology about exile, origins and identity. Through the story of a lost young man, ‘Tideline’ is a journey into the depths of existence. In the story, the protagonist shares his experience with a girl who also lost her father.

Actress Marie Eve Perron defines Mouawad as an “exceptional contemporary” author. Mouawad tells the story of “love and death with so much intimacy”, a quality that is present in all of his work.