The works of the writer director Wajdi Mouawad, Lebanese-born and adopted Québécois, devastate and ravage its audiences, making them shake with laughter as well as burst into tears, sweeping them along in its tumultuous path, flabbergasted by the virtuosity of writing that moves like this, the twists and turns of the crazy stories. Incendies does not disappoint, composed of multiple strands of an edifying tale linked to the oldest of our tragedies. With Mouawad, the intimate and the universal are never far apart. The play opens with the death of a woman, Nawal, who leaves a letter for her children telling them to go to search for their past. In their quest they are forced into a confrontation with unspeakable things, an uncompromising faceoff against their own roots, to retrace their mother’s steps toward forgiveness. The author’s own life, his suffering and pain, is part of the drama. Fiction is where Wajdi Mouawad bandages his wounds, whereas the theatre is a sympathetic space where hope can spring from the most despicable actions. The words negate the bestiality of the instinct and allow us a reconciliation with ourselves.
