Theater artists Majdalanie and Mroué take on Bertolt Brecht guest professorship

Theater artists Lina Majdalanie and Rabih Mroué have accepted the Bertolt Brecht Guest Professorship of the City of Leipzig at Leipzig University’s Centre of Competence for Theatre (CCT) in the summer semester of 2025. They are among the most important contemporary artists on the international theater and art scene. On April 28, 2025, the University and the City of Leipzig will hold a joint reception for the two visiting professors in the plenary hall of the New City Hall. In addition to greetings from the city and university, a laudatory speech in honor of Lina Majdalanie and Rabih Mroué and an inaugural speech by the two artists, an artistic program is planned.

With their works, which alternate between documentary theater, video art and performance and deal with current and repressed political issues, the internationally renowned Lebanese artist duo has developed a very unique form of expression in their many years of collaboration. In their pieces, the performance, video and installation artists deliberately blur the boundaries between the real and the fictional, between historical and contemporary tragedies.

Majdalanie holds a doctorate in theater studies and is an author who, in addition to her artistic work as a director and performer, also regularly takes on teaching assignments and guest professorships at universities in France, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Germany and Lebanon. Mroué studied theater studies in Beirut before moving to Berlin in the 1990s. He is an author, visual artist and photographer as well as editor and co-publisher of the international magazine ’The Drama Review’ (NYC) and co-founder of the Beirut Art Center. Both artists have been fellows of the International Research Center ’Interweaving Performance Cultures’ at the Freie Universität Berlin and together won the Jürgen Bansemer & Ute Nyssen Dramatist Prize in 2011. The works of Mroué and Majdalanie have been presented at numerous international festivals and co-produced by major production houses in France, Germany and Switzerland.

As Bertolt Brecht Visiting Professors, they will be working at the CCT until mid-June 2025. This is the second time that the professorship has been awarded to two people at the same time. The first time was in the summer semester of 2023 with the two music theater directors Sergio Morabito and Jossi Wieler. Here, too, the artists worked closely together. The guest professorship in the summer semester 2025 will be filled in close cooperation with the Schauspiel Leipzig residency, where the current production by Mroué and Majdalanie, "Four Walls and a Roof", will be shown from April 30, 2025.

The Bertolt Brecht Guest Professorship was established in 2017/2018 by and the City of Leipzig. The aim is to integrate international expertise into the research, teaching and public communication of current theater and culture-related topics.