Curatorial Statement
The Runaways by Wafa Taboubi is an authorial work in which she signs the text, set design and direction. The performance begins with a situation of waiting: a group of people find themselves in the same place, waiting for something that is supposed to happen, but the absence of the expected event gradually changes their relationship to time and space.
Waiting here is not merely a pause between two events. It becomes the principal stage material. Time stretches, relationships between the characters become increasingly important, and the space that was meant only to hold them temporarily begins to function as a place from which it is difficult to leave.
Through her set design, Taboubi does not attempt to define the space in detail. The restrained elements keep the focus on the performers' bodies and their relationships. The stage language is based on changes of rhythm, repetition and physical exertion. The soundscape and silence further emphasise the sensation of extended time. Fatma Ben Saidane, Mounira Zakraoui, Lobna Noumane, Mouhamed Bouzid, Oumaima Bahri and Sabrine Omar create a group of characters whose experiences differ, yet who are compelled to depend upon one another. Their performance is not centred on a single story, but on the relationship between individual reactions and collective waiting.
The Runaways does not offer a simple answer to the question of what it means to escape. Before escape becomes possible at all, the performance remains in a space where a decision, a change or a way out is being awaited - and where waiting itself begins to determine the lives of those who wait.
About the Performance
At daybreak... A bus station. Faces and souls forced to sacrifice dreams to survive nightmares. Six characters meet, tied to the same cycle: repeat, continue, restart. The daily routine of waiting for the bus becomes the action’s beating heart.
A very simple moment becomes an existential turning point:
1: The first to flee her pain (The Leader).
4: Escaping from the light (The Fearful).
2: Fleeing family authority only to fall under the boss’s thumb (The Restless and Inquisitive).
5: Escaping from submission (The Passionate Activist).
3: Fleeing the system’s broken promises (The Melancholy Dreamer).
6: Finally joining them, fleeing thoughts of death and survival (The Awakened Silent One).
Then, the silence shatters. Where is the bus? Why is it late? Strike? Breakdown? Labor Day? The questions spiral until 1 decides she will wait no longer: she will walk. The others follow. In that moment, a routine commute becomes an infinite odyssey… a journey that is at once physical, psychological, and deeply poetic.
