Reimagining Brecht’s Exile at Edinburgh

Lebanese artists Lina Majdalanie and Rabih Mroué present “Four Walls and a Roof” as an illustrated lecture at the Studio Theatre during the Edinburgh Festival. Accompanied by pianist Henrik Kairies, who sings songs by Brecht and Hanns Eisler, the duo reads from a script in a deliberately un-actorly style. Their performance uses the German playwright’s forced migration to explore questions of place, identity and the experience of displacement in the present day.

The Guardian

Bertolt Brecht described the tactics of the U.S. House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) as “cold execution.” Rather than killing opponents directly, the committee could destroy livelihoods by denying blacklisted artists work in Hollywood. Brecht himself fled Germany after the Reichstag fire in 1933, spending eight years crossing several countries before reaching the United States. When the U.S. later questioned his communist affiliations, his return to Europe reportedly took only a day.

The Guardian

Both Majdalanie and Mroué are émigrés who moved from Beirut to Berlin, giving them a personal stake in the notion of “homeland.” They frame Brecht’s exile as a lens for examining contemporary intolerance, noting that HUAC demanded “yes-or-no certainty” and barred Brecht from reading a prepared statement. By gently prodding Brecht’s story toward today, they draw parallels between Cold-War era censorship and the resurgence of far-right politics.

The Guardian

The performance suggests that the mechanisms of cultural suppression identified by Brecht remain relevant. By linking historical blacklisting to modern political climates, Majdalanie and Mroué invite audiences to consider how “four walls and a roof” can become symbols of both safety and confinement for displaced peoples. The lecture underscores that questions of identity and belonging persist across eras, urging reflection on the ways societies marginalize dissenting voices.

The Guardian