Having premiered in Palestine in 2022, MILK مِلْك is a powerful visual theatre experience is concerned with a disaster. Not with its causes, its type or its consequences but with how it divides time in two – before and after – and rifts the two apart, turning time into something with no duration or end. Past becomes present and future loses all meaning other than endless repetition. Inside this rift, which at first appears safe, a group of women look everywhere for their lost motherhood. Coming to the Abbey Theatre for 8 performances only, this powerful and determined performance, described as a visual poem, is not to be missed.

Discussing this piece of work, Artistic Director Caitríona McLaughlin said: “When I first saw MILK مِلْك at the Festival d’Avignon, it felt like seeing a group of strangers trying to put a world back together. I wanted to programme this theatrical experience for Irish audiences because it says so much about the impact of war. When we read the headlines, in our focus on who is fighting, we forget about who gets left behind. Those are often women and children. In the absence of their sons, their brothers, their husbands, this work is a tribute to lost motherhood, to the mothers of the lost, and how they are trying to foster a new world without their children.”

Reflecting on the work, Bashar Murkus and Khulood Basel commented that: “Three years ago, we thought we had succeeded in MILK مِلْك in creating a “theatrical poem about what wars leave behind.” But over the past three years, as “real wars” have crushed people before our eyes and stolen everything they love, we have come to realise how incapable theatre is of capturing even a single moment of war.”

Bashar Murkus and Khulood Basel 

Since 2011 Bashar Murkus, a playwright and director, and Khulood Basel, a creative producer and dramaturge, work together in combining artistic vision and independent political production thinking. The duo creates original theatrical works by delving into long-term theatrical research paths, driven by a desire to raise questions about important human and political themes to audiences in Palestine and the world. Together they manage the Khashabi Theatre in Haifa, which they co-founded with a group of Palestinian theatre makers. It is an independent Palestinian theatre that works towards a society that freely practices art and creativity as a natural right, and strives to renew its cultural identity by placing independent culture front and centre. It is a space that challenges societal, political, and artistic taboos and forms a renewed state of art that depends on cooperation and mutual support. MILK مِلْك has toured from Haifa to the Venice Biennale and the Festival d’Avignon and will travel to London next year.

Co-producers: Festival d’Avignon, Théâtre des 13 vents Centre dramatique national de Montpellier, Théâtre de Liège, Romaeuropa Festival,  Palestinian National Theatre El Hakawati (Jerusalem), Culture Resource, Théâtre Jean-Vilar (Vitry-sur-Seine), Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, Moussem Nomadic Arts Centre (Brussels), Compagnie Théâtre Alibi – Fabrique de Théâtre (Bastia).