Adaptation translated from Arabic by Julija GULBINOVIČ
Aram is a young man who moved to Sweden with his mother from a war zone more than a decade ago. Emil is a young man who grew up in a Swedish family, whose name has become associated with an act of violence that shook the community.
The plot of the play "Fear" is based on real events in a small Swedish town, where a student shot ten people at an educational institution, killing three of them. Most of the victims were immigrants. The story unfolds after the shooting, as a criminal investigation into the incident begins. "Fear" is like a psychological reconstruction in which the act of violence itself serves as a starting point, while the focus is on what gives rise to it – the moment when fear turns into action.
The structure of the play resembles an expert analysis: the stories are told through the memories and testimonies of various characters. A picture of the event is pieced together from their stories and what they leave unsaid. However, the deeper one delves, the more evident it becomes that there is no single truth, that each person has their own version of events. This investigation offers an opportunity to take a fresh look at what we tend to take for granted in everyday life: stereotypes, social hierarchies, preconceptions, and the very forms of fear themselves.
A liminal, or in-between, space is created on stage, where the present and the past exist simultaneously. This is not a realistic interior, but a field of memory and inquiry. Here, the living converses with the dead; memories become real just like the present, and events are constantly being reconstructed anew.
In this play, fear becomes the central axis – a state in which injustice and humiliation are gradually normalized. The fear of loneliness, the fear of failing to live up to expectations, of being rejected, forgotten, and left behind, of losing one’s identity, and the fear of “the other.” Fear builds up imperceptibly until it turns into aggression or self-destruction.
The play invites us to reflect: what does it mean to be a citizen of such a world? Is justice finite? Where does responsibility for one’s actions begin? This is a work about society today and about our responsibility for what it will be like tomorrow.
Playwright Mohammad Al Attar, born in 1980 in Damascus, Syria, currently lives and works in Berlin. After studying literature and later theater in his hometown, he earned a master’s degree in drama from Goldsmiths, University of London. His plays, written in the original Arabic, as well as their translations, have been presented at theaters and festivals in various countries: the Volksbühne in Berlin, Lincoln Center in New York, the Royal Court Theater in London, the Avignon Festival, and many others. Al Attar also writes articles, focusing extensively on the Syrian revolution since 2011, as well as on the topics of refugees and the war in his home country.
