Settler Colonialism in Three Acts
A participatory lecture-performance by Mudar Al-Khufash
About the Project
Dialectics of Erasure treats settler colonialism not as a historical event but as a performance, a structure sustained daily through repeated gestures, routines, choreographed movement, and the images that organize perception, behavior, and knowledge. The work began as my master’s thesis, first staged site-specifically on Ives Street in London — the exact spot where Palestinian cartoonist Naji al-Ali was assassinated in 1987 — before being reworked and expanded over the following year for Berlin and London. The research behind it was undertaken during a research stay in London (winter 2024–summer 2025), supported by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation and affiliated with the University of the Arts Berlin with the support of BÈZNĂ Theatre.
The piece sits at the intersection of performance studies, settler-colonial studies, Indigenous studies, and theories of state violence, drawing on Patrick Wolfe’s framing of settler colonialism as a structure rather than an event, and extending Richard Schechner’s performance theory by introducing resistance as an eighth function. Two further concepts run through the piece: Lewis R. Gordon’s idea of imposed temporality, colonialism as a seizure of time as much as land, and Diana Taylor’s concept of the repertoire, embodied memory carried through gesture, speech, song, and ritual, which persists through live transmission where the written archive can be destroyed.
The piece unfolds in three acts:
Act I — Outdoors. A site-specific public intervention. Audiences are guided through real-time collective actions, a banner-making action in a public space chosen for what it reveals about visibility, censorship, and erasure. The audience votes collectively on the statement to go on the banner, then carries the finished banner toward the theatre. Participants are asked to imagine and inhabit lived realities under settler colonialism before a word of the lecture is spoken.
Act II — Indoors. The group moves inside, where stage speech, projected video, and extended-reality imagery examine the positions the audience has just occupied within a system of displacement, complicity, and erasure.
Act III — Discussion. The floor opens to the room.
Where It Has Taken Place
Berlin — Berliner Ringtheater, Alt-Stralau 68, 16–19 April 2026 Premiere. 70 minutes, in English.
Team: Artistic Director, Writer, Performer — Mudar Al-Khufash · Production Assistant — Andreas Tryfonopoulos · Dramaturgical Support — Lisa Kirchner, Dandan Liu · Sound Composition — Marisol Jimenez · Video Projection — Liudmila Siewerski · Movement Direction — Sefa Valentin Okutan · Mixed Reality Design — Gabriel Jeanjean · Technical Direction — Moody Kablawi · Graphic Design — Anita Nguyễn With thanks to Dan Light, Aydan Tair, Héctor Manchego, Mathew Wernham, Karina Griffith, Robert Yerachmiel Sniderman, Unity Theatre & Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung.
London — Theatre Deli, 1–2 May 2026. Production manager: Emilia Nurmukhamet with Bold Mellon Collective. The outdoor act took place on Aldgate Square and the indoor segment in Leadenhall Street, in the former trading rooms whose profits, as I trace in the piece, were built on the transatlantic trade in cotton, tea, and enslaved people.
Team: Artistic Director, Writer, Performer — Mudar Al-Khufash · Production — Emilia Nurmukhamet, Bold Mellon Collective · Dramaturgy — Dani Abulhawa · Projections Scenography — Liudmila Siewerski · Sound Composition — Marisol Jimenez · Projection Mapping — Nurul Wardani and Sammy Kissin of Slice of Light · Movement Direction — Rudzani Moleya · Well-Being Support — Lubna Hoque · Technical Stage Management — Ghost Chan · Marketing — Dear Annie · Captions — Rachel Sampley
Credits
Written, Directed and Performed Mudar Al-Khufash Supported by: IMPACT-Förderung, Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Gesellschaftlichen Zusammenhalt des Landes Berlin;
Art Council of England
Full Berlin and London production teams are listed above, under each venue.
