Have you ever felt like a stranger in your own hometown? Like the spaces you were so used to - be it a house, a neighborhood street, a garden - no longer felt the same?

It is in this interstitial space where we locate the creation process of Before You Go, a walkable trail of performances that took place on November 17th and 20th 2022 in Gemmayze, in partnership with British Council Lebanon, as part of their IN-BETWEEN festival.

An extension of our first-ever pilot tour completed back in August 2022 in Zahle, Anjar and Rayyak, during the Network for Cultural Alliance Framework, Before You Go part of the In-Between Festival was the perfect opportunity to adapt our pilot tour and set it in Beirut for the first time, inside the Sursock Palace.

Before You Go explores the notion of being a stranger in your hometown. More than showcased performances and social experiences, this artistic intervention plays around with the roles and spaces that shape our social dynamics and interactions. It’s an invitation to walk along a guided trail as both host and stranger, and encounter pockets of site-specific dance performances that provoke, accentuate and elevate our day-to-day relationship with our surroundings and each other. It’s a collective journey where reality and fiction blend together, where the common transforms into an open field of possibilities, and where imagination lies in the eye of the beholder.

Each trail’s duration was roughly 100 minutes and started at the entrance of the Sursock Palace, a beautiful historic residence that was severely damaged during the Beirut Port Explosion in August 2020. It is currently undergoing maintenance and restoration in an effort to transform it into a public museum. The Palace’s gardens had been accessible to the public for years during holidays, special occasions, festivals and other private celebrations, but no one - except relatives and friends of the Sursock family - had been inside the Palace before. First-time visitors entered the Palace with sparkles in their eyes, whereas those who had already been in the Palace were struck by both grief and awe: the Palace had been damaged inside and out during the Port Explosion, but it was coming back to life through the arts as the plan is to turn in into a museum.

In the end, everyone felt like a stranger visiting the space for the very first time.

On the first day, some adaptations were made to Before You Go’s trail due to the weather forecast, and so, all performances were held indoors. The trail was curated and visitors were guided through the Palace, from room to room, from performance to performance, before being bid farewell. As for the second day, the meeting point remained the same at the Palace’s main gate, but the remainder of the trail was interspersed with various stops around the gardens, before visitors were guided indoors. The trail was designed to include 6 site-specific performances stemming from different dance & movement genres including contemporary, drag, and dabkeh with an engaging performance that encouraged us to use our imagination through storytelling, and more importantly, to reflect.

The trail was performed 3 times in total: once on the 17th of November and twice on the 20th, in large part due to the limited capacity of audience members. This allowed us to maintain the intimacy and vulnerability that the experience emanates, giving the visitors the time and space to appreciate the beauty in every detail of the Palace, as well as witness, feel and reflect on their own experiences.

Before You Go is a trail that is dear to our hearts, as human beings with a deep love and a troubled relationship with the land we call home.

Nobody could have interpreted this notion of feeling like a stranger in your own hometown better than the following artists, listed here in order of their appearance:

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