The people behind the curtain: Dramatist Lubna Abou Kheir

Editor Katharina Nill

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With the social comedy «Cheese War» at Neumarkt, the author from Damascus settles accounts with the local working conditions in the fast food sector.

Lubna, what is your third play «Cheese War» about?

«Cheese War – eine systemrelevante Groteske» comprising eleven miniatures, is a dark social comedy about the fates and interconnections between of the employees of a pizza delivery chain in Zurich called Monopoly. The employees, who are generally immigrants who take on this kind of work in order to survive, are at the mercy of this exploitative system. Between fast food and food delivery, they’ve only got about 30 seconds to prepare a pizza. A cheese war breaks out … but I don’t want to reveal anything else right now!

To what extent is «Cheese War» inspired by your own past?

I worked for a pizza delivery joint in Zurich for five months: as a delivery driver, as a pizza maker, and as a shift manager. The job was really gruelling. Unexpected things would happen all the time, maybe because there were so many languages being spoken, and the time pressure and job pressure were immense. The people there would work night and day for monthly wages of 1,500 Swiss francs – but they’d do anything and everything in their power to keep the operation running. When a colleague showed up for work sick, I asked for regular corona tests, and my supervisor let me know that I should look for a new job. It’s a stroke of luck that I got to process that chapter of my life. And to be honest, «Cheese War» is really funny: my figures remind me of the Minions, as they blather on in English, Arabic, German, and Spanish. It’s a entertaining evening, full of laughs …

Where do you go to recharge culturally?

I like going to the Theater Neumarkt and I love the stage and performances at the Schauspielhaus im Schiffbau. And I never miss a show at the Werft at the Theater Spektakel.

Lubna Abou Kheir, born in 1992, studied dramatic writing in Damascus. She’s lived in Zurich since 2016, working as an author, theater scholar, and actor. Her short work «Damaszener Café», which she performed in herself, was seen in Aarau, Basel, and Zurich. The NZZ wrote that her 2019 work «Gebrochenes Licht» («Broken Light») was a «small stage miracle» that traced a «line from Damascus to Zurich », calling her a «new voice of Swiss theater». Now she returns with the world premieres of two works. The first, «Cheese War – eine systemrelevante Groteske» appears starting 9 April 2022 at the Theater Neumarkt in a production by Jessica Glause. She transforms Kheir’s texts into «a colorful, musical reckoning with the system and what it does to us. With ham, pineapple – and lots and lots of cheese» (Neumarkt).

Published from Katharina Nill on March 27, 2022.