How Nancy Wished That Everything Was an April Fool's Joke
Date: 2007
Region: Middle East
Subject: Political/Economic/Social Opinion
Medium: Performance Art
Artist: Rabih Mroue
Confronting Bodies: Lebanon's Interior Ministry
Date of Action: August 2007
Location: Lebanon
Description of Artwork: How Nancy Wished That Everything Was an April Fool's Joke involves four fighters of different militias in Lebanon's 15-year civil war reminiscing about their experiences episodically. The characters all contradict one another in their stories and in their actions, pledging loyalty to a political leader and then betraying him.
The Incident: Mroue had tried to avoid censors since 1990 by simply avoiding them. However, in 2005, he ran into trouble with the Interior Ministry over one of his pieces and was forced to censor parts of it. Since then, performance spaces have been demanding pieces to be checked by censors. In the case of How Nancy Wished..., Mroue took his chances with the censors and found it completely banned, without the option of cuts.
Mroue believes the reason for the ban stems from the fact that although there is no fighting, Lebanon is on the brink of another civil war.
Results of Incident: Mroue will still preform How Nancy Wished... in other countries.
Source: International Herald Tribune
