Shubbak: A Window on Contemporary Arab Culture

Three Rooms

Amal Omran

Directed by: Amal Omran, Hatem Hadawe & Kathryn Hamilton

Three Rooms is a live film that takes place simultaneously in Istanbul, London and Paris, with one performer in each location.

Originally the trio were planning to stage a play, but the changing political landscape meant that two of the performers couldn’t get visas. Refusing to replace those unable to travel, they began to experiment with ways of working that could overcome the physical restrictions, creating a new kind of live-ness for this new world.

Three Rooms invites the audience into the quiet intimacies of daily life when you are essentially confined to your room – making tea, reading books, smoking cigarettes while watching the seagulls over Istanbul roof-tops, or watching the grey clouds over the Paris suburbs. It gestures towards the irreplaceability of people, and the impossibility of representing their experience without them.


This event is part of Performance(s) between Two Shores – a series of three new works from Arab theatre artists who are now creating in Europe. Commissioned by six partners and funded by the European Commission, these works tour internationally and develop new audiences for Arab theatre artists in Europe.

Part of Shubbak Festival 2017