In Heavens, the fourth and final instalment of his critically lauded
Blood Promises cycle, Wajdi Mouawad crafts a fierce and poignant play
that penetrates the intersection where violence, terror, beauty, and art
converge. Isolated in a secret location, an international team of
intelligence personnel are given the task of intercepting and decoding
cryptic messages from terrorists. The sudden and unexplained suicide of
one of the case's key agents forces the team to probe into their
colleague's life in hopes of discovering what he knew, and stopping the
attack before it's too late.
Wajdi Mouawad was born in Lebanon in 1968. Mouawad fled the war-torn
country with his family; they lived in Paris for a few years, then
settled in Montreal. In 1991, shortly after graduating from the National
Theatre School, he embarked on a career as an actor, writer, director,
and producer. In all his work, from his own plays--a dozen so far,
including Journée de noces chez les Cromagnons (Wedding Day at the
Cro-Magnons'), Littoral (Tideline), and Incendies (Scorched-
which served as the basis for the Academy Award nominated film
Incendies)--Wajdi Mouawad is guided by the central notion that "all
art bears witness to human existence through the prism of beauty." From
2000-2004 he was the artistic director of Montreal's Théâtre de
Quat'Sous; in 2005 he founded two companies specializing in the
development of new work: Abé carré cé carré in Canada (with Emmanuel
Schwartz), and Au carré de l'hypoténuse in France. He is the recipient
of numerous awards and honours for his writing and directing, including
the 2000 Governor General's Literary Award for Drama (Littoral), the
2002 Chevalier de l'Ordre National des Arts et des Lettres (France) and
the 2004 Prix de la Francophonie. He is currently Artistic Director of
the National Arts Centre French Theatre.
