Finding a method in the madness

The first days of rehearsal began with the NTGent team dragging a large table into the bare courtyard of the building now being used for the institute’s theater program. Stefan Bläske, the dramaturge, and Mr. Rau set up their computers at one end of the table, working on the script.

Mr. Rau’s approach to scriptwriting is loose, and with “Orestes in Mosul,” as with many of his other works, he mixes sections of the original text (no more than 20 percent, in accordance with another tenet of his manifesto) with material gleaned from his team’s research and discussions with the actors. In this production there will also be music and documentary video clips of the Iraqi actors discussing the play.

With little electricity available, members of his team watched the power bars on their computers dwindle over the course of a morning. Plumbing was provisional as well. But at midday, spirits rallied a bit when someone brought a box of local baklava and plastic cups of dark, heavily sugared Iraqi tea and bottles of water.

Attempts to figure out the daily schedule were largely futile. And for the Iraqi actors it was hard just to show up on time.

Mosul is still a barely functioning city, where most residents fear they are about to tumble back into war. Getting from the west bank of the Tigris to the east, where rehearsals were taking place, could take hours, as only two bridges were functioning, and only in one direction at a time.

On subsequent days when the rehearsals moved to the former arts institute building, which was bombed during the war, students had to walk through a crowd of silent, grief-stricken families outside the city’s morgue. They were waiting for the bodies of daughters, sons, brothers and sisters who had drowned when a pleasure boat capsized.