Live eventManchester

Deadlift

Manchester International FestivalManchester

6 June 2027 · 19:00

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A powerful Palestinian visual performance exploring the human body, endurance and rebuilding – directed by Bashar Murkus How much can a body carry before it breaks? Palestinian director Bashar Murkus transforms Suleiman Mansour’s iconic image of a porter carrying Jerusalem into a wordless visual performance. Suleiman Mansour’s painting Jamal Al Mahamel, often translated as Camel of Burdens, shows a porter bent beneath the unbearable weight of an entire city. In DEADLIFT, Bashar Murkus translates this enduring symbol into intense physical theatre, asking how much a human body can bear and when endurance itself becomes resistance. Created without spoken text, DEADLIFT centres around a Palestinian ensemble, moving through cycles of weight, exhaustion, injury, care and reconstruction. Watch as a city is carried, broken and built again testing the limits of the human body. Bashar Murkus is a