"Those who know me will discover that they didn't really know me, and those who didn't know me will curse the day they got to know me"; this is Hanane Hajj-Ali's warning at the start of her performance.
Hanane Hajj-Ali is one of the best-known and most agitprop theatre people in Lebanon, and is now over fifty. The monologue by this actress, wife and mother, who goes jogging every day to fight against osteoporosis, obesity and depression, takes the audience through the streets of Beirut and to her dreams, longings and disillusions, and also to the characters she plays. The daily jogging ritual has conflicting effects. Against the backdrop of a city that destroys in order to rebuild and rebuilds in order to destroy, the two hormones that sport stimulates, dopamine and adrenaline, have an alternating destructive and constructive effect. In 'Jogging', Hanane Hajj-Ali performs a multi-layered play that does not shy away from either the personal or the political.