Review from: Circusstad Festival, Theater Rotterdam – Small Hall, Rotterdam; 1st May 2025, 17.00
Sometimes, sitting in the audience, one is awestruck as how adept and multiskilled a performer is, and it is all the better when they are likeable too. Roxana Küwen Arsalan in OMÂ or the privileges of the potato is one of these special performers, being not only a fluid and supremely flexible juggler – especially with her feet – but also able to bring everyone into her world as she switches effortlessly between Dutch, English, German and Persian to tell her story.
Central to Küwen Arsalan’s narrative are her grandmothers, her German ‘Oma’ and Iranian ‘Mâdarjun’, who, though they never met in real life, she imagines finally meeting each other at a tea that she hosts. Küwen Arsalan plays herself and both grandmothers in this solo show, switching roles effortlessly through simple changes in the way a headscarf is worn as she envisages how their meeting will play out.
What about the juggling though? Where does that fit in? The ceremony and habits of preparing and drinking tea allow one opportunity, be it the gracious movement of the tea pot in preparation for pouring or adding sugar cubes to cups. But there’s also the straightforward reality that Küwen Arsalan chose to become a juggler, studying at Fontys Circus in Tilburg, Netherlands (hence speaking Dutch), from which she graduated in 2013 with supreme control over all twenty toes.
German Iranian Küwen Arsalan shows us her impressive juggling routine as she recounts her attempt to get permission to perform before the Iranian public through giving a private performance to the librarians at Tehran’s library. Deemed to be dance, permission is denied.
Küwen Arsalan questions her privilege, the genetic happenstance of having fair hair and blue eyes that protects her from the racism accorded to others with her mixed heritage, and – comparing a pomegranate to an apple – gently and politely invites us to question our own privilege and our tendency to judge by appearance.
Whether you are drawn to the show by the promise of the juggling or the story, you’re likely to find both to be highly engaging.
From and with: Roxana Küwen Arsalan
Artistic follow-up: Lucie Boulay
Régie: Camellia Rashidi
Dramaturgical accomplice: Nele Cleo Liekenbrock
Sound creation assistance: Alessandro Angius
Co-Lighting Designers: Noémie Hajosie, Camellia Rashidi
Punctual Game Accomplice: Véronique Tuaillon
Set/costume help: Ivanna Bort
Dissemination accomplice: Marie Marchand
Photos: Carla Dacal
Production: La Supérette / Christine’s Friends
Coproductions: La Maison des Jonglages Scène conventionnée La Courneuve (93) / Carré Magique Lannion – National circus centre in Brittany (22) / La Grainerie – European production centre and Scène conventionné d’intérêt national en préfiguration Balma (31) / La Verrerie d’Alès National Pôle cirque Occitanie (30) / Zirkus ON Germany / Cultural Centre of Walloon Brabant Belgium
Residency assistance: Espace Périphérique La Villette Paris (75) / Carré Magique Lannion (22)
