Wajdi Mouawad belongs to the new breed of stage performers. Snappy dialogue, an exciting plot and powerful characters define his style. This month Mouawad came to Moscow's Et Cetera theatre to stage a performance called the “Fires”.

Wajdi Mouawad's performance is hard to unpack. On the one hand it's a love story, on the other a war drama. A Lebanese-born Canadian Mouawad left his native country more than 30 years ago but memories of war are still in the back of his mind.

“War has transformed my whole life. I had to move from Lebanon to a new country and learn a new language. It's impossible to forget it. But war also taught me a great deal. To me the war is more like a member of the family, an aunt or an uncle whom you dislike to death but have to live with,” he says.

The director is often seen as a fighter for human rights and is internationally known for his philosophical approach to theatre.

“One can guess that the play is probably set in an Arab country. But the theme is not a particular war in a particular country but rather the problem of survival during any war or catastrophe. How can one continue to love, to live, to make friends? The play poses many questions. Whether it's important to know our history and the past is one of them,” he suggests.

Perhaps this performance is just one way of learning from mistakes in recent history.