Bringing theatre and politics together, the event invited regional and international theatre practitioners and academics to reflect on the contemporary relevance of one of Europe's most prominent playwrights, best known for his scathing criticism of social norms.

Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences Dr. Philippe Frossard opened the seminar by emphasizing LAU's robust tradition of liberal arts education and commitment to holistic education as the impetus for organizing such an event. "As guardians of this tradition, we want our graduates to be Renaissance men and women--and to do this, creativity needs to be nurtured, which is why hosting such an event is of such importance."

Indeed, the Department of Communication Arts in particular boasts a long tradition of supporting theatrical performances that tackle current issues and critique the status quo -- something that shares a strong kinship to Ibsen's own work. "LAU distinguishes itself by facilitating a space for students of theatre--allowing possibilities of exchange and networking," said the department's chair Dr. Mona Knio with palpable pride.

According to guest speaker Dr. Frode Helland, a scholar from the University of Oslo, Ibsen's work can be used to address social concerns: "Creating dialogue about Ibsen means creating a transnational debate about the art of living in a multicultural world," he said.

"Examining productions of Ibsen in different cultural contexts can offer a unique window to understanding social tensions present in society--whether it is in Iran or Vietnam," he continued.

In attendance was also prominent Palestinian writer and poet Najwan Darwish, who echoed Helland's sentiment: "Art is common ground that we can all stand on."

A lively round-table discussion concluded the daylong seminar and focused on the difficulties of functioning in an institutional environment that remains largely hostile to theatre and the challenge of procuring reliable sources of funding--a struggle that Ibsen himself perpetually faced. Many participants lamented the fact that it is becoming increasingly difficult to convince audiences to spend money on a night at the theatre.

However, theatre enthusiasts like communication arts student Abed Wahab Kassir from the Lebanese University recognize the value of political theatre. "The event was a valuable experience and it added to my knowledge about Ibsen," he said before adding, "I did not know much about him until today and it has certainly piqued my interest."
 

The Lebanese American University and the University of Oslo supported this project, which received the Ibsen Scholarship Award in 2011. The Royal Norwegian Embassy in Beirut and the Royal Norwegian Foreign Ministry (UD/DTS) also provided further financial support.

Mathhab, adapted and directed by LAU Stage Director and Theater Instructor Lina Khoury, is based on the 1977 Tom Stoppard play Every Good Boy Deserves Favour about two men who share a cell in a Russian psychiatric hospital. One is a Soviet dissident who will only be released if he admits that his statements against the rulers are a product of his mental illness, the other is a genuine mental patient conducting an imaginary orchestra. The music ensemble forms an essential part of the show and was originally composed by Andre Prévin, head of the London Symphony Orchestra at the time.

"Since tyranny and oppression are everywhere under different names, Mathhab can actually be taking place in any Arab country," says Khoury.

In Khoury's adaptation, the main actors are two female students. The dissident is Syrian, the patient, Palestinian.

"Considering our regional context, to have actors of these origins - with their respective accents - play such roles, was important and put the play into perspective," says the director.

Indeed, Syrian student actor Syrine Dardari's poignant call for the respect of basic freedoms continues to resonate hours after the play is over.

Armed with courage and determination, the prisoner doesn't yield, even to her daughter's supplications to give in and come back home.When berated about her mental disorders by the state hospital and national security mandated physician, Layla the dissident cries out, "I don't have disorders, I have opinions." To which the doctor replies, "Precisely. Your opinions are your disorders!"

For Dardari, second year student in communication arts, the experience is life changing. "When I heard about the play I immediately auditioned and told Lina Khoury that I wanted the role, that I needed it."

She says she is proud to be part of what she calls a revolutionary play. "It is a tribute to my people, to my country."

While the original title, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour, derives from the popular mnemonic used by music students to remember the notes on the lines of the treble clef, Mathhab has two meanings in Arabic : "refrain" in music terminology, but also sect. It reminds us that oppression is not only the weapon of tyrant regimes.

The director's choice of two female prisoners clearly denounces gender inequalities in orchestrated, patriarchal and sectarian societies that restrict any freedom of expression from artistic to sexual."Social tyranny can be worse than political oppression," says Khoury.

Although the themes tackled are heavy and eerily bitter, the lightheartedness and sense of parody in the play, along with the actors' playfulness, keep the audience on the edge of laughter.

The role of the orchestra on stage- led by professional composer Oussama el Khatib and mainly consisting of students - is also crucial in setting a lighter or heavier tone at different times of the show.

Layla the mental patient, superbly performed by Mira Saidawi, sets her tone from the very beginning, "There is a little music in every one of us, and he who says the contrary is a tyrant."

She might just be the sanest of all.

Saab, assistant professor of Arabic studies and coordinator of the humanities department's Comparative Literature Program, shares the grant with the Silk Road Rising Theater in Chicago and Robert Myers, a professor of English and creative writing at the American University of Beirut (AUB). They will adapt the play Touqous Al-Isharat wal-Tahawulat (Metamorphosis: Rituals and Signs of Transformations) by the acclaimed Syrian playwright Saadallah Wannus. The grant, made by the MacArthur Foundation, will see the play performed in English for the first time for audiences in Beirut and Chicago.

"We are very happy to receive such a prestigious prize that is generally known to be very competitive," said Saab. "This is one of the most important plays in Arabic literature."

Wannus, who died of cancer in 1997, is generally acknowledged as one of the Arab world's most important contemporary playwrights. The play that Saab and Myers will adapt has been censored in the past because it addresses issues like sexuality, and political and religious hypocrisy.

The play, a French version of which is scheduled to be presented at the Comédie Française early next year, "is an appropriate fit in an era of globalization and in the midst of the Arab Spring," said Dr. Philippe Frossard, dean of the School of Arts and Sciences. With characters who strive for transformative change and who criticize authoritarian rule, the play easily evokes the political and social tumult currently rippling across the Arab world. "The grant will give Lebanon and Arab culture the best possible exposure in the U.S. and the wider world," said Frossard. Saab added she hoped the performances "contribute to furthering dialogue between the Arab and American publics."

Actors will be cast from both AUB and LAU. Performances will be staged at LAU in 2013, while panel discussions on the play's themes will be held at AUB and at the Silk Road Rising Theater. The grant essentially allows for "a mini-Wannus festival," said Saab.

Wannus' play will be the third time that Myers and Saab have worked together. The professors previously translated and adapted Hamam Baghdadi (Baghdadi Bath) by the Iraqi playwright Jawad Al Assadi, and Al Diktator (The Dictator) by Lebanese playwright Issam Mahfouz.

In addition, Saab and Myers have authored an article about the play. "Sufism and Shakespeare: The Poetics of Personal and Political Transformation in Saadallah Wannous' Touqous Al-Isharat wal-Tahawulat will be published in February 2013 in Theater Research International.

"We live now in a world where academic institutions cannot progress in isolation," said Dr. Vahid Behmardi, chair of the Department of Humanities and who supported the grant proposal. "It was the collaboration between Dr. Saab and AUB Professor Robert Myers that resulted in this remarkable grant."

“Here at LAU we are very proud of our communication arts students — both past and present — and it is important for them to get exposure beyond the gates of the university and have a platform to test their product,” says Dr. Mona Knio, chair of the Communication Arts Department.

“Seeing how audiences react to your work is the most important thing for an artist,” she adds.

LAU communication arts students made quite an impression at Masrah al-Madina's Mishkal festival - that showcases young talent in the domain of music, theatre, and cinema - where they directed and exhibited three playwrights: Chairs by Ranim Halabi; Crime in the Hospital by Mazen Saadeddine; Women in War by Rami al-Rabih.

Additionally, LAU made an impressive showing in the music component of the four-day event with a crowd-pleasing performance of the BLOK Laptop Orchestra, a music group composed of talented LAU students who boldly push the boundaries of electronic music.

"Mishkal gave me great motivation to pursue my artistic endeavors," says LAU third-year communication arts student and BLOK member Firas Bou Zeineddine. Indeed, Bou Zeineddine and his seven other band mates were unexpectedly approached by a local production company who offered to produce a future show. This surprise offer comes on the heels of BLOK’s international exposure—the group performed recently in front of a rapt audience in Alexandria, Egypt, during the Backstreet Festival. Some LAU communication arts students participated in several workshops organized during the event that focused on art in non-traditional spaces.
Earlier in the summer LAU also made a strong showing at the 10th Lebanese Film Festival.

The event evoked nostalgia for LAU alumna Tamara Stephanyan who made her film debut in 2005 at the festival. Stephanyan majored in communication arts with an emphasis on radio/TV and reflects fondly on her time at LAU: “I began my film career at LAU.”

This year she showcased her film  —a contemporary reflection on the dynamics of Lebanese and Armenian society. The film received wide acclaim and Stephanyan received the highly coveted “Best Fiction Film Award.” A native Armenian, Stephanyan reflects on the importance of her experiences in Lebanon to her work: “Lebanon is living in a complex temporality, where there is no real beginning, middle, or end. We as filmmakers are influenced by this particular rhythm and tempo.”

LAU alumna Amanda Homsi Ottoson also received special mention for her documentary Jasad and the Queen of Contradictions—chronicling the life of activist, writer and LAU instructor Joumana Haddad.

The festival opened with part-time LAU faculty member Wafa’a Halawi’s film We Might as Well that traces women’s lives within one of the few preserved historical buildings in Beirut.

“Partly whimsical and partly true—this film is a collaboration of dance, stop motion and time-lapsed cinematography and architecture,” explains Halawi. We Might as Well originally premiered at the Cinedans Film Festival in Amsterdam—one of the most prominent dance festivals in the world.

“I was very happy and proud of the LAU alumni on their success at the festival!” exclaims Halawi.

“This shows the impressive pool of talent we have here at LAU,” she adds.
 

Founded in 2010, Between the Seas promotes the representation and understanding of Mediterranean identity and culture in North America. The one-week festival, which includes performances in the fields of dance, music and theater, aims at engaging North American artists, scholars, and audiences in a discussion of the region’s culture and identity.

In I.D. Abyad comes to grips with the emotional and physical struggles that transgender people in Lebanon experience in order to search for and embrace their own identity.

“Transgender people endure a great deal of suffering, starting with the sheer fact that society, deliberately or otherwise, rejects them,” says Abyad. “Undergoing sex reassignment surgery also engenders a different kind of hardship, although emotional distress could very easily outweigh physical pain.”

Written by LAU alumna Amahl Khouri and directed by Abyad, I.D. is both an informative and aesthetic enterprise that sheds light on the harsh and stringent realities of transgender people in Lebanon. The script, which the duo started conceptualizing in February 2012, is the result of a poignant reinterpretation of various interviews conducted by Khouri with several transgender people in Lebanon, culminating in a theatrical performance that brings Khouri on stage as the sole performer.

“There are many important transgender stories and developments happening in Lebanon that never get discussed in the mainstream. There is a kind of erasure, or shame, or denial. Trans people are very marginalized and invisible here,” says Khouri, adding that I.D. helps transgender people to be in the spotlight for the first time.

“I think that visibility is a very potent and political thing, and this is precisely what I.D. brings. Bringing visibility means bringing humanization,” she explains.

One’s identity, however, is not restricted to sexual orientation, stresses Abyad.

“Gender is a dynamic construct, and transgender people are just people who want to be themselves. I.D. is not just about sexuality. It’s about what people have to go through to stay true to who they are,” says Abyad.

While transgenderism generally remains a taboo in Lebanon, Abyad is very excited to stage I.D. in Beirut for local audiences in the near future.

“This may not be an easy topic to tackle, but the function of theatre is to crash boundaries and question preconceived ideas, and to get to know the Other,” she says.

I.D. is a work in progress, and the duo plan to include more interviews and theoretical work (particularly that of American feminist author Judith Butler) as they develop it further. I.D. will also be performed at the Dancing on the Edge festival in Amsterdam.

Dr. Lina Abyad is assistant professor of communication arts (theater) and fundamentals of oral communication at LAU.
 

Organized by the Department of Communication Arts on July 10-14, the five-day annual festival featured a total of 12 student-theater productions, acted and directed entirely by university students.

A Crime in a Hospital, directed by LAU communication arts student Mazen Saad El Din was a crowd favorite. Based on the play by Lebanese poet and playwright Issam Mahfouz, it follows Issam Mahfouz himself as he visits five mental patients, in an attempt to investigate a crime that happened in the mental institution where they reside.

“Working with people from different countries was truly memorable. This is the first time I receive feedback from people from such diverse backgrounds. It gives you a whole new perspective,” says Saad El Din.

The festival comprised various musical performances, several short film screenings, and a non-student performance by the International Association for Creation and Training in Egypt.

“This festival’s success is entirely thanks to the students’ seriousness, commitment, and determinedness to organize it and be part of it,” said Dr. Mona Knio, associate professor of theater and chairperson of the communication arts department, at the event’s opening ceremony.

In addition to directing, acting in and staging the plays, LAU students were also responsible for technical tasks crucial to the staging of the productions, including set construction and management and light- and sound-checking.

"‪Meeting the theatrical troupes from abroad and helping them in any way set the festival’s tone — one of humility, sincerity and commitment to cultural value," says LAU communication arts student Alia Samman. Samman acted in both The Cage and Victoria Station, a play she also directed.

Hala Masri, LAU theater coordinator, agrees saying the event offered an excellent opportunity for students from various countries, cultures, and backgrounds to exchange ideas about art and theater.

A festival highlight, says Masri, was the daily “chat room,” an informal forum allowing participants to discuss, analyze, and evaluate the previous day’s performances.

“You’d be surprised how much you can learn from the insights of people from other educational institutions and countries,” stresses Masri. “Viewing your work through fresh eyes helps you to gain perspective, and make improvements and modifications for the next time.”

Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences Dr. Philippe Frossard’s implored all those involved to “follow your heart — if you are passionate about what you do, you will succeed.” Judging by their palpable energy, they didn’t take much persuading.

Participants came from various Arab universities, including Alexandria University (Egypt), University of Sousse (Tunisia), Hassan II University – Mohammedia (Morocco), Beirut Arab University, Haigazian University, and LAU (Lebanon).
 

Directed by assistant professor of communication arts Dr. Lina Abyad, Fantasia Opus3 turned the Gulbenkian Theater into a time machine, transporting the audience to their schooldays and fatuous first loves, revisiting adolescent pipe dreams through the lens of adult desire.

The production initially took shape almost entirely through improvisation. The first draft of the script was composed by Abyad as a kind of collage of the actors’ impromptu recollections of their earliest memories.

“We didn’t really know what the play would be about at first,” she recalls, “but we talked a lot about childhood, schooldays, and longing for love. We taped everything, and finally identified the recurrent themes and began working on them.”

The result weaves together embarrassing fracases, haunting insecurities, ingenuous crushes, and sensory firsts — at once ephemeral and indelible — into a tapestry of nostalgia and pain.

Curiously enough, the Communication Arts Department’s very first productions in the early 1960’s were children’s plays, notes Dr. Mona A. Knio, associate professor of theater and the department’s chairperson. “Abyad’s improv-based production was ultimately — and uncannily — reminiscent of the department’s early theatrical work,” Knio says.

The surreal set — the stage is draped in white and pastels and lit by lanterns — was designed, says Abyad, to invite the audience to be part of the play, to send them into reverie.

“You have to give them — from the very beginning — an idea of what to expect from the play, which is why the colors of the set are very soft and light,” she says. “This is a very light play.”

Light as it is, Fantasia Opus3 is not devoid of melancholy, the trace of sadness that can tinge youth both as it it’s lived and as it’s remembered.

In one scene, the actors — scattered on the stage, dressed in technicolor garments, and holding cages — are standing on doormats, miming the vehement, sometimes even tyrannical tone of parents trying to edify their children.

Comments that seem benign in the individual instance — “remember to say thank you,” “don’t pick your nose,” or even “don’t mention that you’re doing theater in front of grandma” — become oppressive in the aggregate, and can leave an elusive scar on youngsters, one they may obsessively revisit as they grow older.

In another scene, a young woman draped in white wanders the stage recalling the 2006 war in Lebanon — fondly, as paradox would have it, because awful as it was, it brought her and her family closer together, and taught her to appreciate life’s small blessings.

“It is practically impossible to talk about memories in a Lebanese context and not evoke one war or another,” explains Abyad. “I provoked the actors, and the result of those provocations was the play’s raw material. All I did was edit, rearrange and design it into a script.”

Theater-goers and members of the university drama community praised Abyad’s compositional method. “The authenticity creates audience intimacy — people can relate to it almost immediately,” says LAU theater coordinator Hala Masri.

Peter Matar, an architecture student at Académie Libanaise des Beaux Arts (ALBA), concurred. “I felt the actors themselves were my memories," he said.

“I am many people,” she provocatively replies, her whimsical transparency puzzling her questioner.

Every artist is many-sided, much like a Rubik’s cube, says Lina Khoury, stage director and theater instructor in the Department of Communication Arts, and the director of Al Shaghila.

“An artist can be many things and many personages at the same time: creative, rebellious, devilish, good. Versatility is what makes him or her unique,” she notes.

Fittingly, Nakhle is portrayed on stage by a number of thespians — including a male actor, in order to shed light on the sculptor’s masculine side.

Al Shaghila is based on Edward Albee’s play Occupant, which stages an interview with the late American sculptor Louise Nevelson. In Lina Khoury’s version, however, Louise Nevelson is transforms into the fictional — and deceased — Badiaa Nakhle, a Palestinian sculptor who grew up in Tripoli, later settling in Beirut.

Like Occupant, Al Shaghila is structured as a posthumous interview with the sculptor, chronicling her endeavors, failures and accomplishments. Badiaa is dead but her wit and sensibility are pungently alive, even effervescent, as she looks back on her life with nostalgia and sporadic regret.

Badiaa’s versatility is not only the key to her personality; it also suffuses the roles she takes on in her life. She is a daughter, a mother, a lover, a traveler, and an artist, playing each of these roles with varying degrees of mastery.

“Occupant is a play that addresses an artist’s suffering, something we’re not very familiar with,” says Khoury. We like to focus on the artist’s work and fame, but we don’t always know much about what’s happening inside.”

The young Badiaa’s inner conflicts are indeed at the core of Al Shaghila, catalyzing her transformation into an accomplished and renowned sculptor. Flamboyant but authentic, Badiaa reflects on love, art, sex and depression with such candor that it’s almost impossible for the audience not to identify with her.

“Have you ever lived in the 60’s? Have you ever been a Christian Palestinian woman in Lebanon?” Badiaa rhetorically challenges her interviewer. “Then don’t talk to me about simplicity.”

“All artists go through similar phases in their lives, whether it’s depression, promiscuity or the struggle for fame,” says Khoury.

“At the same time, I really wanted to create an oppressed character that the audience could connect with — this is why I chose to make Badiaa a Christian Palestinian woman,” she adds. “We are all outcasts in one way or another.”

The central character, 19-year-old Wahab, leaves you perplexed, like a victim and perpetrator at the same moment. He is deeply saddened, but mostly angered, both at himself and at his mother who can’t help but force him to watch her slowly die of cancer.

Perhaps that’s what living with death does to some. A myriad of complexities and contradictions, and the only thing you wish for is that it was you who was dying, and not the sick woman crying in torment.

“Usually, death doesn’t happen on the stage,” explained Dr. Lina Abyad, the director of A Shell in the Heart, as the latest major theater production organized by LAU’s Communication Arts Department was called, during a Q&A after the May 5 performance. “It usually happens behind the scenes, then you bring it in. Here, we witnessed it as it happened.”

Performances continued till May 15, at the Gulbenkian Theatre, Beirut campus.

The play was based on a 2007 homonymous novel written by Majdi Mouawad, a Canadian-Lebanese actor, comedian and author.

The mother calls Wahab into her room where she is lying motionless. Her voice, once strong and confident, has dried out.

“I’m in pain, Wahab,” she tells her son.

“I know, but what can I do?” Wahab shouts. “Just tell me, what can I do!?”

A Shell in the Heart forces you to relive those experiences trying to comfort a loved one in their hospital bed, gripping onto their hands and staring them in the eye, with the mutual recognition that soon they will be dead, and there is nothing anyone can do about it.

Wahab's brother calls him to the hospital where his mother, it seems, is near the end. He arrives to the hospital, but falls to his knees in the parking lot under the falling snow, wishing for a bomb, or something, anything, to put an end to the misery.

For the most part, the play is set in contemporary Lebanon, but flashes back several times to the innocent days of Wahab’s childhood. His mother, wrapped in a stunning summer dress and bead necklace, dances as little Wahab rides his bicycle in circles.

Death, then, was outside, beyond the walls of his home — explosions and gunfire rocked a country at war — but inside, there was serenity.

“The [young] mother represented the beauty of Beirut before the war,” says Abyad, who is an assistant professor of communication arts at LAU.

Back at the hospital, Wahab climbs to find his family standing over the mother, remaining by her side till she takes her final breath.

“Mama,” Wahab calls to his deceased mother. “I would have liked to have known you better. I know you’re not here anymore, but you will always be with me.”
 

LAU’s most recent major theater production, Dissonance of Fights, left some in the audience visibly stirred during the emotionally charged play based on the Lebanese Civil War.

With no dialogue and only short, impulsive testimonies by the actors declaring their guilt, innocence and ignorance, the interpretive play forced audience members to draw on their own experiences and knowledge of Lebanese conflict to give the story meaning.

Directed by LAU theater instructor Nagy Souraty, the play was inspired by a book documenting Lebanese massacres written by author Nasri Sayegh.

The production was organized by LAU’s Department of Communication Arts, and was performed December 4–5 and 9–12 at LAU Beirut’s Gulbenkian Theatre.
 

The play opens with a woman, representing Mother Earth, giving birth to children who grow up to become fighters, victims and witnesses. The children’s tendency to violence is exhibited during their childhoods as their games turn into fights.
 

After clashing, the fighters rise up off the ground and together carry the terrified mother who screams at the sight of the fighting.
 

After more rounds of warfare, the men speak with a sort of remorse, while dually attempting to justify their actions. They say they have become bloodthirsty and addicted to killing.

Souraty says the idea for the play came during auditions when he was exploring, on the one hand, violence on stage, and on the other hand, the idea of how an honest, peaceful individual could be driven to violence.

“Then we realized a lot of what we were doing resembled what was happening in Lebanon,” he explains.
 

After more fighting, we hear from the victims lying on the floor. “I was killed when my building collapsed in 1982,” one calls out. “They accused me of being an Israeli spy,” says another. “They shot me in the feet, then the thighs, then they shot me in the head.”

The dead take turns listing their ages, birthdays, places of birth, religious confessions, and registration numbers.
 

Following a series of heavy scenes, tensions ease and the mood changes dramatically to one of hope, of coming together and celebration. The actors dance and twirl to a charming tune.

As the scene winded down, the audience applauded, somehow believing the story would end on a happy note.
 

But the peace proves to be short-lived and the actors are once again in violent confrontation with each other.

“We don’t know when someone will press a button and we’ll be right back there again,” Souraty says, explaining just how sensitive the Lebanese trigger for war is.
 

The play appears to suggest that the civil war in Lebanon never ended, it just experiences short interludes. A message at the end of the play says “Lebanese wars are our future,” and “the Lebanese doctrine is violence.”

The renowned American stage actress begins reading a monologue in a spot-on Russian accent, gesticulating with her arms. She finishes to a robust applause and takes questions from the crowd of about 70, sitting on stools and the stage floor.

“How do you transform into these diverse characters and make them so believable?” asks one student.

“If you believe it’s true, you can do it,” answers Chalfant. “You become the part by an act of will. In acting, people believe what you tell them.”

Chalfant spent the afternoon of December 1 conducting an acting workshop for LAU communication arts students and AUB students taking drama and English literature courses.

Chalfant, 65, is a veteran of the American theater world. She is best known for her role in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America: Millennium Approaches, for which she received a nomination for Broadway’s 1993 Tony Award as Best Actress (Featured Role - Play).

She has won numerous acting awards, including the Outer Critics, Drama Desk, Obie and Lucille Lortel awards for her heartrending performance in Margaret Edson’s Wit, a play where Chalfant shaved her head for three years for the role of terminally ill cancer patient Vivian Bearing.

After a Q&A session at the workshop, Chalfant read a scene from Wit, giving the students a glimpse into her award-winning character.

Afterwards, a student asked if Chalfant had learned a life lesson from or had a connection with any of the characters she had played. It turned out Vivian Bearing’s circumstances were very true to life for Chalfant. During her three-year stint as Bearing, her brother was terminally ill with cancer and passed away in 1998.

“I learned from him what it was like to die, and to decide the time had come to let go,” Chalfant told the audience. “There is always some part of you at the center of every role. You can’t make a work of art without having some control.”

Before reading one final monologue from the play A Delicate Balance, Chalfant took a few more questions. One student asked if it was difficult to switch from theater to acting in movies.

“Acting in movies is easy, is fun,” Chalfant replied. “You only need to learn the lines for one-and-a-half minutes and have the luxury of repeating them to get it right. In movies, someone else decides what the audience will look at. … In theater, you’re responsible for the entire event, whether it sinks or swims.”

The workshop was organized by the Department of Communication Arts and the office of Student Development and Enrollment Management at LAU, in collaboration with The Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud Center for American Studies and Research (CASAR) at AUB.

Personal connections with Dr. Elise Salem, SDEM vice president; Dr. Mona Knio, associate professor of theater and the chairperson of the Communication Arts Department; and Dr. Robert Myers from the English Department at AUB, brought Chalfant to the Beirut campus.

“The main purpose [of Chalfant’s visit] was to expose the students to the acting techniques and experience of a prominent stage actress,” says Hala Masri, theater coordinator at LAU’s Department of Communication Arts. “It was also a cultural activity for LAU and AUB students.”

The plays included Kafka, His Father, the Boss, the Wolf, and the Pigs, LAU’s spring 2010 major production directed by Dr. Lina Abyad, LAU assistant professor of theater, and Guantanamo, The Meaning of Waiting, an LAU student production directed by Farah Shaer, a third-year communication arts major (radio/TV/film emphasis).

“We performed both nights to a full house,” says Shaer, who at 23 claims to have been the youngest director at the festival. Her team of actors represented the youngest theater group among the dozens that assembled in Cairo for the festival.

Shaer’s play, which was first performed in May at LAU, is based on a collection of interviews with the wives of Guantanamo Bay prison inmates published in Guantanamo: ‘Honor Bound to Defend Freedom,’ a book co-written by journalist Victoria Brittain and novelist Gillian Slovo.

Shaer says she chose to base her play on the book because it gave her the opportunity to confront audiences with topics she finds most relevant: feminism and war.

“It’s a theme I always incorporate in all my projects,” she says. “The book gave me the ability to expand and create scenes — It’s not a classic or ordinary play where the writers do the directing.”

The play takes a critical look at the effects of incarceration on the families of inmates. The actresses, representing the wives of Guantanamo inmates, wear Niqabs during the first half of the play, before they change to orange prisoner uniforms while reminiscing about their beloved husbands.

“They started to talk about their suffering and the audience realized that it’s not just the husbands that are prisoners, but the wives too are prisoners deep inside.”

The Guantanamo team consisted of seven students including five cast members (Shaer, Reem Al Halaby, Nour Hassan, Nada Khoury and Rindala Haddad) and two stage directors (Johnny Abdo and Mira Al Assad).

Kafka, first performed in May at LAU, focuses on the strained relationship of Bohemian/Czech writer Franz Kafka and his belittling father.

Most of the actors in Kafka are LAU students, although major productions allow actors from outside LAU to take part.

Abyad values the opportunity to travel with her students as it forces them out of their comfort zones and teaches them to adapt to new settings.

“It’s a very good experience for students to travel, learning even simple things like taking responsibility for the costumes, the props, how to pack and unpack,” she says. “You go there, you adapt to a new space, to the lighting, with different people, a different technical crew, and a different kind of audience.”

Around 200 young thespians from the Middle East and Europe met on the Beirut campus to present diverse performances during The 13th LAU International University Theatre Festival, held from July 22-28.

The event featured over 20 theater productions, in addition to concerts, workshops, installations and discussions.

Organized by LAU's Department of Communication Arts, the event helped the participating actors grow professionally through exposure to new and unique techniques and styles used by their peers from various countries.

The festival was kicked off on July 22 with a performance of Kafka, His Father, the Boss, the Wolf, and the Pigs, an LAU major production directed by Dr. Lina Abyad, LAU assistant professor of theater, which was first performed in May.

Following Kafka, the festival gave the floor to singer and songwriter Hiba Saab, who was the first of 10 musical performers.

Walad, a local group that mixes folk, blues and oriental music, performed several songs outside the Safadi Fine Arts Building on the opening night, following Saab's performance.

Students from the Utrecht School of Arts, in the Netherlands, performed their play Dwaal, meaning "wander," during the second night of the festival. The play deals with issues of identity, expression, choice, social codes, and the strive for freedom.

Festival participants came from Belgium, the Netherlands, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Kuwait and Syria. A handful of Lebanese universities also took part, including LAU, the American University of Beirut, Lebanese University, and Haigazian University.
 

In the Heart of the Heart of Another Body, an LAU fall major production directed by Nagy Souraty, an LAU theater instructor, was presented outdoors as an open rehearsal on the second night of the festival.

"I think the festival was more colorful this year," says Hala Masri, LAU theater coordinator who was a member of the event's organizing committee -- along with Souraty, Abyad and Dr. Mona Knio, associate professor in the Communication Arts Department.

Masri says organizers worked harder and longer to plan the festival than in previous years, resulting in more plays and extra activities.

"The festival has become a tradition at LAU," Masri says. "People start asking me about it two or three months before," she adds.

Here, young professional Syrian actor Mustafa Al Khani leads an acting workshop for the young artists.

LAU students perform Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza, written by British playwright Caryl Churchill in response to the 2008-2009 Israeli military strike on Gaza.
 

Belgian actors from Théatre Universitaire Royal de Liège performed a theatrical rendition of Franz Kafka's 1917 short story Communication à une Académie (Report to an Academy), on the third night of the festival. The story is about an ape named Red Peter who has learned to behave like a human, then writes to an academy about his transformational experience.

Students from the Utrecht School of Arts perform an outdoor experimental piece called Project Lens, in which two members from the audience depend on each other to complete several military-themed missions, developed in the form of a video game.

"Our main thought in this is to try to prevent or maybe even decrease a traumatic stress disorder," said Rosa Frensman, one of the performance's organizers. "We are trying to do this by taking away someone's vision and giving it to someone else to see if without vision, something may be less traumatic."
 

The Bear was performed by the Higher Institute for the Performing Art and Cultural Activity in Morocco. The play, written by Russian playwright and author Anton Chekhov, is a story of two adversaries, a widow and her debt collector, who fall in love.

LAU student production Guantanamo: The Meaning of Waiting was staged on July 25, the fourth night of the festival which was reserved for Lebanese universities. The play tells the story of six women waiting for their husbands to be released from America's infamous Guantánamo Bay prison in Cuba.

View more photos of the theater festival.

LAU’s spring major theater production, Kafka, His Father, the Boss, the Wolf, and the Pigs, was launched on May 8 at LAU Beirut’s Irwin Hall Theatre.

The production contrasts the nature of a letter written by Bohemian/Czech writer Franz Kafka in which he laments the harsh, belittling attitude of his father, Hermann Kafka, a prosperous merchant in Prague, to whom the letter is addressed, with several draft letters written with a more resentful tone that accuse his father of offering him nothing but blame and criticism.

“I wonder if I choose the plays, or if the plays find me,” says Dr. Lina Abyad, the play’s director and an LAU assistant professor of theater, after being asked why she chose Kafka. She says that, at one point, all theater artists will eventually confront Kafka who is regarded as one of the most influential writers of his time.

Kafka presented an opportunity to move away from social and political problems, or issues related to the Arab world, which Abyad says she frequently deals with in theater productions.

Kafka was represented by many actors all dressed alike. In one of the draft letters, Kafka writes that his father never gave him candy, represented by the enormous lollipops covering the actors’ faces, perhaps to hide Kafka’s guilt and shame.
 

“The visuals are just as important as the texts,” Abyad says as she explains how the props and lighting help deliver Kafka’s message.

Abyad says many people were surprised to find humor in the play, considering Kafka’s reputation as a deep, serious-toned writer. “I wanted to show that Kafka is also funny and surreal,” she explains.

The play has had a deep impact on many audience members. A father of an actress from the play was in tears after watching the performance. He told Abyad that the play described the relationship with his children.

“Many people have come up to me to say ‘this is exactly what is happening to me,’” Abyad says. “They were very moved.”

The letter was written when Kafka was 36 years old and was apparently never delivered. It was first translated into English from German and published in 1966 titled Letter to his Father. In 2008, a new English translation was published under the title Dearest Father. Abyad and Rachid Al Daif translated the texts to Arabic for the purposes of the play.

The theater production is organized by LAU’s Department of Communication Arts. Two performances have already taken place on May 8 and 9, with another four scheduled for May 13, 14, 15 and 16 at 8:30 p.m. Tickets costing LL10,000 and LL15,000 can be found at the Gulbenkian Theatre’s ticket booth, Beirut campus. For more information, please contact: 00961-1-786464 / 00961-3-791314 ext. 1172. 

LAU’s Department of Communication Arts participated in the fifth University Theater Festival in Fez, Morocco, from April 8–11, with the student theater production Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza.

Developed for the Play Production I course, the play is directed by LAU communication arts student Fuad Halwani, under the academic supervision of Dr. Mona Knio, associate professor of theater at LAU. It is based on a script written by English playwright Caryl Churchill in 2009.

The festival was organized by the Université Sidi Mohamed Ben Abdellah in Fez. It featured student troupes from North African, Arab and European universities that staged more than a dozen performances.

LAU theater students waiting at the Casablanca International Airport to catch their flight to Fez, Morocco, for the University Theater Festival.

LAU’s theater group in front of the Royal Palace gates in Fez.

Student thespians engage in a conversation about masks with French actress Joelle Richetta.

LAU students test the new-made ladders for their set at the festival in Fez.

An LAU student rehearses on set before the performance at the theater festival in Fez.

A climactic scene from the performance of Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza.

Dr. Mona Knio (left), LAU associate professor, with the cast and crew of Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza after the performance at the University Theater Festival in Fez.

Students enjoy lunch with the Dutch group at Le Kasbah, overlooking Bab Boujeloud, the main entrance to the Old Medina of Fez.

Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza was also featured in the World Theatre Day activities at LAU on March 26.
 

LAU joined the rest of the world on March 26 to celebrate World Theatre Day with replays of two student plays from earlier this year, one new student production, and the presentation of a visiting production, on the Beirut campus.

The event was an exercise for the students, says Dr. Mona Knio, associate professor in LAU’s Communication Arts Department that organized the event. Since LAU student plays show only once — and a lot of hard work goes into producing them — the event gave the students the opportunity to show their work again, and more importantly to improve, Knio explains.

First held in 1962 worldwide, World Theatre Day aims to bring together the international theater community. Every year, a figure in theater or outstanding in heart and spirit from another field shares a message about theater and international harmony. This year’s figure was Dame Judi Dench.
 

Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza

The replay of student theater production Seven Jewish Children: A Play for Gaza was performed outside the Safadi Fine Arts Building in the morning.

The play is directed by LAU communication arts student Fuad Halwani, and based on a script written by English playwright Caryl Churchill in 2009.

It consists of seven scenes describing 70 years of events in recent Jewish history, including the Holocaust, Jewish immigration to Palestine, the creation of Israel, the expulsion of Palestinian Arabs, the 1948 Arab–Israeli War, the dispute over water, the First Intifada, the building of the West Bank barrier, Palestinian suicide attacks, Hamas rocket attacks, and the 2008 bombings of Gaza.

Director Halwani uses ladders symbolically, as they are “a tool of elevation and progress — an upward transition; it is the mother and the soil we use to grow. If cultivated, the land is home, but when exploited the mutilation of the land is the only hope for survival.”

Nos Nseis

Nos Nseis, performed and directed by Ahmad Al Aydi, an LAU architecture student, and Ma’moun Frayji was presented on a special stage outside the Safadi Fine Arts Building, following the first play.

Nos Nseis is not an LAU student production, but produced by Al Jana – Arab Resource Center for Popular Arts, with which Al Aydi and Frayji have worked for years.

The performance at LAU was a part of a series of plays about the character “Nos Nseis,” which means mini person in Arabic. The character uses comedy to talk to usually young audiences about school, friends, and accepting differences. The play presented at LAU focused on the dangers of peer pressure, cigarette smoking and drugs.

Dangerous Angels

The next play of the day was a new LAU student production, Dangerous Angels, which was performed in Gulbenkian Theatre in the afternoon.

Dangerous Angels is based on a script by Asian-American playwright Scott C. Sickles and directed by LAU student Layal Salman.

Written in 1931, the play portrays a family funeral reception and reveals truths about issues of family, death, sexuality, incest and religion through the members’ interactions.

The taboos addressed in the play are similar to those found in Lebanese society according to director Salman, who says “issues of sexuality and incest are never discussed and are therefore hidden forever.”

The Lesson

The replay of student production The Lesson was performed outdoors in the evening, in front of the Irwin Hall arches.

Written by absurdist Eugene Ionesco, The Lesson is about a girl who tries to get a doctorate degree by taking a lesson in mathematics and philology. It ends with a tragedy because the communication between the student and teacher fails.

LAU student Soha Shukayr, who directed the play, aims to show her audience that we see absurdity every day, specifically pointing out the way those in power proclaim freedom of speech, but in reality they only want their opinions to be adopted.
 

The audience enjoys The Lesson outdoors.

The main attractions in the series are expected to be the two performances of the play Romeo & Julia at Irwin Theater, today and tomorrow by the New York-based Nature Theatre of Oklahoma group.

“We knew that LAU has a good reputation for its arts, so we contacted them to see if they were interested in [collaborating],” says Maha Kobaissi, an organizer with the Al Bustan Festival.

Romeo & Julia is a twisted rendition of Shakespeare’s renowned 16th-century tragedy Romeo and Juliet, based on the fuzzy memories of several people who were asked to recant the story of Romeo and Juliet from beginning to end.

By the time the play was finished, there were new, invented characters, and others missing from the original version, while scenes included blind spots and twisted events.

The same group will hold an improvisation workshop for students at the Beirut campus, on March 11, from 5:00–8:00 p.m.

Also part of Al Bustan Festival’s program, LAU Beirut hosted renowned Italian actor, author and theater director Antonio Fava on March 2 for a theater workshop attended by about 25 students.

During the workshop, students learned the skills of Commedia dell’Arte, a 17th and 18th-century European art craft, which translates to “comedy of art” or “comedy of the professional.”

Fava, who also holds the title “Maestro of Commedia dell’Arte and Comedy,” brought several of his personally designed leather masks, which have been exhibited in museums around the world, to the workshop to act out several character roles.

“1560 was the beginning of the decadence of the mask,” Fava said, as he explained that the year also represented the participation of women in European theater.

This year, the Al Bustan Festival designated an Italian theme to celebrate the nation’s cultural talents.

The workshops were given by Adam Coleman, a prominent British stage actor and also senior practitioner at Globe Education — the public educational division of the Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.

Coleman set out to teach theater techniques such as communication skills, body language, tone, and brain gymnastics, in addition to self-awareness and self-knowledge.

320 participants from 13 local high schools, two local universities, as well as LAU students, benefited from the workshops held at the Gulbenkian Theatre on the Beirut campus.

“We put physicality, body language and words into Shakespeare’s play Romeo and Juliet. Then we went through a 10-step program to bring words from the page to the stage,” says Coleman, who has 20 years of experience as an actor and has previously given workshops at LAU in 2004 and 2005.

The workshops were a joint venture between LAU, Globe Education, and Lebanon’s branch of the English Speaking Union, and were supported by the British Council.

Hala Masri, theater coordinator in the Beirut campus, says the students all said they “learned how to express themselves properly,” as well as gained an understanding of “how to express emotions on stage.”

Sima Ghaddar from the Hariri High School in Saida says the workshop has nurtured her love for acting by giving her a chance to improve her skills: “[We learned] verbal communication, posture, personality and how to build our character through acting.”

LAU student Iman Khozam says the workshop was a really interesting and liberating experience. She explained: “I’m a Play Production student so I learned a lot of techniques and how to apply them to my actors later on.”

Coleman says the students’ responses were absolutely brilliant. “I couldn’t want for a better response,” he says. He explains that workshops conducted overseas often make him feel more valued.

“People are really appreciative here of the fact that these visits are being put on. The biggest thing they keep asking is, ‘Are you coming back? Are there more sessions?’ That’s the biggest complement,” he says.

Masri says in addition to introducing high schoolers to LAU’s communication arts program, the workshops “give students an idea about acting on stage and confidence to express themselves on stage.” She adds: “This is their introduction to acting.”

The Globe Education program offers a year-round program of workshops, courses and events open to the public. The program also encompasses year-round international outreach projects for students and teachers. Annually, the Globe Theatre hosts over 100,000 guests at the Globe Theatre in London for local workshops.

Read more about the workshops held at LAU in an article posted on The Times Educational Supplement's website.

The training helped around 25 students who attended to learn tools and techniques to clear their minds and be able to react impulsively during improvised performances, which force actors to think on their feet.

“When you’re in theater, you have to be patient,” says second-year communication arts major Nour Abu Hamdan, who attended the workshop. “Four hours honestly wasn’t enough, especially for improvisation, because it takes a long time to train your body and mind.”

Abu Hamdan has performed in several student productions at LAU but has never attempted improvisation, which until the workshop has not occurred to her as a possibility.

“Before I took this workshop, I thought I’d never do improv — I didn’t think I was suited for it,” Abu Hamdan says. “But what I learned is that it just needs training, just to get into that improv state of mind.”

Orr has been improvising for over 20 years with several San Francisco-based groups. He has taught and performed improvisation at the American Conservatory Theatre, BATS Improv Stanford University, and many other U.S. and international venues.

The event was sponsored by LAU’s Department of Communication Arts after local theater actor Raffi Feghali, who frequently performs in LAU student and major productions, notified the department that Orr would be in town and offered to coordinate the workshop.

Feghali originally invited Orr to Lebanon to help launch Live Lactic Culture (LLC, or Laban in Arabic), an organization aimed at building a community of improvisation actors in Lebanon.

“I met Tim at an improv festival in Amsterdam in 2009 and it struck me that when we launch [LLC], we have to bring him [to Lebanon],” Feghali says. “This type of acting should be spread more — We have to get as many people involved as possible, so I called LAU to benefit from this.”

Souraty, a drama and theater instructor in the Department of Communication Arts at LAU, says that while the play is inspired by texts written by Etel Adnan, it is specifically influenced by Adnan’s book of poems, In the Heart of the Heart of Another Country. The director says the performance is as a “collective creation” between him and the cast of 15 and crew of 40, of which most hail from LAU.

The starting point for all this, explains Souraty, is a heart attack he had a few months ago. He says that major incident in his life provided the impetus to explore the heart in this production. “I do not do theater by choice,” he says. “I do it because I cannot do without it. I do theater because it is imposed on me by the world.”

In the Heart of the Heart of Another Body is an impressive experimental performance featuring a cast of student and professional actors who play themselves, and auditioned for the roles last fall in an open casting call.

The interlinked ideas that are explored in the performance are the heart, memory, time, silence, sound, noise, childhood, survival, loneliness and humanity. Reflecting the multiplicity of languages used in Lebanon, the actors perform in Arabic, French and English.

Theatergoers who might be accustomed to watching traditional narratives unfold on stage were pre-alerted in the program that Souraty’s In the Heart of the Heart of Another Body “is an experimental performance, is not based on a specific script,” and “does not have a specific plot.”

Kalyl Kadri is a third-year theater student at LAU and a cast member of Souraty’s production. Asked to describe his experience of working as part of a large cast and crew on a production without a script, he says it was an interesting experience as an actor: “It’s definitely a challenge. It’s a completely different experience from script-based theater where a director tells you what he wants you to do. We don’t have characters. He [Souraty] doesn’t refer to us as actors. He refers to us as a dramatus personae, and we’re basically stylized versions of ourselves on stage. This is something that you don’t find somewhere else.”

Kadri explains that this production cannot be viewed as a play or a show, but rather as a journey. “From the first and second night, most of the comments we were getting after the performances were emotional — ‘We loved it,’ or ‘I was crying, but I don’t know why.’”

“It’s an experience that we’re taking the audience through — a journey more than a performance,” he adds.

The play runs nightly from January 9–10 and 14–17 at 8:30 p.m. sharp, at the Gulbenkian Theatre, LAU Beirut campus. Tickets can be purchased for LL10,000 and LL15,000 at the Gulbenkian Theatre’s ticket booth. To reserve tickets or to find out more information, call 01-786464 or 03-791314 ext. 1172.

Wearing his traditional kimono, the well-known Noh master demonstrated the techniques of the art form during a lecture, which was held on August 28 as part of the "Noh Theater at LAU" activities -- the first of their kind in Lebanon -- that took place on the Beirut campus in the end of August and beginning of September.

Umewaka said only male actors traditionally performed Noh plays -- women were allowed to act only 80 years ago. He showed a traditional ritual Noh actors perform at the beginning of a performance when they salute the audience and their fellow performers. He explained traditional concentration exercises performers could use, and the specific way they should move around the stage. He also stressed the importance of showing pure -- even exaggerated -- emotions.

"His lecture was fantastic," says Dr. Mona Knio, LAU associate professor of arts and communication. "He talked for two hours and then the students cornered him at the reception and asked questions for another two hours. It's such a satisfaction to have him here," she adds.

Besides the lecture/demo, Umewaka also led a Noh theater workshop that gathered around 20 professional actors and performing arts university students at LAU for eight days between August 29 and September 8.

During the workshop, the participants auditioned and rehearsed for Umewaka's newest play, The Italian Restaurant, which was performed in Arabic on the Gulbenkian stage on September 8. It is a ghost story -- as per Noh theater tradition -- that takes place in a restaurant, Umewaka explains.

Noh theater "was so new to us," Ahla Mawad, a professional actress who took part in the workshop, said during a rehearsal. "I had an idea about it from my theater history course in university and I have a passion to learn about any kind of theater. Now I am so fascinated that I can't sleep at night and I write notes about what he had said to us during the day," she added.

Umewaka says it is the first time he holds a workshop in Lebanon, although he has been married to a Lebanese for 26 years. "I know it is new to them [the participants], but most of them did very well," he adds.

Umewaka started acting at the age of 3 and played his first main role six years later, following in the footsteps of his father, the late Naoyoshi Umewaka, who is considered a legendary Noh actor.

In 1995 Umewaka received a doctorate in drama from the University of London, where he now teaches as a visiting professor. He is also an associate professor in arts management at Shizuoka University of Art and Culture. Leader of the Umewaka Noh Theater Troupe, he has composed, choreographed and directed a number of new Noh plays.

The Noh activities at LAU were organized by LAU's Department of Arts and Communication in collaboration with the Embassy of Japan in Lebanon and the Arab Theater Training Center.

According to Abyad, this was the first participation of a major LAU production in such a big event that gathered groups from about 45 countries around the world.

The troupe included a mix of backgrounds--academic and otherwise--united as part of Theater in Performance, an LAU course taught by Abyad.

Although regular students sign up for it and work towards producing a play, auditions are open to everyone. This gives them the chance to come to the university for three months and benefit from the course, and occasionally from something extra, like a ticket to the Cairo festival covered in full by LAU.

The Blind was the product of teamwork among all those enrolled in the course, according to Abyad. "This is LAU's service to the community," and an act against the commonly held view that the university is an island, she said. "This integrates the whole community in the process of artistic production, and has it bubbling," she added.

Although the play had been performed at least 10 times on campus as this year's spring major theater production, putting it together again was no piece of cake. "Three major actors were not able to make it to Egypt," said Abyad. "So we had 10 days to replace them, which was no easy task. It required a huge amount of hard work, but we got through in the end," she added.

The troupe won no prizes, but to them, that's insignificant. Going to Egypt was "an amazing experience," said Lama Marashly, a radio/TV/film senior. "We were so lucky to have met and gotten feedback from professional acting troupes" that were the festival's major competitors, she added.

The Department of Arts and Communication is bustling in preparation for its two annual major productions and yearly International University Theatre Festival. "Whatever happens, the show must go on," said Abyad.

The Arts and Communications Department decided to reschedule and go ahead with the event as it tried to come to terms with the loss of longtime colleague Miled Karkour a few days before the opening.

Communication Arts students helped with the planning and staging of the festival's diverse activities, including plays, street theater, dance performances, poetry reading, presentations, and workshops.

The event "was very special because it took place after a catastrophe for all of us--Miled's death--and we had to live up to the values of Miled," said Associate Professor and an organizing committee member Mona Knio.

"The students were aware of that and they worked hard to make sure that the work they would do would be up to the standards that Miled would accept," she added.

In addition, the festival organizers had to overcome the setback caused by armed fighting in Beirut in May. Despite some changes in the program, the festival allowed students to gain more exposure to different aspects of theater production such as acting, stage management, lighting, and sound and set design.

Knio said that the multinational and diversified performances also offered opportunities for interaction among students and participants coming from various cultures and performing arts backgrounds. Universities, institutes, and presenters from Algeria, Bahrain, Jordan, Lebanon, Sri Lanka, and Syria participated in different forms in the six-day event.

The performances touched on such issues as corruption, poverty, stereotyping, feminism, fear of the unknown, and lack of effective communication. Messages were relayed in varying ways, from the gloomy The Blind (LAU), to a brighter Voiceless World featuring actors with speech and hearing disabilities (Al Bayan Institution, Lebanon), and the new language of We Don't Understand, spoken in reverse (University of Bahrain).

Other plays performed at LAU theaters included Insinuation (dance theater) by the dance department of Syria's Higher Institute for the Performing Arts; Life on Line by Yarmouk University in Jordan; The Other by the University of Wahran, Algeria; Insomnia by the Lebanese University, and four student productions by LAU (If You're Glad, I'll Be Frank; By a Thread; 10,000 Cigarettes; and R.A.W.: 'Cause I'm A Woman).

Some other activities were the installation performance of Regrets of the Statue of Man (Saint Joseph University), the poetry reading by two LAU students, and the improvised Reclaiming the Streets, in which the Interactive Performance Group promoted the idea of art--rather than riots, clashes and demonstrations--dominating the streets of Lebanon.

The program also included four theater-related presentations.

• Dr. Hanan Qassab Hassan spoke about the "Damascus: Arab Capital of Culture 2008" festivities, in her capacity as secretary-general of the event;
• Zico House talked about creating theater companies in villages (rural areas), a project by a group of five Lebanese directors;
• Associate Professor Maurice Maalouf discussed the numerous benefits of joining the International Theatre Institute;
• Rathna Kumari, the director of the National Theatre Institute in Sri Lanka, introduced the evolution of theater in her country from its earliest forms of ritualistic dances to contemporary performances.

Workshops were held on sound techniques, body balance and projection of emotions on stage.

Miled Karkour's obituary.

Twelve blind men and women--played mostly by LAU students enrolled in Director Lina Abyad's Theater in Performance course--find themselves stranded by their guide in the middle of the forest. As the play opens, one of them stands up and starts walking, but after he stumbles, they all decide to stay in their places, awaiting their guide's return. Their overwhelming fear keeps them immobilized for all but the last five minutes of the 43-minute production.

The actors--all of the men rendered bald--were dressed in red and orange Tibetan monk robes. With their skin plastered in clay and their faces covered by fabric, they could only see through a sliver. Floating slabs of wood in the shape of a boat covered the stage. When the actors stood or attempted to walk, the planks trembled because of the uneven gaps between them. Under the stage was a pool of water--unseen by the blind actors--making the audience feel the constant presence of potential danger.

Departing from her usual practice, Abyad had the actors memorize their lines before the rehearsals. She had them rehearse blind (for over 200 hours), so they could "discover what it means to listen to each other."

Abyad said she was pleased with the attitude of her novice actors (most of whom had never acted before), having "embraced the project seriously."

For the past nine years, Dr. Abyad--an assistant professor in the Humanities Division of LAU's School of Arts and Sciences--has directed the university's spring major theater productions.

She usually chooses plays with political and social themes that "talk about the world, [and are] not art for art's sake." However, she stressed that the substance of The Blind is more philosophical than political. The Lebanese can be compared to the characters in that they currently find themselves "in a very dramatic situation" over which they feel they have little control.

The process of picking a play is akin to falling in love, as Abyad described it. She first read The Blind 25 years ago and knew that at some point she would stage it. She went to great lengths to secure the script, it being out of print. She finally found a used French book published in 1903 on the Internet, which she then translated into colloquial Arabic with Rachid Al Daiif.

When first considering it for this production, she thought it was too black, terrible, and morbid; but after putting it aside, the characters kept coming into her dreams. These nightmares forced her to reconsider. "The play picked me. ... I didn't pick it," she said.

Originally written in French in 1890 by Belgian playwright and winner of the 1911 Nobel Prize in literature Maurice Maeterlinck, The Blind is symbolic, absurd, pessimistic, existential, poetic and "in a loose way tragic," according to Abyad. It is considered to have influenced other playwrights such as Alfred Jarry, Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett, most notably in Waiting for Godot.

Dr. Mona Knio, the teacher of the student directors, said that she chose the two productions to be rerun, mostly because they were very successful. In addition, she wanted to select plays with different subjects and durations to be presented in the Gulbenkian and Irwin theatres, in Beirut.

The Bald Soprano, the longer play directed by Maher Kaidbey, ridicules bourgeois society frozen in meaningless formalities, and satirizes the fact that people often speak to fill space.

The set was decorated with square boxes representing the minute and hour hands of a clock. As they engaged each other in repetitive and often nonsensical conversations, the characters haphazardly moved the boxes to show the irregular passage of time.

The play featured two bourgeois couples, played by Amir Haidar, Nour Saikaly, Muhannad Hariri, and Mariam Al-Naser, who stayed within the confines of the "clock" center stage. According to Kaidbey, they symbolized "two-dimensional, very flat," unreal characters "stuck in time."

On the other hand, Maya Sabban and Sany Abdul Baki, playing a maid and a fire chief respectively, moved outside the broken clock area, because they represented real people with feelings.

"First, when I was chosen [to rerun the play], I was very happy and excited, but then I realized how much I had to work," admitted Kaidbey. In fact, he improved some aspects of lighting, music and gestures for the replay, based on a brainstorming session he conducted with his collaborators and the advice of his instructors. He also felt that the actors did a better job the second time around, because they knew what to expect from the audience.

His interest in The Bald Soprano, written by Eugene Ionesco, began when he learned it in school and later saw it performed in Paris. "I fell in love with it...[and] I wanted to express my own vision of the play," he said.

Dalia Yassine, the director of R.A.W. ('Cause I'm a Woman), the other production that was repeated, had come up with the idea of creating a feminist play before picking the actual script. In an interview with The Daily Star, she said, "The emotional, sexual and psychological stereotyping of females begins right from the start. To be a woman, if not a defect, is at least a peculiarity. I had this little recording playing in my head for years and years..."

R.A.W. ('Cause I'm a Woman) focuses on the stereotypes of four Asian women, especially as geishas, exotic virgins and suicidal Miss Saigons.

The women, played by Yassine's friends Dania Jarakji, Assil Ayyash, Joy Telvezian and Rana Abi Abdallah, stood in four boxes symbolizing a doll's house. Moving like dolls, they wore kimonos and Asian make-up at the beginning of the play. They later stripped down to skin-colored leotards symbolizing nakedness, and removed their make-up to show their liberation from the objects they were made into.

Yassine modified the original script, written by Diana Son, to prepare a 25-minute performance, during which each woman spoke about her struggle to break a common stereotype and to be seen simply as herself.

According to the director, the distinctive feature of her production was its "very blunt" style; instead of following a traditional story line "with a beginning, a middle and an end," R.A.W. ('Cause I'm a Woman) consisted of "lines after lines, story after story," she explained.

Despite the hard work needed to produce the play especially the first time, Yassine said it was so fun working with her friends that she "would do it again a thousand times."

Real life sisters Lina and Rasha Joukhadar play sister maids Claire and Solange. Their mistress is mentioned in conversations but never seen on the stage.

The action takes place within a cultural context of wide social gaps between rich and poor. The sisters' secret mocking of their mistress is their way of manifesting a deep jealousy of her. The set, a stage within a stage, was cleverly designed to underscore their exaggerated imitations of the woman.

The sisters successfully plot the imprisonment of the mistress's lover and revel in her despair. Later, they imagine ways to kill her. The plan to poison her falls through when her lover is released from prison, and Claire takes imitation to a fatal extreme.

"I wanted to present the absurdity of life and theater, to mix reality with absurdity, because sometimes reality creates contradiction," said Shiha about her choices. She doubled as director and set designer.

The young director's adaptation of Jean Genet's play ran 35 minutes, but took two semesters to complete, starting with modifying the script, selecting the production staff, and perfecting the performance. Rehearsals were held every day for one month.

Shiha was clearly pleased with the results: "Everything I wanted in a play was done; it was perfect," she said.

LAU's School of Arts and Sciences offers numerous student-produced plays, as well as two major productions, throughout the year. Watch the university's calendar of events to stay abreast of upcoming performances.

The play taps into a variety of Jeha's folk tales and the different adventures he encounters. A collection of folk tales is thus turned into a dramatic plot featuring Jeha treating serious matters with deliberately inappropriate humor.

"I started from several books for Jean Louis Maunoury, Inea Bushnaq, Leonardo Sciascia, Jihad Darwish, Jean Dejeux and Idries Shah. I chose a number of tales from among hundreds and narrowed them down to 40," the director said.

The play's team later looked for a framework through which those varied tales can hold a logical and credible identity.

"We worked in commedia dell'arte style considering each tale of Jeha a synopsis which the actors built on through improvisations," Abyad revealed.

The play depicts scenes from the life of Jeha with three ever-existing characters: his wife Jamila (beautiful), Tatarian invader Timur Lenk and Jeha's donkey.

The scenes are set in a space of Arabic-Islamic architecture with low lighting as if the city was lit by lanterns. Along with oriental costumes of North African and Middle Eastern character, all those elements jointly take spectators on a trip to the world of Jeha.

Although recounting familiar tales, the plot is well knit with short and quick dialogues conveying daily life details of this fictitious and contradictory character.

Jeha is both naive and wise, with a flippant character and rebellious spirit standing up to the Tatarian invader Timur Lenk and ridiculing his authority. The constant bickering and fighting between Jeha and his wife adds to the humor.

In scenes such as the Turkish bath, Jeha as a judge, the market and the popular café, Jeha poses questions, drags himself into weird situations yet manages to sneak out of the whole scene with remarkable wit. People around him not only believe all what he says but are also impressed by him and his ideas and constantly seek his advise even on personal and private matters.

It is true that the plot revolves around Jeha and his tales, but the different characters have their own distinct positions that complement his picture. Evidently, the character of Jeha does not upstage others no matter how trivial their role is.

Some actors and actresses play several roles in the play, while Jeha's character is played by only one actor, 20-year-old student Mahmoud Jaban. Allowing actors to play various roles gave them the chance to experiment several times in a single performance.

Abyad recognizes efforts exerted by actors, who are still beginners. She admits to have faced difficulty in simultaneously directing a major production and teaching actors the basics of theater.

The play involved a team of about 30 student actors/actresses, dancers, and musicians as well as production and technical crews of students, administrators and professionals.

This spring's major production featured seven performances held between May 12 and 21, 2006 on the Beirut Campus' Gulbenkian amphitheater. Although intended for all audiences, the show sparked wide interest among children spectators.

The play pays tribute to three characters: Jeha himself and two Lebanese comedians that remind the director of Jeha's character, Chouchou and Nabih Abul Hosn.

LAU's bi-annual major productions are aimed at providing theater students with professional experience within the realm of the university. The production usually involves the Theater in Performance class and a number of other students and faculty members from the Arts and Communication Division, in addition to some graduates and professionals.

Photos courtesy of Sami Haddad