LEBANON-PLAY Drama helps Lebanese to bridge their city's divides

Record ID: 145281

  • Title: LEBANON-PLAY Drama helps Lebanese to bridge their city's divides
  • Date: 3rd August 2015
  • Summary: VARIOUS OF PLAY
  • Embargoed: 18th August 2015 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Lebanon
  • Country: Lebanon
  • Topics: General
  • Reuters ID: LVA996WSYDFSXJY4WS1VD56WV3F5
  • Aspect Ratio: 16:9
  • Story Text: Young people from two warring districts in the Lebanese city of Tripoli are taking to the stage in a comedy inspired by their own lives, trying to turn their backs on old rivalries inflamed by Syria's civil war.
    "Love and War on the Rooftops", a play within a play about a Sunni Muslim and an Alawite in the coastal city of Tripoli, drew in a full house in the capital Beirut.
    Some locals have welcomed the project but others have accused actors from both sides of being traitors, a reflection of the daily tension between the Sunni Bab al-Tabbaneh district and the inhabitants of Jabal Mohsen, whose Alawite sect is an offshoot of Shi'ite Islam.
    It worsened four years ago when conflict erupted across the border in Syria, pitting the government of President Bashar al-Assad, an Alawite, against an insurgency dominated by Sunni Islamists. The tension often boils over into violence, and sometimes claims lives.
    At first, Khodor Mukhaiber, 19, refused to act in the play with Jabal Mohsen residents. He never expected he would end up having friends in the Alawite part of the city, on the other side of the aptly-named Syria Street.
    "I believed they were our enemies because that is how we were raised. After insisting, I came to help the play. After I met them in this play, my point of view towards them change, I saw we were alike, we are all young people - they don't have work, we don't have work, we have the same crises," said Khodor, who plays the part of an exasperated director.
    Around 57 percent of Tripoli's residents are classified as "deprived" in a United Nations poverty report published in January.
    "Before the play we did nothing, there was no work, nothing, just sitting in the street," said Ali Amoun, 23, whose character falls in love with a Sunni, sparking a scandal.
    The drama unfolds on Tripoli's rooftops in a whirl of music, card games, violence and secret romantic rendezvous, revolving around a play in which the actors are constantly arguing with the director.
    Fatima Mukhaiber, 23, who plays Amoun's love Aisha, describes how, after becoming involved in the play, the new friends met in each other's districts to break the fast during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan.
    "I used to have this thought - why are we enemies? Now I'm doing something about it after the play," she said.
    The writer and director of the play, Lucien Bourjeily, said there has been a marked improvement in how the actors from different sects relate to each other now.
    "At the beginning there was frostiness between them, which is normal especially in their situation. I remember when they first came and sat, they sat eight from each side, it was very clear who sat on this side and who sat on the other. Now, today, if you ask them to sit down and talk about the play, they will randomly sit down. You feel the difference simply from this act," he said.
    The audience at the theatre in the Hamra neighbourhood of Beirut were also full of praise.
    "The project is great. I loved the honesty in it, you feel that the actors are giving from the heart, they are giving the image they like to give. The project is nice because it is about time for people to know that we can reach affection through art," said Maamoun Tebbo after watching the play.
    "It was excellent. The youth are great and their acting is greater. The subject is also very good," said audience member Oumayah Jadeh.
    The play is a project by March, a Lebanese civil rights advocacy group, and is described by the play's director as a form of 'drama therapy'.
    The March website says the organisation wants to send a message through the play that "under development and lack of opportunities" is killing hope and leading to violence, and that a better environment and opportunities would lead to peace and prosperity.
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