No Demand No Supply

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On the 27th of March 2016, the inquisitorial commission in Mount Lebanon raided “Chez Maurice” and “Silver” brothels in Jounieh area, east of Beirut, and saved seventy-five Syrian refugee women from what became known later as the largest sex trafficking network in the history of Lebanon. The story gained huge media attention as the women told horrifying stories about the torture and abuse they suffered at the hands of one of the lead figures of the network, which was making more than one million dollars a month according to the police reports. Few weeks after the uncovering of the story, the media lost interest in it and slowly it started fading into oblivion. No Demand No Supply aims at giving voice to the women’s stories while shedding light on an aspect that was totally disregarded in the mainstream media: the sex buyer. The play is still as relevant today as it was in 2017. The court hearings are still in progress. So far, almost three years after closing down the brothels, seven court hearings took place in which nothing really happened because some of the accused are simply not showing up at the court. The victims are still waiting for justice while Imad Al-Rihawi, the trafficker who was in charge of managing the network and torturing the women, was released on a 20 million Lebanese pound (approximately 13 thousand dollars) bail on June 20, 2017, and Fawaz Ali Al-Hassan, the head of the network, was never caught.

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Anbara

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The play begins the day of Anbara’s veiling ceremony at the age of ten and ends the day she finally revolts against the veil in 1927 at the age of 30. The play is a historical docu-drama that tackles Anbara’s life and the stages of her maturity. At the young age of 16, Anbara took an active part in establishing one of the first women’s organization in Lebanon and possibly in the Arab World. By the age of 18 she was defying her family by meeting with her fiancé in secret. As an activist, Anbara and her contemporaries realized early on that women must have a role equal to that of men in their nationalist struggle. To play her part, she devoted herself to promoting women’s rights and women’s education.

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Tales of a City By The Sea

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‘Tales of a City by the Sea’ is the story of two people who meet and fall in love in the besieged Gaza strip, woven together from the actual experiences of people living under occupation. Jomana, a Palestinian woman living in a Gaza refugee camp, falls in love with Rami, an American-born Palestinian doctor and activist who has just arrived on one of the first Free Gaza boats in 2008. Their love is met with relentless string of challenges. Ultimately, Rami must decide between returning to his comfortable life in Texas and staying in Palestine with Jomana. Choosing to stay means leaving his family and career behind for a life ravaged by war, while leaving means not only losing Jomana but also ignoring the plight of the Palestinians.

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The Blue Pink

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A journalist is investigating story of Shahrzad, a transgender woman killed by her son through interviews with her transgender friends and other acquaintances including a relative, a social worker, a child labour and her housemate who is a sex worker. Shahrzad formerly known as Majid has a difficult time expressing her sexual identity since childhood until marriage, which she breaks off and leaving for the big city of Tehran without knowing that she has left a son behind. She is living in a trans community and finally able to obtain money and legal permits for sex change operation, she is happily married to a transgender man but after a long journey of transformation her past comes to hunts her. While her husband, friends narrates Shahrsad life they also unravels their own sad tales of discovery, harsh cruelties in the society and transformation and even recounts the history of Khomeini’s fatwa on sex reassignment surgery. These characters have faced common conditions and plights in the society facing violence, rape and poverty.

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The Magic Mixture for Happiness

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In an ironic style, the playwright makes a carnival of diverse characters who all suffer from the lack of happiness. Every characters appears with its own specific monologue/experience, yet the same character re-emerges again later adding new layers to its tragedy and responding to the issues of the other characters. Almost in a bleak way, every character tries to live with its own lifelessness. In a society where everything seems to be fake, the human existence is void of humanness and of any hope in the future. Hope becomes a sarcastic bleak song delivered during the play. The magical mixture for happiness seems to be the mixture of those characters, who can only be happy by forcing it or faking it. It is a play that highlights the tragic situation of most of young Egyptians who cannot find a future to aspire to, nor hope. The depression of a potential driving force in Egypt, puts an end to the state-diffused illusion that everything here is perfect!

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In the Name of the Father

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An Egyptian billionaire seems to be ruling the world. He is the absolute Patriarch. His empire extends to his five children who control all the aspects of economic corruption on a global scale. From human trafficking/slavery, to prostitution, human organs’ trade, monuments’s trafficking, weapon trade, drugs, to the biological manufacturing of viruses and the pharmaceutical trade it entails, to the business of war, famine and investing in weapons of mass destruction, the Patriarch and his family have dehumanised everything. Following the death of his abandoned son (from a second wife), the father decides to repent by offering to the dead son his share in his fortune. All the five children rebel against the father. Led by the eldest, Hazem, the brothers and sisters gather to plan for the assassination of their father. The aunt (sister of the father) -who is blind- is the only one who dares to confront the father with his truth. The wife and mother of the dead son fight over whether he should be butties according to the Christian or Muslim traditions. The mother (ex-wife of the father) is christian, while the father is muslim. The wife of the dead son is also christian. A debate over which religion he should follow in death takes place. The mother insists that he is buried in the islamic cemeteries of his father’s family, to guarantee his inheritance as a muslim son. Meanwhile the five brothers and sisters play a deadly game that ends up by killing someone.

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The Guaranteed Way to Remove Stains

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After a long night, a woman decides to murder her lover by putting him into a bathtub full of acid. The play is a long monologue delivered by the woman where she examines how her entire life is shamed and how it has been filled with “stains”. She discovers that everything that she is attached to has been viewed as a stain, that she herself has been seen as a stain. The play is almost the only one of its kind in Egyptian theater where the narrative is entirely constructed from a feminist perspective and where the voice is solely given to the woman to share the prohibited truth of her shamed sexuality and the objectification of her body. Due to the nature of monodrama, the feminist discourse is given the ultimate chance to expand via the discourse of the victimised female character who transforms into a killer. This transformation is neither shamed by the author, nor judged. It could seem that the killing itself has a symbolic value, and that the woman is equally killed while killing her lover. To commit murder in such a horrific way is equal to committing suicide. The Egyptian society witnessed many cases of wives killing their husbands and cutting their bodies to pieces, especially during the 1990’s. This play is the only theatrical text to have tackled the issue.

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