Spring Major Theatre Production: Nom el Ghezlan

Irwin Theatre, Beirut campus

A collective creation

Adapted and directed by Associate Professor Lina Abyad

Word from the Director:

For me, this play began long ago during my trips to Damascus. It began when I read Syrian authors and when I attended and also participated in theater festivals in the City of Jasmine.

The odyssey that we recount here traces the trail of tears of Syrian exiles in five tableaux. It is an odyssey that begins somewhere in Germany and ends somewhere in Syria during a joyous and convivial dinner precisely when the call begins to spread for a revolution demanding fair and necessary reforms.

Two distinct voices are joined to this epic story, that of the poet Farag Bayrakdar and that of the writer Yassin Haj Saleh. The first writes in order to witness the horror of Syrian prisons, the second to survive the absence of his wife, Samira Al-Khalil, kidnapped two years before.

Alienation resonates painfully in prison, exile and sequestration.

You will hear the stories of people who, before the choice of life or death, chose life – at any price. And the price is very heavy. Day in and day out…

Artistic Team

Set Designer                                                     Hana Fakhoury
Costume / Props Designer                          Ghina Sibaii
Lighting Designer                                           Fuad Halwani
Poster, program & all print design          Noura Andrea Nassar

The performance will take place every day between April 4 and 10 at 8:30 p.m.