Femme MENA Representation in Lebanon and the United States

Nabra Nelson: Salaam Aleykum! Welcome to Kunafa and Shay, a podcast produced for HowlRound Theatre Commons, a free and open platform for theatremakers worldwide. Kunafa and Shay discusses and analyzes contemporary and historical Middle Eastern and North Africa, or MENA, theatre from across the region.

Marina Johnson: I'm Marina.

Nabra: And I'm Nabra.

Marina: And we are your hosts.

Nabra: Our name, Kunafa and Shay, invites you into the discussion in the best way we know how, with complex and delicious sweets like kunafa, and perfectly warm tea, or in Arabic, "shay."

Marina: Kunafa and Shay is a place to share experiences, ideas, and sometimes to engage with our differences. In each country in the Arab world, you'll find kunafa made differently. In that way, we also lean into the diversity, complexity, and robust flavors of MENA theatre. We bring our own perspectives, research, and special guests, in order to start a dialogue and encourage further learning and discussion.

Nabra: In our third season, we highlight queer MENA and SWANA, or Southwest Asian North African theatremakers, and dive into the breadth of queerness present in their art.

Marina: Yalla. Grab your tea. The shay is just right.

Nabra: In previous seasons, we have explored the intersection of womanhood and MENA narratives in theatre. This season, we further complicate notions of MENA womanhood by exploring the additional intersections of queerness in femme MENA theatremaking. Joining us this episode are two queer Lebanese femme theatremakers based in the US. We will discuss how intersectional identities show up in the two artists' work and life, and learn more about the social atmosphere for femme MENA theatre artists in Lebanon and the US.

Sarah Bitar is a Brooklyn-based, trilingual actor, vocalist, writer, and activist from Lebanon, and graduate of the Stella Adler Studio. In her acting, teaching, and advising, she aims to explore the different facets of the human experience in its depth and absurdity. Select credits include Stockade, produced by Varonique Films, Like Salt produced by Cinephilia, Very Big Shot produced by Cabrit Films, Glimpse Revolution produced by Rattlestick Playwrights Theater, Hail Elisha produced by LAByrinth Theater Company, and Love's Labour's Lost produced by Irvington Shakespeare Company.

She's part of the acting company at the Mercury Store, a startup space that provides theatremakers bodies, space, and time to examine their work. There, she has worked with many directors, including Will Frears, Kareem Fahmy, Will Davis, Nikki Maggio, and others. She was a recipient of the NYFA City Artists Corps Grant in 2021.

Marina: Lama El Homaïssi is a Lebanese trilingual actor, singer, writer, and voiceover artist currently based in New York City, where she's an artist-in-residence at the SHIM:NYC Residency, and is also a member of the Joe's Pub Working Group 2022-2023. Lama began her career in entertainment working for years as a television writer in Lebanon at Sony Pictures Television Arabia, Talpa Middle East, and ITV Studios ME, before pursuing her MFA in musical theatre at Boston Conservatory at Berklee.

In addition to performing, Lama served as a research and translation assistant on Daniel and Patrick Lazour's We Live in Cairo, a new musical directed by Obie Award-winning director, Taibi Magar that premiered at American Repertory Theater in 2019. She later went on to work as a dramaturgy and publications assistant for ART's 2019-2020 season, and was involved as a storyteller and singer in several community engagements and education events in both Boston and New York City.

She collaborated with the Lazours and Ramy Essam on lyrics for the song, "Tahrir is Now," on the album "Flap My Wings (Songs from We Live in Cairo)." Lama's writing has also been featured in the Harvard Gazette, Brooklyn Rail, and in her essay, "On Storytelling as an Act of Survival," published in HowlRound's Theatre Commons.

Hello. We are so excited to have you with us today. Before we jump into larger conversations, we've heard your bios, but we would love to hear, what are you working on right now, and are there upcoming projects that you're also really excited about that you want to and can share? Who wants to start?

Lama El Homaïssi: I'll go. Hi, my name is Lama El Homaïssi. I am an actor, singer, writer from Beirut, Lebanon. I've been in the US about six years now. I came here in 2017 to get my MFA from Boston Conservatory at Berklee in musical theatre, because I have a background in film. After graduating, I always found myself in between being both a writer and an actor. Marina, I think it was you who said that what makes you want to be a playwright is the lack of voices and the lack of maybe representation of very specific MENA identities, including femme identities. I always feel like that's what fuels me to keep writing. And then when I get tired of writing, I'm like, "Ah, okay. I should do more auditions," and then I'll audition for parts. And a lot of them being Middle Eastern, with all due respect to all the work that's out there being produced, I don't always feel represented by those descriptions. And then I'm like, "All right, back to the drawing board. I will continue writing."

So I never tire of either thing, I just find myself bouncing back and forth. I just feel like it is an immense privilege to be able to have a voice right now, just historically speaking, contextually speaking, and to not use it right now just feels like I would be doing a great disservice to a lot of groups, including... I just feel a responsibility. So that was a long way of intro-ing what I'm working on right now.

As we speak, I have a show coming up at Joe's Pub. It's a cabaret storytelling and music night. It's called Not Harem Material and it features vignettes, original songs, and covers of songs, and they're all under the umbrella of a reaction to something an agent once said to me in a meeting, that I was "not harem material." So it's just kind of putting that in question and putting the stereotype and these monoliths in question.

And then the other project I'm working on is an original musical, a rock musical set in a Beirut dingy music bar, called Radio Beirut. And I'm developing these things under the Safe Haven Incubator for Musicians. It's a residency program that I've been in. It's run by Artistic Freedom Initiative, Tamizdat, and Westbeth Artist Housing, as well as Joe's Pub. I've been developing these two projects simultaneously for the last two years.

Marina: Those are so exciting. We'll definitely come back and jump into them more. I also just like the idea that there's a cycle or a circle that sort of has emerged, of the writing to auditioning to back to writing. It feeds into each other from necessity in different ways.

Lama: Yes.

Marina: Sarah, how about you? What are you working on?

Sarah Bitar: Well, besides scheduling doing nothing into my agenda, this fall, I am working again at the Mercury Store, which is my favorite space in New York City. It's in Gowanus, Brooklyn. It's an experimental developmental space for directors, and I work there as an actor servicing different projects in development, which is very exciting because we get to tackle questions and experiment with stuff without the pressure of production. While some of the directors... They have different programs, but some of the directors get mentorship and guidance, and so I've been learning a lot about directing and why I was very frustrated on past projects, and understanding the importance of a director on a project actually, which is the leader and the vision-carrier, and the importance of selecting projects where I trust the philosophy and the articulation of that particular director, and surrendering as an actor to that process. Otherwise, it's not fun for anybody. Yeah.

And to piggy off of that, I find myself being very selective about the things that I want to audition in. Or beyond, for that matter, now that I've hit my early thirties, I feel like, oh, I've, I don't know, ridden the wave of “Go, go, go, do, do, do, be part of everything,” and now I'm really being respectful of making space for the things that I really want, including writing also.

We pick up our writers' group tomorrow that I started with Yusuf Gad and Laila Abdo, and it came out of the OuLuLi group on Facebook. We started our first session in last February, and we're picking it up tomorrow. And that's the only time I do actually write for a specific project, when I have accountability and inspiration from others. And it's a really amazing mixed group of screenwriters, playwrights, essayists, journalists. Yeah, and so I think it's a great space to learn from all these people who do have writing experience, and myself who never got any writing training but just have the need to express something. By the way, me and Lama met about-

Lama: Twelve years ago.

Sarah: Twelve years ago.

Marina: Wow. Wait, tell us about this meeting.

Lama: If I'm not mistaken, we met at a unofficial Disney musical theatre workshop masterclass. Because in Lebanon, there's definitely music, and there's definitely theatre, but that genre of musical theatre that's so specific to the West or to Broadway or Disney, it's not training that you will find easily.

Sarah: Although it was very present in the sixties, seventies, and eighties. Al Rahbani, you know.

Lama: For sure. But see, I don't think of that as Western.

Sarah: Yeah, fa3lan.

Lama: And yeah, we met at that workshop.

Sarah: Yeah, there's no belting, and...

Lama: Yeah, totally different, which I love to talk about. And also, I know we're going on a tangent, but-

Marina: We should talk about all of this.

Lama: The shift from the Rahbanis to Ziad Rahbani.

Sarah: I wanted to say one last thing about what I'm working on, and it's the culmination of what I've worked on two years ago. So we're premiering our feature film, Stockade, at Woodstock Film Festival at the end of this month. So that's not work; it's just the reaping of a long time of work.

Marina: I bet. Very exciting. For those of us who can't be there in person, is there ever a virtual option, or do we just need to be patient and we'll see it when it comes our way?

Sarah: Yeah. I think hopefully, this is only the beginning of the festival circuit, and it'll make its way to different towns and cities and maybe into an online screening sometime down the way.

Marina: I'll keep my eyes peeled. Yes, you've given us a great place to start this conversation. Do we want to start with musical theatre? It feels like that was the last thread that was sort of-

Lama: I think Lebanese theatre, and then we can touch upon musical theatre.

Marina: That sounds great.

Lama: Because I feel like opening it up to theatre might be... We talk a lot, Sarah and I, about how much we miss the theatre scene back home and the ways that it's different. Because it is different. It is different in a lot of ways. And Sarah, I'm going to put the pressure on you to describe exactly how it's different.

Sarah: Well, I left in 2016, so I also haven't been immersed for a while. I follow from far away. But before I left, there was Zoukak, which is still around, and there was Lina Abyad who's also still making amazing work, and Lina Khoury. And sorry if I'm missing anybody, but this is what comes to the top of my head. And of course, Faek El Homaïssi, who's a beautiful pantomime, and I don't know if I should say this, but also Lama's father.

Marina: Wait. Say more, say more!

Lama: Thanks for the shout-out.

Sarah: Yes. I think Lama would know-

Lama: Yeah, whenever it's my turn, I'll definitely tell you about him.

Sarah: Cool. So I feel like there's different genres. Camille Salameh did a lot of theatre, and the moshwara, and it was about the working class, middle class. There's, of course, the satirical theatre of Ziad El Rahbani. This is a very quick overview. And I think Lina Abyad is very théâtre engagé, focusing on women's feminist theatre, domestic violence. She did a range of stuff. But I saw a play of hers here at NYU actually last year, which I was very excited about, called Amrika, and it was about all the women that have migrated at the turn of the century, mostly women, all the women that have migrated.

Lama: In Little Syria, right?

Sarah: Yes. From the Damascus region to the US. And one of them was a jewelry maker, and another one was a politician who was advocating for preserving the way we dress and our traditions, and very interesting. It was very visually beautiful. There was a boat scene, and the curtains at the beginning that were turned to mundane activities that women do every day, like fold clothes or iron. That was really exciting to see that.

I feel it was the first play in New York City that I saw about that part of the world that wasn't written or catered for a white audience in an interesting way, because it just told the story. And that is something that I like to think about. Beyond identities and identifications, what's the story, and how are we telling it in a skillful and theatrical way, if it's for the theatre, and cinematic way? Yeah, I know that Hammana Artist House is also doing an interesting initiative. There's puppetry, serious puppeteers, as well as the Dakroub brothers.

So I would say, everything that essentially... First of all, theatre in Lebanon is definitely a luxury in, sadly, what people go through on a daily basis to survive. But at the same time, I'm very impressed that theatre even exists, because there's literally no funding from the government whatsoever, it's all personal initiatives, there's no reward on any level.

Marina: And just to touch on what you just said, thank you for giving such an overview, because it's so important. And we've talked before on the podcast about how there's often a burden on MENA or on SWANA folks to write stories that then are really either palatable or have a lot of explanation to white audiences, and so it's refreshing to have these moments of, "No, this is just the story." And Adam also talked on this season about how sometimes it's okay just that it's not written for you, and you'll still get a lot out of it even if you're not the target audience of it. So I love hearing that, too.

Lama: I wanted to add something, too, that Sarah and I always talk about, is, we were comparing how adapting to the New York theatre scene or how it feels to be in the New York theatre scene, versus the Beirut scene. And I think one big thing to make distinct and clear is that, you know how there's sort of a production or money-making machine, or even the way we start to think about putting something on its feet, there's a lot of focus on financial investment and producers and backing, and sometimes it may affect what gets produced or why we're telling the story today or all those things. In Lebanon, it's a lot of self-production, or you'll get a grant from an organization like AFAC or Mophradat, and then figure out the rest yourself. You can walk away actually with losses, but you're paying a hundred dollars to each of your friends just for being able to do it for two weeks.

You personally walk up to the theatre space yourself, and you go, "Do you have time on this calendar?" And you're talking to one other person, and you're figuring out... I don't know if this is the case for everybody, but I feel like it doesn't feel gatekeep-y when you are... Maybe a downside is that we don't get, there isn't support from the government, or not sufficient. There aren't really these big producer types that are funneling money into this, because it's not a way that we've been making profit from tourism in Lebanon.

So there's focus on other things. There's promoters bringing big acts to concerts and things like that. That's definitely present in that way. But where I was going with that is that, as a playwright and as a creator, you're thinking a lot less about product and money and audience, and you're thinking more about core, and you're thinking about what is it that's itching you so much that you have to say it right now, or as my father says, he's like, “I'm pregnant, and I have to give birth to this thing even though it's not financially a good idea right now.” So what will push you to that point where you're going to suffer a loss, but you really... Why are we still making theatre? There's a reason.

And then the other thing I wanted to say is, Sarah and I are similar in age. Hope that's okay to say. But I was born in 1991, which was the first year out of our Civil War, which had begun in 1975. So we also are born out of a time where there are big... Thematically, a lot of things I've noticed in the narratives from pre-Civil War to during the Civil War and post-Civil War, they're very different. We definitely grew up sort of reckoning with this idea that our country had just gone through that and that there was just an acceptance that things were being rebuilt and that, economically speaking, it was in a specific state after such a long Civil War.

Then, as well as thematically, I grew up with a lot of retellings of the Civil War. And our experience, I feel like I didn't start to unpack or talk about it in my practice, because there's so much space given to this Civil War in the public conscience, and it's so present that I feel like I didn't begin to unpack everything until I was way older.

And then in terms of the plays that we watch, I think another thing Sarah and I always talk about is, it's so different than Western theatre, I think, because there isn't the threat of needing to sell a product and make money, there is more experimental theatre. I think that alleviates a lot of the freedom that an artist can have. There's a lot of experimental theatre. Before Ziad Rahbani began writing his musicals, his father's, a lot of the themes were of kind of a perfect village. What are the societal norms? You've got your bad guy, you've got your hero, the love interest, and a chorus of an ensemble of these villagers singing back. What are these societal norms? Like, “Oh no, she spoke to someone without the presence of her father.” So reinforcing an ideal utopic time, nostalgic for an era of Lebanon.

And then when Ziad began composing and writing his plays, you could definitely see a shift as we were now in the Civil War. I think of Bennesbeh Labokra Chou, which is one of his musicals. It's set entirely in a bar, and it's about these patrons that come and go. And they're singing about the situation, they're singing about living day to day, trying to make it. And then the question that it's asking is sort of, what this desperation is going to push this bar owner to do in his personal life, without giving away the ending. But you're definitely going from a bigger utopic, “these are the village ideals,” to a more gritty, realistic, not really beautiful image.Marina: I just really appreciate the context that you've given to Lebanese theatre. We've had Zeina Daccache talk about some Lebanese theatre, and Sahar Assaf, and so we've had some dips into really thinking about theatre in Lebanon from different perspectives, but I feel like you gave a really concise overview really quickly. So thank you for that. I think that's a huge benefit to all of us to get to hear.

I definitely want to head into the music direction in a minute, but I also just want to think of some of the things that you brought up about how, in your lifetimes, the context of theatre has changed, the stories, that theatre telling has changed. And I also just, I think, want to tie that into what we all bring to our art. Because we bring our identities, but you also have... You've lived in Lebanon, you're living in the States, so you're bringing all of this context with you to the art that you're making now, with MENA identities, with femme identities, with queer identities. These things all play into... Sarah, you were talking about how you've become more selective over time with roles, and that's also part of an identity that's becoming either more confident or more comfortable, or just, “I'm in my thirties, I don't want to do this anymore,” the other kinds of gigs. But I would love to talk about the ways that your identity play into the art that you're making or even the conversations that you want to have.

Sarah: Wow. While you were talking, I was like, "I don't know, maybe you and I should get together and build a course here in the US about theatre or something."

Marina: I would be the first student, promise. That would be amazing.

Sarah: Okay. I'm going to start with, I'm a bit of a rebel against identity art in a way, or the way in which the theatre is heading right now. I'm more of a committer to a good story, no matter who are the people in it. And it took me some time, arriving here, being a foreigner, existing as a foreigner in this space, having to go through visa stuff and still going through visa stuff, and expressing myself in, not a second, but a third language, and also being from this very complicated place that is so difficult to sum up. And also it's a very faraway place geographically, and people tend to be very, very ignorant about, like, "Oh, Lebanon, what is that?" And it's fine. It's fine. Like, "Okay, cool. Yeah. It's a very tiny country and two oceans and a continent away."

Right now, I'm working on producing, for example, a play by Sarah Kane. It's called, Cleansed. I'm putting it up hopefully with a... Of course, I'm going to say "hopefully." That's a very Lebanese thing to say. Inshallah.

Lama: Inshallah.

Nabra: Inshallah.

Marina: Inshallah.

Sarah: People don't get it when I say "hopefully." They're like, "What do you mean?" It's just getting a buy-in from the power up there in the sky somewhere.

Back to Cleansed. It's a very feminist... If we want to give it that label. I really have trouble with labels. But it's a story of this woman who arrives in an institution for undesirables, and there she meets the person in charge who is the biggest abuser and who allegedly killed her brother. And she's there slowly transforming into the body of her brother. And so there's that transition, and, without sticking those labels on it, it's a trans play. It's questioning power and the voices, the violent voices that we internalize, and how we relinquish our power when we believe that there's something wrong with us and seeking help and giving power, seeking help from another person and how they can abuse that power. So it's very relevant and very dark, and there's a lot of brutal moments in the play. And so that's something I'm curious about.

I recently auditioned for a very interesting role for a feature film, literally last week, written by a Lebanese American. And it's the first script that I actually read that is just taking a stab at the rich Lebanese people. And the character is raised as a princess, and her family is not respecting essentially her kind of refugee husband-to-be who is also a doctor. But she gives him an advice to assert his dominance by actually refusing to open the door or doing the things that her mother shouts at him, which I find very funny, with the undertones of Triangle of Sadness and Parasite. Those were the reference for the film. And I thought that was pretty fun, and those kinds of stories excite me. Because it's like, the one role I auditioned for before that, that Lama refused to audition for, was, it's like a rewriting of The Odyssey that was all refugee characters, and again, "The woe is me, the woe is me."

And I was like, "Okay, it's an Off-Broadway show. I'll get paid, whatever. I'll travel." I'm justifying every single reason as to why I should audition. "I'll practice acting, blah, blah, blah." And then I get there, and the casting director is white, the woman who wrote it is white, the director is white. All the four characters are not American. I don't know why. I don't know why. I don't know what... And it's fine. I'm not saying that American people can't write about non-American characters, that's not it. But it's so ignorant, and it tokenizes those characters that have turned into, in a way, archetypes, in this part. And it's boring. It's boring. I don't want to be in another war. I'm recovering. And I also don't have the emotional bandwidth to even be in a play that is about that. It does something to me, especially when it's treated in this very sincere, dumb, uncritical way, where, again, there's no story craft. It's not a universal story.

Because I can see how war is appealing as a narrative. There's a battle, and there's someone who wins, I don't know, and there's destruction. Maybe there's something appealing about that. It's exciting. We all stop to look at a car burning. But there's another kind of narrative, that... I read this beautiful essay by Ursula K. Le Guin a couple of weeks ago, about stories as carriers and the shift that we need to make from the hunter's kind of narrative, of, “And he twisted his spear into the mammoth, and the blood spurted it onto his face,” to another kind of narrative, she says, with beginnings that have no endings and stories that have more tricks than conflicts. She talks about stories as a connective endeavor, where there's no hero that saves or hunts or whatever, but it's a web that is being put together by so many different people.

Sorry, and the last thing I'm going to say on that is that I thought that the Pakistani film, Joyland by Saim Sadiq, that had many awards and I think a lot of visibility, which I'm very excited about, really achieved that beautifully. There was the father and the son and the wife and the sister-in-law, and all of their struggles and how they affected each other, and there's no protagonist. They're all creating this story together. And it was very impressive to see how that could be achieved. And that's a movie, so if people would like to...

Nabra: And Lama, I felt like a lot of things were sparking for you while Sarah was sharing. I saw you taking notes. I love it.

Lama: Oh, yeah. I have a very expressive face. I wanted to say that the whole thing that took us to Lebanese theatre was Sarah mentioning my dad, and then I completely forgot to talk about him. So basically, we were talking about Lebanese theatre and how there's a lot of self-production, or not a lot of institutional backing, support, or governmental. And I grew up in a theatremaking household because of my dad.

So my father is Faek El Homaïssi. He started out as a pantomime, but it definitely transformed into experimental theatre using pantomime, rather than the way that you would imagine it classically. He studied in France and then moved back to Lebanon. And growing up, I was behind the scenes of a lot of the plays and children's musicals that my father worked on. One of them was Kello Men El Zayba’, and many others to come. And it was a family affair. My dad would be the creator and performer. My mom's a painter in fine arts, so she would do the posters, sometimes puppets, whatever masks were required. And then my brother and I would just do ushering. Day of, we'd just be there. And then as I grew older, I got into stage makeup, and I started doing my father's face, which was really special and also kind of scary, just seeing him needing to focus in those final moments, and I'm just like, "Wait, hold on." He's like, "Please, please, I must go now."

So definitely being a father working with your teenage kid doing your makeup was an experience for him as well. But I definitely saw how every feat began and ended for every one of his productions. So I got to see a lot of the beginnings and behind the scenes of doing all that. And he was also in Bil Nesbe la Boukra Shoo by Ziad Rahbani. He was in that musical that I was talking about.

Sarah: He's amazing. And he's a long, long life educator. I studied with him, and he still teaches, I think, at the Lebanese University where I did my undergrad. But he taught, I don't know, for forty years or something.

I feel like if it were up to us, we wouldn't choose to re-experience and re-traumatize ourselves every single time we make theatre.

Lama: He's a drama professor. Yeah. Yeah, he has definitely had a long life and career in theatre and culture work in Lebanon and the Middle East in general. And I feel very, very lucky to have grown up around that and with that.

And now I wanted to also touch upon, we were talking about these intersections of identities. I feel like for me, when you're in Lebanon, everybody has gone through the same thing, and we're just all maybe expressing that in our work or speaking about things that have nothing to do with what we've experienced. And you're presenting it to an audience of predominantly other Lebanese people. And so there's a lot less of contextualizing that you have to do or educating that you have to do. And when it comes to anticipating your audience, it's a whole different ball game than it is for me here.

I noticed that after immigrating, it was something I had never really thought about, but just how much I would be affected as a writer, how much thinking I would do about, "Oh, okay." But I kind of have to take a step back, and I have to start my story a little bit behind so I can contextualize. Or I'm using a first generation Lebanese American who's kind of parachuting going to Beirut on a journey of her own to try and detangle her identity. But I feel like I only started to think about these theatric modes and methods in writing to help an American audience. I'm not saying anything... I'm just saying that maybe they're very unfamiliar with certain things, or potentially certain beliefs they have about the Middle East are either incorrect or might be true for Northern Africa, but not really for the Levantine region. So I definitely noticed that I am more mindful of my identity because I'm having to spell it out as well.

And then the way I feel is that also I've just auditioned for a lot of women in distress, a lot of parts of women who are either offstage, they appear for a little bit, they're in distress, they're not part of the main story, they're sort of just there as an instrument. The main character might be an Arab cis male, hetero, whatever, but we're just kind of part of the background. And I don't want to say that it's always intentionally harmful. I think sometimes it's a way of letting the audience member go, "Oh, have sympathy.” You should have sympathy for these women but at the same time, that kind of victim box can take away so much from femme agency, or just any kind of...

And then we talk about this in the US in the context of a Bechdel Test. It's kind of similar, but then adding also a lot to it of stereotypes about Arabs, or people just assuming that, in order for them to make Middle Eastern theatre, you don't need creatives on the inside of it. That's the side I was saying, is, you can just really tell before you even show up to the audition what kind of situation it is, because there's a certain tokenization in the language or even just the topic. I feel like if it were up to us, we wouldn't choose to re-experience and re-traumatize ourselves every single time we make theatre. But it's also an important thing to talk about. But if it's coming from a Middle Eastern creative who wants to talk about the War, it is also different than someone American who's Caucasian and wants to talk about the War.

Sarah: We don't write plays, habibti, we don't produce plays, we just write comments.

Lama: It's like, if someone wants to really empower a community, I think writing a story about what you think they're going through, even if it's based on testimonials or dramaturgy, I also question that written page, of the amount of... When there's media and there's journalism and covering anything on our side of the world, are the femme folks and queer folks being asked what it's like for them to be there? I don't think that that's the case. So I think that there's also not a lot of data that will support someone who hasn't lived our experience to be able to just write about it.

So I'm not opposed to it. I would just like to see more trust, and maybe just, I would love for the theatre industry to just also be okay with maybe my story not being defined by my circumstances. If I come up to you, and I really just want to, I don't know, write about a story that takes place in a record store, and it's, I don't know, just a simple story about a neighborhood and about a love connection and about maybe a store that's going to shut down, I would love just to be a little liberated from the expectation to always step in and represent. Because I don't trust that that role that has been spelled out necessarily represents me.

I actually feel like I am never on the page when I'm looking at an audition listing. In very few words, I'll tell you, my dad's a mime, my mom's a painter. We had that whole situation growing up, being in the theatre. I had huge rock music influence from my uncle and my brother. And when I have auditioned or presented myself to an agent or whatever, I was flat out told that, "I don't know who you are." And I'm like, "I'm telling you who I am. It just sounds really close to you,” and you're like, “That couldn't be. You're the other.'"

Because when that instance happened, I stood, and I was singing "Hands Clean" by Alanis Morissette, and whoever was there was like, "Why are you singing that?" And I was like, "Because I'm huge into pop rock. I really see myself being in Jagged Little Pill maybe. I do this and I do that." Arab is a part of my identity, but I'm not going to walk around and be like, "Cast me because I'm Arab." I think diversity is important, but I also think that you should be able to imagine me in any role, for a lot of reasons.

Marina: I love so much of what you said, and I just want to signpost a few things, of, other people get to have broad identities, but sometimes Arab identity or MENA or SWANA folks can only have that as an identity, and like, no, that's of course not true. Your identity is so capacious. So I just love that you signposted that. And also, I now want to come up with a Bechdel Test for MENA SWANA folk, because I think Nabra and I have talked about this. We're like, "Oh, there's a prayer rug on stage." Like, "No." Right? It could be true, but...

Lama: Yes, yes.

Nabra: The call to prayer has to go at least once. It's so true. And this is why we talk so much about intersectional identities and why these kinds of conversations are so important. Because there's just so much of what you've said. There's these tensions that come up with how you are presenting your own art, how other folks are seeing you, and also what you want to see as the atmosphere of theatre as a whole. Even within the MENA theatre industry, let alone the entire media industry, I see that a lot of men and cis men specifically are really driving those narratives.

But there are so many more coming up, and there are so many more femme narratives coming up. And not to mention femme narratives as well, as we're seeing in this conversation. And trying to figure out what is our way in, that holds onto our agency and doesn't put the entire conversation on our identity, which I feel like is a lot of what both of you are saying in what you've been saying here, is, your identity is a part of your art, but it isn't the part of your arts in every situation. It's not the only thing you have to say or to talk about, but it also shouldn't be ignored. And that kind of balance is the tricky conversation that we're constantly trying to suss out on this podcast.

I was going to ask what your number one top MENA queer femme theatre, arts, film, media thing should be, that people should know about and should look up and maybe is under known? What's your go-to thing, even if it's a song or if it's a play or if it's a book that you just can't get enough of?

Marina: If you don't have one, just what's your favorite thing that you're either listening to, watching, or just want people that are listening to know about? This is why I wanted to get to talk more about your musical theatre, Lama. Because I feel like those would've been things people might not know and should look up more.

Lama: I'm going to say there's a really beautiful Lebanese drag community here in New York. And I will say that to me, that is theatre. And that's just actually perfect, because that's what I wanted to add about, is, we didn't really talk too much about queer theatre. And the reality of the situation is, with Article 534 in our law in Lebanon, in our penal code criminalizing queerness basically or making it punishable if someone's caught in the act, and combining that with our censorship, with all of these more recent extremist rhetoric against queer folks, clearly, when there is queer art there, it's just in certain spaces. And it does exist, but sometimes implicit and not explicit. So it definitely exists.

There's this queer narrative that doesn't explain itself, and it doesn't make a point, and I love that… It is just a connection. It happens, and it dissipates. And I think that's beautiful, and it comes out of friendship.

Marina: What about you, Sarah?

Sarah: I was going to say that there's accidentally a queer story in our film, Stockade, which I mentioned earlier, that will premiere at Woodstock Film Festival at the end of this month. And it's about Ahlam, this Lebanese artist who's going through the whole visa shebang, and she takes this very shady job out of desperation. And then there's this queer narrative that doesn't explain itself, and it doesn't make a point, and I love that. I love that. It is just a connection. It happens, and it dissipates. And I think that's beautiful, and it comes out of friendship. Bahar Beihaghi, who's from Iran, plays that opposite me, and I insisted on... So a friend of mine actually wrote that film inspired by my own artist visa story, and he initially had a man have that role who guides my character, called Ahlam, navigate this uncharted territory of art. While Ahlam is delivering this box upstate New York... I'm not going to give anything away. But anyway, so, no spoilers. Yes. Yes, please, I hope... Or if you are a festival organizer, we'd love to have it come to you as well.

Nabra: Yes. I think that’s the biggest takeaway I feel like, is, look up Lama and Sarah’s work and follow it, and that’s going to be your femme queer MENA magic for many decades to come.

Marina: And if you're looking at the HowlRound transcript, it's all hyperlinked. So we're going to do our best to provide some easy access there as well.

Nabra: Thank you both so much, so many brilliant insights, and for sharing especially so much information and insight about Lebanese theatre, both here in the US and abroad and in Lebanon. So much juicy stuff there to continue to think about and to continue to keep up to date on. Thank you both so, so much.

Marina: Oh my gosh. I need to come to New York and just go out with you both. I have so many things that I want to follow up on. This was not enough time, so thank you.

Lama: I definitely agree, not enough time. I feel like I wish we had another hour. I could talk to you forever.

Marina: This podcast is produced as a contribution to HowlRound Theatre Commons. You can find more episodes of Kunafa and Shay and other HowlRound podcasts by searching "HowlRound" wherever you find podcasts. If you loved this podcast, please post a rating and write a review on your platform of choice. This helps other people find us. You can also find a transcript for this episode along with a lot of other progressive and disruptive content on the howlround.com website. Have an idea for an exciting podcast essay or TV event the theatre community needs to hear? Visit howlround.com and contribute your ideas to the comments.

Yalla, bye!

Nabra: Yalla, bye!