The Play’s The Thing: Political Turmoil and Theater of The Oppressed in Lebanon
So long as there have been governments, there have been protests. So long as there have been protests, there has been protest art. Though fads and fashions may die, change, and may sometimes be revived, protest art remains some of the most enduring work in all of humankind’s artistic canon. One of the most inspiring forms of such art originates in Brazil and is practiced all over the world today.
The 1950s in Brazil were rife with socio-economic change and political reform. The financial surplus from World War II was depleted, and government officials were seeking new methods of economic stimulation. Getulio Vargas resumed the Office of President in 1951, after being overthrown in 1945. His new regime’s agenda was set to mark a new era of social reform that focused specifically on industrialization. His ideas were based on the theories hypothesized by Raul Prebish and the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLA). The policies that were enacted simultaneously ostracized the agricultural sector and produced a new, urban, working class.
Witness to the birth of this inevitable class struggle was a playwright and member of the Teatro Arena Theater Company, Augusto Boal. He concocted a new performance style he dubbed “Theater of the Oppressed”. Boal sought to both establish a new identity in Brazil’s theater community that was separate from its European roots, and offer a new means for workers and poor people to represent themselves. Stylistically, Theater of the Oppressed draws artistic inspiration exclusively from the relevant politics of the day and lends the stage to the people and communities who are victimized by those events. In short, it is the audiences of injustice who are given a voice through performance. In the most literal sense, the actors’ lived experiences become living works of art. The fifteen years of Boal’s dedication to and development of Theater of the Oppressed have left an incredibly profound impression on the international theater scene. Eventually, that impression found its way to Lebanon after its citizens persevered through relentless upheaval and political unrest in the span of three years.
Since 2019, Lebanon has suffered a series of tragedies, each to devastating proportions. The first trial in this sequence of tribulations was a multifaceted economic decline that began three years ago, just before the initial emergence of the COVID -19 virus. According to The World Bank, Lebanon is still experiencing one of the worst economic crises in recent history. Its GDP has fallen a staggering $34.5 billion USD, and its GDP per capita has plummeted by roughly 37.1 percent. Moreover, the value of the lira, the Lebanese national currency, continues to deplete. A recent estimate values one Lebanese Lira at roughly seven ten thousandths of a U.S. dollars. As of September 2021, the average rate of inflation in Lebanon hovers at around 144.12 percent. Meanwhile, unemployment rates are rising, and banks have adopted several capital control policies that include an end to the distribution of loans, and a segmented pay system that filters out old currency from the new.
In the midst of this economic crisis, on August 4, 2020, two massive explosions caused a warehouse fire in Beirut that obliterated the city’s ports. The chaos that ensued destroyed 300,000 homes, injured 6,500 people and killed 200 others. While the cause of the explosions remains unknown at the time of this writing, many Lebanese citizens believe that their government is hiding evidence and obstructing the judicial process from revealing who was behind the violence. This tension and paranoia erupted into what is now referred to as the Tayouneh Clashes the following year.
According to the New York Times, the Tayouneh Clashes were originally orchestrated as protests by two competing Shiite Muslim Parties, Hezbollah and the Amal Movement. Both militant factions demanded that the judge who presided over the port bombing investigation, Tarek Bitar, was stripped of his title and duties. October 14, 2021, began with a political demonstration, but after nearby snipers began targeting people in the crowd, a wave of chaos swept across Lebanon’s capital city. The violence migrated rapidly to a neighborhood home to the Lebanese Forces, a Christian political party at odds with Hezbollah. After four hours, the Lebanese Army entered Beirut. In total, six people were killed, and twenty five were wounded.
In response to the hysteria, political polarization, and the repeated annihilation of citizens, land, and political institutions alike, a new play entitled Taarafou or, Get To Know Each Other emerged in 2022 as part of Lebanon’s proud tradition of practicing Theater of the Oppressed. Written by Lebanese poet and playwright Yehia Jaber, the show was produced by a nonprofit organization called MARCH Lebanon, which seeks to promote art to fight for positive, inclusive social change.
True to the style pioneered by Augusto Boal almost 70 years ago, Jaber wrote a play wholly informed by each individual actor's lived experience, none of whom had acted before. The show is performed by people mostly in their twenties who recite and reenact their experiences of racial prejudice, sectarianism, and forging a sense of self in the greater Beirut area. In an interview from L’Orient-Le Jour, one of the actors, Mohammad, a 21-year-old Sunni from Tarik el-Jdideh, recounts growing up and being taught that Christians were alcoholics. Elias, on the other hand, is the only Christian in the cast. But the two of them, after having worked on this show, have forged a friendship off stage by writing one for themselves on stage. Some of the other stories follow a Sunni man who was raised in an orphanage without knowing his real identity, a Druze man who was bullied for being poor, and a young man who was harassed because his mother was from Liberia.
MARCH Lebanon posted on its Facebook page that the play has become so successful it’s now extending its run for a third time. The play has been dubbed by theatergoers as a “community comedy”, and it regularly is performed before a full house. The venue in which the play is being performed is called The Sunflower Theater: an appropriately poetic name given the theater’s geographical location right at the site of the Tayouneh Clashes a year prior. Taarafou and MARCH Lebanon are demonstrating with every performance that from the soil of destruction can sprout the seeds of beauty, creativity, and understanding. Upon the grounds of extraordinary wreckage, even if only for an evening, hope will prevail. Not just in Lebanon, but wherever hate and injustice might dare to reign. For so long as there is art, there will be hope.
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