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Raphael Khouri | |
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Raphael Khouri (previously Amahl Raphael Khouri) Is a Jordanian queer, transgender documentary playwright, journalist, activist, and theatre artist. [1]
Khouri was born in the United States, but moved to Saudi Arabia, and lived his teenage years in Jordan. [2] Khouri earned his bachelor's degree (BA) in Communications from the Lebanese American University in Beirut, Lebanon. [3]
Khouri started his career as a journalist but was introduced to documentary theatre through a festival in Alexandria, Egypt.
Before becoming a documentary playwright, Khouri was an apprentice to a prominent stage director in Lebanon and intended to become a director himself. After finding difficulty entering the directing world, Khouri turned to working as a journalist while he set out to write his own play. Taking inspiration form Antonin Artaud (among other theorists), Khouri decided to explore writing within the documentary theatre genre. [2]
Khouri has also been commissioned to write new work for the Outburst Queer Arts Festival in Belfast (features in 2019 and 2020), and he will appear in the upcoming International Queer Drama anthology published by Neofelis Verlag, and the Methuen Anthology of Trans Plays. [4]
First performed at the Politik im Freien Theatre Festival in 2018.
First performed in Beirut in 2014, No Matter Where I Go is a play that explores how queer people navigate public spaces and how their identity is constantly questioned within these spaces. Khouri explains that the Lebanese media is profit-oriented and often misrepresented homosexuality and queerness. No Matter Where I Go actively fights against stigmatization by elevating narratives that disrupted the hegemony portrayed in Lebanese media.
This was the first queer Arab performance of its kind. Though some Arab plays had some gay content, this was the first work that went out of its way to be queer. This text was performed as pot of “Bodies in Public” a conference on bodies in Beirut. [5] It is published in the anthology, Global Queer Plays. [6]
This work was created for Climate Change Theatre Action. Khouri describes this play as an elegy to all the fish that have been killed due to climate change. Khouri stated, "That’s what happened to the tuna, they loved it so much that they’ve killed it.” [7]
Nouhad Wadie Haddad, known as Fairuz, is a Lebanese singer. She is widely considered an iconic vocalist and one of the most celebrated singers in the history of the Arab world. She is popularly known as "The Bird of The East", "The Cedar of Lebanon", "The Moon's Neighbor", and "The Voice of Lebanon", among others.
Lucien Bourjeily is an Emmy-nominated writer and director of both theater and film. His work has traveled the worldwide festival circuits and won him many awards of which the 2017 Dubai International Film Festival Jury Prize. He brought his progressive approach to theatre to London's LIFT Festival in 2012 with his hard-hitting immersive play "66 Minutes in Damascus" which was chosen as one of 10 plays in the world that "rethink the stage" by the Huffington Post.
The cinema of Lebanon, according to film critic and historian Roy Armes, is the only other cinema in the Arabic-speaking region, beside Egypt's, that could amount to a national cinema. Cinema in Lebanon has been in existence since the 1920s, and the country has produced more than 500 films.
Omar Naim is a Lebanese film director and screenwriter best known for writing and directing the 2004 film The Final Cut.
Forbidden Lie$ is an Australian documentary released in September 2007. It was directed by Anna Broinowski.
Jean G. Daoud is the founder of the "Holistic Method" in actor training and "Play art and Creativity Therapy". he is a philosopher, poet, playwright, professor and researcher in acting, stage production and art therapy. He holds a degree in Cinema and Theatre Studies from University of Paris VIII, and is Professor of Drama and directing and Department Head of Theatre at the Lebanese University. He is an expert in "Creative Pedagogy" and Therapy through actor training. He is the founder of the Laboratoire de dramaturgie, d'actorat et de textes. He is the Secretary-general of "Beirut's Congress of Theater".
Rami George Khouri is a Jordanian-American journalist and editor with Palestinian background. He was born in New York City to an Arab Palestinian Christian family. His father, George Khouri, a Nazarene journalist in what was the British mandate of Palestine, had traveled with his wife to New York in 1947 to cover the United Nations (UN) debates about the future of Palestine. His family resides in Beirut, Amman, and Nazareth. He is also a public speaker. After attending secondary school at the International School of Geneva in Switzerland, Rami Khouri returned to the US to complete his education. Khouri has served for many years as the chief umpire for Little League Baseball in Jordan.
Theatre in Lebanon has its origin in passion plays. The musical plays of Maroun Naccache from the mid-1800s are considered the birth of modern Arab theatre. Some scholars, such as Abdulatif Shararah, have divided Lebanese theatre into three historical phases centered on 1) translations of European plays, 2) Arab nationalism, and 3) realism.
Experimental theatre in the Arab world emerged in the post-colonial era as a fusion of Western theatrical traditions with local performance cultures such as music and dance. It is characterized by hybridity as it transposes Arabic traditional performances that were usually seen in public squares and marketplaces to theatre buildings. Experimental theatre in the Arab world has historically taken forms of Forum theatre by using audience participation as a way to smooth conflicts and resolve social tension. The audience is then transformed from a commonly passive into a proactive and involved one. It has been seen as a form of theatre of resistance and cultural activism as it deals with contemporary sensitive issues of the region such as the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the Arab Spring, the role of women in Arabic society and religion. Such issues are often dealt with using humour. Throughout the years, experimental theatre in the Arab world has gradually converted into a synonymous of non-mainstream and underground art movements in which artists are always evolving and breaking down conventional markers between actors and spectators. The script combines the appropriation and dis-appropriation of Western models and is usually organic, more improvisational and self-reflexive. In the late 2000s, improvisational theatre which takes forms of stand-up comedy shows has also emerged around the Arab world.
A growing number of film festivals are held in the Arab world to showcase films from the region as well as international standouts. In addition, institutions and organizations in other parts of the world are increasingly honoring the new generation of filmmakers in the Arab world with Arab film festivals.
Jordan Tannahill is a Canadian author, playwright, filmmaker, and theatre director.
Amjad Nasser, known with the pseudonym of Yahya Numeiri al-Naimat, was a London-based Jordanian writer, journalist and poet and one of the pioneers of modern Arabic poetry and Arabic prose poem.
Eliane Raheb is a documentary filmmaker and director from Lebanon. She made her debut as a director with her 2012 film, Layali Bala Noom. Her latest film is Miguel's War from 2021. That film received the Teddy Award for best LGBTW film at the 2021 Berlin International Film Festival.
Issam Abdel-Masih Mahfouz was a Lebanese playwright, poet, journalist, author, translator, and critic. His literary works include dozens of books on politics, culture, and theater, as well as “dialogues” - imagined exchanges with historical figures. During his lifetime he was also well known as a Professor of Dramatic Arts at the Lebanese University and for his writing in the Lebanese newspaper al-Nahār, particularly its culture section.
Liwaa Yazji, alternative spelling Liwaa Yazaji, is a Syrian filmmaker, playwright, TV screenwriter, dramaturge and poet. Her works, written in Arabic, have been translated into English and presented in the United Kingdom, the US and, in original Arabic versions, in Arab states.
Alexandre Paulikevitch is a Lebanese artist living in Beirut, Lebanon. He is one of very few male Arab belly dancers, and is known for his thought provoking work and the social issues he tackles through his art. He studied at the University of Paris VIII majoring in Theater and Dance.
Rasha Salti is a researcher, writer, producer, and curator of art and film. She lives and works between Beirut and Berlin. Salti co-curated many film programs at public institutions, including ArteEast, Lincoln Center and Museum of Modern Art in New York, and collaborated with film festivals as a programmer, such as the Abu Dhabi International Film Festival and Toronto International Film Festival. Since 2017, she is the commissioning editor for La Lucarne at ArteFrance, a program dedicated to Auteur documentaries. Her curatorial projects were exhibited at numerous international public institutions, including Barcelona Museum of Contemporary Art, Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin, Museo de la Solidaridad Salvador Allende in Santiago de Chile, the Sursock Museum in Beirut.
This Arab Is Queer: An Anthology by LGBTQ+ Arab Writers is a 2022 LGBTQ+ anthology featuring the memoirs of eighteen queer Arab writers, hailing from eleven Arab countries and the diaspora, some of whom are internationally bestselling while others use pseudonyms. The book is edited by Elias Jahshan, and was the finalist in the 2023 Lambda Literary Awards and Bread and Roses Award. This Arab Is Queer received critical acclaim for its portrayal of queer Arab experiences, with Time magazine calling it a "groundbreaking work".
Betty Taoutel is a Lebanese actress, born in Beirut, playwright, and director in the theatre, on film, and in television.
