The Segal Centre’s recently held an event on contemporary theatre in Lebanon. The centre has previously showcased readings of plays by Arab dramatists Rama Haydar and Bashar Murkus. On the 17th of October, to celebrate a new exchange partnership with the Theatre Initiative at the American University of Beirut (AUB), the Segal Centre invited Sahar Assaf, Assistant Professor of Theatre at AUB, to speak on theatre in Lebanon today.
This was followed by a reading of some excerpts from No Demand No Supply, written by Assaf and produced by Joy Sarah Arab.
Here’s more on No Demand No Supply:
The performance was based on interviews with Syrian women and delivered a reading of Lebanon’s 2016 sex trafficking scandal, capturing the harrowing ordeal of the survivors of the Chez Maurice “torture chambers” where a group of Syrian women were trafficked and tricked into prostitution.
And here is a report on CNN Arabic on how this play “shook” Lebanon with the realities of sex trafficking. The article includes an interview with Assaf on the importance of this play at this time.
More on the performance of this play :
The lecture performance is unapologetically by women, about women, and told from women’s perspective. This powerful and moving performance left us angry, motivated to fight for justice, and hopefully will trigger national, regional, and global conversations around the most lucrative business in modern day history.
The event at the Segal Centre concludes with “a panel with Assaf, Marvin Carlson, Peter Eckersall and others that touched on questions of Arab theatre, political theatre, dramaturgy and the contributions of women artists, among other topics.”
You can watch the event here:
Arab Hyphen 