Beirut's theater stage refuses to go dark

There is a powerful defiance about celebrating World Theater Day in Lebanon right now. The country is bruised, stretched thin, running on fumes and memory. And yet, somewhere on a Beirut stage tonight, the curtain will rise.

"Now we can't really celebrate anything," admits Josyane Boulos, the woman behind Le Monnot, widely considered Lebanon's foremost theatre. "These days it's really hard." She pauses, then continues with the measured conviction of someone who has seen harder days and kept going anyway. "But theatre is something we have to talk about, we have to express."

As old as humanity itself

For Boulos, theater is an art form that has always lived inside crisis. That is, in fact, its point.

"If you read Shakespeare's stories today, you'll see that nothing has really changed in the world," she says. "We humans are still the same." It is precisely that timelessness, the idea that the stage has always been humanity's mirror, that makes World Theater Day feel necessary rather than ceremonial.

Lebanese theater has had plenty of opportunity to hone that particular kind of resilience. It has survived civil war, assassination, economic collapse, and along, grinding uncertainty. Each time, it found a way back to its feet. "The will of the actor and the director," Boulos says, when asked what keeps it alive. "Nothing else. Their passion for it. Because in the end, we can't live without it."

Lebanese theater receives almost no institutional financial support. Productions are mounted on shoestring budgets. The infrastructure that sustains theatre industries elsewhere, state funding, corporate sponsorship, stable venues, is largely absent here. "If there wasn't passion, we would have stopped long ago," she says plainly. "Whoever makes theatre knows they can't live without it."

Quality up, resources down

What makes the Lebanese theater scene quietly remarkable is that it has not merely survived, it has, in certain measurable ways, grown.

"Qualitatively, theater has progressed a lot," Boulos says.

The quality of acting, writing, and directing has advanced greatly, especially compared to other Arab countries.

She attributes part of this to history, to the accumulated knowledge passed down through generations of practitioners, and part to the pressure of circumstance. When you cannot rely on lavish production values, the writing and the performance have to carry everything.

The paradox she describes is a sharp one: "In terms of work, scripts, and creativity, there's definitely progress. But in terms of resources, it has declined a lot."

A theater for everyone

When Boulos took over Le Monnot in 2022, she arrived with a clear intention: to tear down the invisible walls that had kept Lebanese theatre feeling distant from the people it was supposed to serve.

"I wanted the theater to be for everyone, not just a certain class of Lebanese society," she says.

Previously, theater in Lebanon was distant, not connected to society, people didn't go. Now we've brought it closer to the community.

That mission has taken on a literal dimension. Le Monnot has introduced wheelchair access, audio description for visually impaired audiences, and subtitles. The theater is working toward accommodating audiences with autism and other sensory needs, adjusting lighting and sound on dedicated evenings.

"Anyone, regardless of disability, language, or background, should have access," she says. "We hope to become fully inclusive in the future."

Beirut on the international stage

Under her direction, Le Monnot has also pursued an ambitious program of international exchange, Lebanese productions touring abroad, foreign works coming to Beirut, insisting that Lebanese theatre belongs in the global conversation.

On the international side, Lebanese productions have carried Beirut's stories to stages far beyond its borders. “Bilad Al Hamra” and “Ghammed een Fatteh een” are among the works that have toured internationally, bringing Lebanese voices, narratives, and theatrical sensibilities to foreign audiences who might otherwise never encounter them.

The exchange runs in both directions. Foreign productions have also found a home at Le Monnot, including works by directors.

I’ve also personally produced French plays at Le Monnot over the past four years; several French productions have been staged there. And we’re constantly working on collaborations and workshops with London’s Royal Court Theatre.

If Beirut were a play

The interview ends with an invitation: if Beirut were a play today, what story would it be telling?

"It would start as Hamlet," she says, "and can go on into Romeo and Juliet, since we are continuously killing ourselves in this country."

It is the kind of line that lands like a stage direction for a nation: dark, precise, and achingly true. Hamlet for the paralysis, the betrayal, the rotten state of things. Romeo and Juliet for the self-inflicted wounds, the feuds older than reason, the tragedy that didn't have to happen.

And yet Josyane Boulos is still here, still raising the curtain. Because that, too, is what theater does, it names the wound and then refuses to let the audience look away. On World Theater Day, from a Beirut that keeps writing its own tragedy, the show goes on.