A Woman’s Secret Life
Arabic Title: حياة المرأة السرية
Dealing with a women’s sexuality, this play in Arabic is some piece of work. Extraordinary by both its uniqueness and its full exposure of a subject for a long time considered taboo in Lebanon. Produced and directed by local theater figure and A.U.B. academic scholar Sherif Abdennour, the play features as actors and production none but high school and university students.
Five actresses actually, all women, who discuss 75 min long the secret sexual life they lead, with a humoristic tone, assessing a society governed by myths and religious prohibitions; where a woman’s decency is measured by silicon, botox and XXL bras and man’s virility by Armani clothing. Men, classified by stereotype models, have a big part of humiliation in the piece.
According to some information circulating around the theatre, the producer had to cancel a major part of the script, which included a scene featuring a woman masturbating – a word that turns out not to have an equivalent in the Arabic language - on stage, following censorship by the ministry of information. Still, women who started well dressed at first end up half naked just a moment later.
Against any predictions, the piece was very well welcomed by the public, the theatre showed full three successive nights. An issue that caused the production to add two additional representations in order to satisfy the people demand. The play obviously seems to be inspired by well-know French play “Les Monologues du Vagin” which faced a tremendous success in France and Europe in the past years.
A Women’s Secret Life marks the rise of Lebanese acting to a new level, a level where limits are pushed an inch forward in the face of censorship and taboo subjects, and a level where small productions with bright ideas can prove successful…