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…
Tiësto in Beirut
Saturday the 1st October of 2005, Tiësto played at the “Forum de Beyrouth” in Lebanon. 14 000 clubbers (I was there!) came from all over the Middle East to watch the event. Tiësto has been ranked the #1 DJ in the world for three years in a row by DJ Mag. He also is the only DJ to ever have played at the Olympic Games opening ceremony, Athens 2004, in front of a crowd of 70 000 people and nearly 4 billions viewers worldwide.
The stage was warmed up by DJ Mad Jam followed by DJ Amadeus for nearly 4 hours before the man himself, Tiësto, entered the stage at 1:00 am. He mixed “Adagio for Strings”, “Just be”, “Traffic” as well as other hits and on-the-moment mixes. He was really good, for once I was really surprised by how good this DJ could mix, good thing he didn’t cancel his trip because of the recent events in the country. Some fireworks and 14 dancers - too bad no belly dancers!! - were also part of the show; well nothing too exceptional but it was ok though.
I found a nice place just facing the stage, not TOO crowded thank god. Nice thought of going to the concert – I really enjoyed it – and Tiësto will not probably be back in Lebanon for a decade or so.
Concert notes:
- Tickets were priced $35 for regular (facing the stage), $70 for VIP (you get a chair to sit your ass on it) and $125 for VVIP (some extra drinks). Lots of people had fake tickets, so they got stuck at the entrance.
- The “Forum de Beyrouth”, faithful to its reputation of disgusting location, became a huge garbage dump minutes after everyone started getting drinks, there wasn’t a single dust bin in the whole area – not a good image of the organization. On top of it all, the heat reached 50º C.
- DJ Mad Jam really performed well, he should have his own world tour. Quoted: “My washing machine is not working, someone fucked my washing machine”.
You should check Tiësto’s Official Web Site for a schedule of his upcoming worldwide concerts.
