A scene from the play Film Amerki Tawil presented in 1980 at the Piccadilly Theatre in Beirut. (Photo archives L'Orient-Le Jour/Montage by Jaimee Lee Haddad)
Beirut, 1980. As Lebanon sunk into civil war, a show emerged on the theatrical scene like an electric shock: Film Amerki Tawil, a sharp work by Ziad Rahbani. Between absurd tragedy and political comedy, this play remains, more than 40 years later, one of the finest dissections of the Lebanese soul. And its echo, far from fading, continues to resonate in contemporary chaos.The title itself, Film Amerki Tawil, is a biting irony. It evokes a Hollywood action movie while we witness a tableau of Lebanese paralysis. Rahbani subverts the heroic imagination to reveal bureaucratic pettiness, administrative absurdity, and the emptiness of the elites.For Marianne Noujaime, associate professor in theater studies at Saint Joseph University in Beirut, the title itself serves as a key to interpretation: “Attributing the 'grand conspiracy' of...
Beirut, 1980. As Lebanon sunk into civil war, a show emerged on the theatrical scene like an electric shock: Film Amerki Tawil, a sharp work by Ziad Rahbani. Between absurd tragedy and political comedy, this play remains, more than 40 years later, one of the finest dissections of the Lebanese soul. And its echo, far from fading, continues to resonate in contemporary chaos.The title itself, Film Amerki Tawil, is a biting irony. It evokes a Hollywood action movie while we witness a tableau of Lebanese paralysis. Rahbani subverts the heroic imagination to reveal bureaucratic pettiness, administrative absurdity, and the emptiness of the elites.For Marianne Noujaime, associate professor in theater studies at Saint Joseph University in Beirut, the title itself serves as a key to interpretation: “Attributing the 'grand conspiracy'...
