In addition to producing a varied repertory of quality productions, Tahweel organizes workshops in theatre in Beirut and elsewhere for the purpose of creating new productions and offering instruction in and development of skills in theatre making. One of Tahweel’s main goals is to promote theatre from and about Lebanon and the Levant, in Arabic, English, and other languages, in the rest of the world. Tahweel also:
- Stages productions of important contemporary works from the Arab world in Arabic, English and other languages.
- Creates and presents new productions that can be staged in a variety of national and international venues after their initial presentations.
- Promotes cultural exchanges through the translation, production and international presentation of English-language versions of plays originally written in Arabic and of the translation and production of plays originally written in non-Arabic languages into Arabic.
- Provides institutional structure and explores methodologies for successful theatrical development within a supportive ensemble environment
MEMBERS OF THE ENSEMBLE
Sahar Assaf is a theatre actress and director and an Assistant Professor of Theatre at the American University of Beirut. She directed the world premiere of the English-language version of Sa’dallah Wannous’ The Rape at Irwin Theatre in Beirut in March 2015. She also directed the site-specific performance Watch Your Step, praised by The Daily Star as “one of the most fascinating and least comfortable performances to take place in Beirut in recent years.” In 2013, she directed Wannous’ Rituals of Signs and Transformations at Babel Theater in Beirut and also directed a staged reading of it at Silk Road Rising in Chicago in March 2014. She is a member at the North American Drama Therapy Association and a member of Lincoln Center Director’s Lab. Raffi Feghali is an actor, percussionist, theater sound designer, and a peace-builder. In the last 15 years, he has performed with Sahar Assaf, Nidal Al-Achkar, Nagy Souraty, Arkadiusz Zietek and others in pieces in Lebanon, Germany, Italy, France, the Netherlands, Bahrain, Jordan, Syria, Egypt, and Libya. Recent roles include Mohammad and Sa’dallah Wannous in The Rape, directed by Sahar Assaf. For the last five years, he has also been involved in improvisational theater as a co-founder of Laban–Live Lactic Culture. He is an MA candidate in Expressive Arts Conflict Transformation and Peacebuilding at the European Graduate School in Saas Fee, Switzerland. Sany Abdul Baki was classically trained as an actor at the Royal Central School of Speech & Drama (University of London). He teaches drama at the Lebanese American University and gives workshops on nonviolence and civic education in Amman, Jordan. His recent acting credits include The Rape and Rituals of Signs and Transformations, by Sa’dallah Wannous both directed by Sahar Assaf, and Watch Your Step, also directed by Sahar Assaf; Chekhov’s Tree Sisters/Swan Song directed by Ben Naylor and Jenny Ogilvie; and All’s Well That Ends Well directed by Geoffrey Hyland. Robert Myers (www.robert-myers.com) is the author of over fifteen plays, including Atwater: Fixin’ to Die, The Lynching of Leo Frank, Dead of Night: The Execution of Fred Hampton, and Mesopotamia, about Gertrude Bell and the founding of Iraq, which was presented at Yale with Kathleen Chalfant in 2012 when he was the Franke Visiting Scholar at the Whitney Humanities Center. Other recent works include Twilight Country, presented at the Pittsburgh Humanities Festival in 2015, and Unmanned, a stage play about drone pilots that was adapted for the radio as Drone Pilots, and was broadcast on the BBC in 2013. He and Nada Saab have also translated and adapted four plays from Arabic into English, including The Rape and Rituals of Signs and Transformations, both of which he produced in Beirut. He is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at the American University of Beirut and the former director of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Bin Abdulaziz Alsaud Center for American Studies (CASAR). Current projects include the translation and editing of two books of contemporary plays from the Arab world with Nada Saab. TAHWEEL
Tahweel Ensemble Theatre takes its name from the Arabic word for “transformation.” The members of Tahweel are committed not only to an ongoing process of positive personal and artistic transformation in all the Ensemble’s projects, we are also committed to using theater as a tool for edifying and enlightening audiences in the Middle East and elsewhere in the world.
