“Where Can I Find Someone Like You, Ali?”: For one night only!
In collaboration with the Department of Communication Arts, “Where Can I Find Someone Like You, Ali?” will be performed in Gulbenkian Theatre, LAU Beirut Campus on Tuesday March 24, 2015 at 7 pm sharp.
Entrance is free of charge.
Seat reservation via email only at weinali2015@gmail.com (we will confirm by a returning email.)
Ali Taha. Hijacker of Sabena Flight Sabena Flight 571 in 1972.
Ali is a father, a husband and a brother. He departed and his womenfolk were left to continue his life for him and to continue theirs through him.
The Martyr’s Wife. The Martyr’s Daughter. The Martyr’s Sister… Heroic roles that were assigned to these women without them requesting it. A beautiful woman widowed at the age of twenty-seven, four young daughters, the eldest only 7 years old… Suheila, Ali Taha’s sister, who went looking for Kissinger with a single request: to retrieve the body of her brother the Fidāʾī so she could bury him after two long years in the morgue.
Raeda Taha, the author of the play, and Ali’s eldest daughter, opens the family’s intimate archives to shatter the halo of The Martyr and its stereotype, stripping it of the myths of heroism. In the process, and in painful candor, she faces the reality of being an orphan, of loss, and of the absence of a father who can never be replaced, not even by Yasser Arafat himself.
Thus does Raeda go on stage to hold Ali accountable? She strips him and herself bare, speaking in her own voice, that of her mother, and of her aunt. She turns the women into real-life heroines, albeit unknowns, and turns Ali Taha the Martyr-Hero… into a father, a mere father.
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Where Can I Find Someone Like You Ali?”
Written and performed by Raeda Taha
Directed by Lina Abyad
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Set Designer: Hana Fakhouri
Costume Designer: Mohamad Saffieddine
Light Designer: Fuad Halwani
Poster Designer: Dounia Alexandra Nassar
Visuals: Noura Andrea Nassar & Julien Hassan Chehouri
Technical Director and Light Operator: Sari Chrayteh
Stage Manager and Sound Operator: Khalil Kadiri
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