Birth of the Lebanese Theater:

Since Maroun Naccache has made known the theatre with Lebanese, and in a general way to the Arab people, for this famous day of the year 1847 when the Lebanese public saw for the first time “the Miserly one” of Molière, adapted by Naccache, bonds with the theatre started to be woven seriously and the theatrical writing continued to accompany its realization on scene in spite of the great challenges to face the such censure that it is political or social and moral.

Evolution:

 The beginning of the century sees appearing the theatre amateur through the extra-curricular activities which opened the voice with the pioneers of a more serious theatre which presented the first works on the Lebanese scene by the means of parts of the international theatre (mainly French traditional parts and those of Shakespeare.) The Forties saw a remarkable blooming of the Lebanese theatre which considerably grew rich in particular by the translation and the adaptation by foreign parts and this, until the Sixties. This theatre of course opened with the Western theatrical tendencies (Stanislavski, Grotovski, Meyerhold) in faculties of the fine arts which the pioneers of the theatre of the Sixties created. During this period, Lebanon lived one time of expansion as well economic as cultural. It largely contributed to the rise of the theatre which became the favorite leisure of the Lebanese public which had also opened with the new wave of poetic and romantic art. However, the year 1967 is remembered by a great turn of the Lebanese theatre in its expression and its contents at the time of the conflict Israélo-Arab. Rising generation had a new approach, another reality and the theatrical language in was the interpreter. From there were born from new illustrated tendencies as example by the parts of Issan Mahfouz or the adaptations of the parts of Brecht, put in scene by Jalal khoury. At the beginning of the Seventies, Nidal el Achkar and Roger Assaf melt the workshop of Beirut which will put on scene at its manner reality of the time. One also owes in Roger Assaf the works presented by the troop of Hakawati (the storyteller), new more popular form of the theatrical art. The blooming of the success continues, under the protection of the cultural elite until the release of the civil war in 1975. The infrastructure of the success is then destroyed but the success still resists and always and one sees to rise that and there, of under the ruins, remarkable works like those of Roger Assaf Raymond Gebara, Ziad el Rahbani, Antoine Moultaka, Chekib Khoury, Yaacoub Chedrawi… Today still, the Lebanese theatre fights to find its force and its dynamism. Pioneers and young directors cooperate to give the day to a theatre of quality allowing the expression of the hopes and the ambitions of a whole people. This theatre accurately reflects the aspects of the company such as unemployment, the difficulties of access to the medical care, with schooling, the bitterness and disappointment vis-a-vis the fainding of the “Lebanese dream” as well as the economic crisis which strikes since so a long time. The men of the Lebanese theatre of today live their passion convinced of the dominating role of the theatre in its setting in light of the truth political, economic, cultural or social.