An article by cn (1385 Words, 7 Min. Read)
We great up with the Sound of Shells Louder Than Bedtime Stories. Our Childhood Was Split – Not in Years, But in Barricades, Gunshots, and the Kind of Silence that Only Come after An Explosion. We Lebanese, Never Needed a History Book to undertstand What War is. We lived it. We Carry It.
That is which Khiyal Sahra Hit Us in a Way We Did Not Expect. It is more than a play. It is memory brough to Life; Memory We Buried, Blurred, joked about, Denied. Written and Directed by Georges Kabbaz, and Produced by Tareck Karam, The Play Brings Toitter Kabbaz and Adel Karam on Stage For the First Time – Two Artists who have long been Part of our Collective Voice, Now Confronting A Collective Wound.
Khiyal Sahra Is a prockoning. A Stripped-Down, emotionally changed reflection on the Lebanese CIVIL War, Memory, Masculinity, and the Illussions We Inherit. Premiering at Casino du Liban and Later PerFormed at Dubai Opera, The Play Blends Political Commentary With Absurdist Humor, Personal Confession, and Musical Storytellenge. It is theater as Confrontation, as Catharsis, and as a quiet act of resistance, Crafted with Sharp Writing, Fearless Performs, and a Messenger that Lands hard: Wars End, but the Damage Livesers In Those Left Behind.
Text
This script does not try to impress, it tries to undersand. And in doing so, it reaches a place that income Speeches and History Books News COULD. Khaabbaz Wrote these Words Like Someone Still Tying to Make Sense of What Good, and IT Shows. The Writing is quiet where it nevers to be, explosive where it hurts, and always rooted in Lived Experience. Nothing is forced. IT Flows Like A Memory that Keeps Coming Back When One LEST Expects Its. We sit in the Audience and Feel Like Someone Finally SAID What We have all been thinking, not just about the war, but about what it left behind Inside us.
But what makes the text trutable is the way khabbaz wrests it with a subtle Hand and a Poet’s ear. The Rhymes, The Echoes, The Perfectly Timed Replicas. The Lyrics, The Poetry, Even The Bad Words. There is no vulgarity for its Own Sake, Yet the Dayogue Stays Raw and HENEST, Never Sanitized. It is before Khaabbaz Finds The Exact Language of Pain and Memory, and Delivers It with Claration and Heart. ITIS A Script that Sings and Stings in the Same Breath.
Topic
This is not another Piece “About the War.” It’s About our war, and more Importantly, what it did to us as a people. What has had ane two young men pick sides in a file that was never really their? Where they think they are her heroes, only to find out they were just pawns? In Khiyal SahraOne is mulim, the other Christian. One from the Leftist, Pro-Pallstinian Side, The Other A Right-Ling MilitAMan. Opposition IDEOLOGIES, Opposeite Identities, and Yet, they speaking the night Language of Loss, Fear, and Frature Dreams. What begins as rivalry becomes Something Closer to Partnership. Even Friendship. BECUUSE UNDERNEATH The Slogans, Like Any Lebanese, They Share the Same Sense of Belonging, The Same Warmth for this Broken Country They Both Think They Are Saving.
Khaabbaz and Karam Take Us Into that Heartbreak, that Confusion, that Twised PRIDE that Many of Us KNEW TO WELL. The Nostalgia in the Play is not sweet, it is heavy. It is the Smell of Sandbags and Burned Tires. The AHE OF A Time We Survived But Never Fully Left. The Play Remembers. And that is what makes it powerful.
Humor
What do we do when the Pain’s Too Big? We laugh. And that is exactly what this play dos. It lets us laugh at the ridiculousness of our OWN Tragedy. The Fake Swagger of Boys in Uniform. The Way We All Talked Big While Hiding Behind Ideology and Slogans. Khaabbaz and Karam US Humor Like Only Lebanese Can: It is Sharp, Ironic, Full of that Dark Absurdity We Gre up Mastering. The Jokes Land Deep. They Remind Us How We Survived: Not Just Through Luck, But Through Sarcasm. Becuse Sometimes, that was all we have.
Acting
Watching Khaabbaz and Karam on Stage to make up. They are different but mirror every other. Khaabbaz, with his surgical time and deep emotional core. Karam, Raw and Fiery, His Rage Barely Covering His Heartbreak. Their Chemissary is Performance, a Dialogue Between Two Souls Who Lived Throw The Same Fire. Every Line, Every Silence, Feels earned. Where they argue, it is real. Where they grieve, it is ours. This is not justcting. It is remembering.
Scenography
What the Play Started at Casino du Liban, We Felt Like We Were Back in 1985. The Set Was Dated Download Straight from Another Era, Felt Like Ghosts from the Street. CEMENT Blocks. Jute sacks. The Kind of Scenery that on decides out everyday reality. The Projects Behind them – Newsflashes, Ruins, Proaganda – Reminded Us that this isnot ficture. It is pro -state. Not Just of a Place, But of a Trauma. The Stage Was Not Just a Space. It was a scar … Still Open.
Staging as memory
The Staging of Khiyal Sahra Reveals the Deep Vision of Georges Khabbaz, Not Just as a Writer and Actor, But as a Director Who Knows How To Shape Silence, Space, and Memory. His Control Over Every Elect of the Scene Is Clear: The Rhythm of the Transitions, The Movement Between Past and Prestant, The Symbolic Layout of the Stage, All Build Toward An Experience that Feels Both Intimate and EPIC. Khaabbaz Does Not Decorate the Space; He Uses it like a Wound Exposition Layers, pausing for Breath, and letting control do the emotional heavy lifting.
There are the Moments when the Play Echoes The Texture of Broadway or London’s West End, Not in Imitation But in Ambition. You Feel It in the Structure: The Balance Between Dialogue, Music, and Visual Rhythm. You See it in the Irony of the Grand Theatrical Format Used to Tell Such a BRUTLLY LOCAL, Stripped-Down Story. There is something of Hamlet In this, Especially As the Characters Spiral Between Madness, Reflection, and Moal Collaps. But it is Hamlet Throw the Lens of Beirut. Khaabbaz Borrows The Scale of Global Theater and Fells It with the Soul of Lebanon – Contradictory, Wounded, and Human.
The Final SCNE is where his direction reaches its quiet people. After the Passion, Violence, and Ideology Fire, The Stage Transforms INTO Something Stripped and Gray. We See the Two Former Fighters – ONCE Loud, Proud, Deluseiatal – Now Standing As Tired Security Guards in Front of Dead Atms, During The 2020 COLLAPSE. No longer fighting for Ideology. JUST SURVIVING. Just Watching. They are not protected people anymore. They are protecting Machines that do not even work. This Shift is handled with defastating subtlety – no Overstatement, no gesimentality. Just Stillness.
And then, in the Final Moments, Something Shifts. The Stage Quiets. The Energy Drains from the Air. We do not get a dramatic climax or a CLANAN Resolution, We Get Something Heavier. Something Real. What Happy is not? Khaabbaz Does Notannounce It. He lets the size do the talking. And in that Silence, weare left with the UNSETTLING Weight of Everything that Came Beautiful; The Lost Years, The False Pride, The Pain Weight Was Behind Us. It is a fund Note that does not end the story, but Deepens it. Long after
After the applause
This is more than theater. It is therapy. For anyone who lived Those Years – or Who Inherited their Silence – Khiyal Saahra Feels like some finally sat used download and said: I Remember Too. It is a play about War, yes, but more than that, it is about what war to the human spirit. To Men who on decake their ones we fighing for language. To the Mothers Who Waited. To the country we kept trying to fix by Breaking it more.
IT Never Offer Answell. Just a mirror. And maybe that is what weeeded all along. Not someone to explain the past to use, but someone to feel it with us.
