Dramatic music plays and actors run across the stage – they reach out, then retreat. In turns, they take the spotlight. A girl with green streaks in her hair holds up a turtle. A bearded man in a white hoodie sits on the front of the stage, his legs hanging off the edge. “Improvise,” a woman offstage shouts, as a boy falters while speaking. There is singing and dancing; laughter; they cry, drop to the floor and rise together.
This is a rehearsal for a play called Returning in a theatre in Hamra, west Beirut. It premiered on International Theatre Day, March 27th, and has had multiple performances since. The actors are all displaced – among what the UN says are now 1.1 million people across Lebanon forced from their homes by the latest all-out war, which began on March 2nd. In this time, buildings of all kinds have turned into shelters, and this theatre is one too.
Kassem Istanbuli (39) – an actor and director from southern Lebanon – heads the Tiro Association for Arts NGO, setting up what is now known as the Lebanese National Theatre, though it is separate from the government. The name comes from wanting to create spaces where art is accessible to anyone, Istanbuli said.
It was with this aim that they reopened Hamra’s Colisée Cinema – first built in 1945 – in September last year. In total, Tiro has three rehabilitated cinemas – in the capital Beirut; Tyre in Lebanon’s south; and Tripoli in the north – which are now also functioning as shelters for displaced people. More than 140 people are staying here, Istanbuli said, including Lebanese people, but also Syrians, Palestinians, Ethiopians, Bangladeshis, a French family and a Congolese family. Some come for a short time, arriving right after their homes are bombed, he said, before finding somewhere else to move on to.
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Tiro was established in 2014, with the idea that it would encourage local communities to engage with culture and the arts outside of religious and political frames.
They organise activities and screen films for free including, recently, Cinderella, Aladdin and Tom & Jerry. Istanbuli said this offers people a chance to escape the shelters that have “become prison for them”. Going to the cinema is a “trip for joy, a trip for freedom”.
Istanbuli said he believes that everyone has the right to access the arts: both to watch and participate. The play Returning involves themes of displacement and war: a girl talks about what to do with her cat when she is forced out of home; there is a reference to the targeted killing of journalists by Israeli air strikes. “The beauty of the play, it’s by them ... What happened, they tell their story,” Istanbuli said.
The play began as workshops involving movement, voice exercises, and games where attendees spoke about themselves; then developing sketches. Tiro runs workshops for children, including storytelling, puppets and drawing. “What we do is small things, but it’s a tribute to the children and their stories. We need to keep this voice of people through culture, through arts. And we see this is a lot, very important.” The first thing children usually draw is “their house, and they paint the houses and make it beautiful. They believe they will go back home,” Istanbuli said.
Sometimes tragedy comes very close. Istanbuli said that during the last all-out war in 2024, one child – seven-year-old Selena Samra – who was drawing with them was killed in her home later that night with the rest of her family; only one sister survived.
As the Israeli military blows up Lebanese villages close to the border, and threatens to occupy southern Lebanon, it is not clear when – if ever – many of the displaced will be able to return home.
Istanbuli said that to open a cinema as a home to people – particularly in Tyre, the city in the south – is a form of resistance. “It’s very important now to open these spaces ... And to open the hearts for people. This connection is very important. To build bridges in Lebanon through these three cinemas.”
He said the workshops and performances give those taking part a chance to release tension and have their stories heard. “They want to send their message. They want to say war is not numbers. It’s not how many buildings fall. It’s stories. War is solidarity.” He said their stories could be understood by anyone who has lived through conflict in any country.
While humans build borders, and make wars to gain power, they also perform, he said. “Theatre is the language of the people, the emotion of the people.”
And, he added, “we need to give the memory of what happened to the new generation. The memory is the heritage for the country.”
To keep doing anything at all is resistance against “the situation, against the war,” Istanbuli said. “We don’t leave the country, we don’t close our theatre.”
He sees them continuing to make art as “cultural resistance ... The theatre is power. We say that love is resistance and theatre is revolution.”
