In Beirut, laughter as therapy

The words fuse, slam, without compromise and without filter, on the stage of KED, a performance hall in the industrial zone of Quarantine, in Beirut. Alone on the track, Shaden Fakih holds the assistance, strong in mouth, imposing. Nothing resists his critical gaze, his sharp tongue: the internal struggles between politicians, the narrow communitarianism, religious conservatism and patriarchy, the taboos of homosexuality or female sexuality.

With a caustic, deliberately shocking humor, the young woman unpacks her stories and her personal struggles to better pinpoint the shortcomings and hypocrisies of Lebanese society and its leaders. Everyone takes it for their rank. Spectators are taken to task. They were warned: “If you are easily offended, this show is not for you”strikes a cardboard placed on the tables.

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The public came precisely for this, already won over or simply curious about the Shaden phenomenon. Four friends in their twenties drove two hours from Tripoli in the north. A table of young people in their forties from Beirut, all dressed up, laugh at the advances made to them by the actress. The men at the next table took a little longer to cheer themselves up. The bursts of laughter rise crescendo, like the applause.

An outlet for young people

At 30, Shaden Fakih is one of the stars of the young stand-up scene in Lebanon. “It’s a scene dominated by men, here as elsewhere, she explains. I only know two women who do stand-up in the Middle East: one of them is me! But a lot of young women are starting to get on stage, talking about everything, it’s amazing to see that when the majority of the Lebanese population is still so conservative. »

When Shaden Fakih launched in 2017, stand-up had not yet swept through Beirut. Comedian Nemr Abou Nassar filled halls of several thousand people, but in English. A few underground bars held open mics – the “open mic”, where everyone can express themselves in public, without imposed form.

Today, in Beirut, not an evening goes by without a stage. Stand-up has become a real phenomenon that is gradually conquering new audiences, beyond the restricted circle of progressive youth, feminist, LGBTQI + and atheist circles. It is an outlet for the Lebanese who observe, distraught, their country sinking and the same leaders imposing, since the end of the civil war, in 1990, their community and religious yoke.

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