BEIRUT: The young man cowered behind a barrel on the barely lit stage, as his companion pointed a fake weapon toward a roaring audience in a Beirut theater.
The amateur actors were re-enacting a familiar scene from their native Tripoli, one of Lebanon’s most volatile cities.
For decades, but with increasing frequency since the Syrian conflict erupted next door, fighters from the Jabal Mohsen neighborhood and the Bab Al-Tebbaneh have clashed in recurring bouts of violence.
It is against that backdrop that a local NGO and director brought together battle-scarred teens from the two districts to perform in “Love and War on the Rooftop: a Tripolitan Tale.”
For four months, the young residents — some of them former fighters — worked with conflict-resolution group March and Lebanese director Lucien Bourjeily to produce a modern-day tale of romance and reconciliation. “I was really hesitant in the beginning because there was something I didn’t like — that there were guys from Jabal (Mohsen),” said Tarek Hebbawi, a 24-year-old from Bab Al-Tebbaneh.
Battle-scarred Lebanese teens reconcile through theater
