Nidal Al Achkar - Woman of the Theatre

Nidal Al Achkar is a Lebanese artist, born in Dick El-Mehdi, North Metn, married to Mr. Fouad Naïm (journalist and painter) and mother of Omar and Khaled Naïm. Specifically she played a leading role in launching the theatre movement, and culture, in Lebanon and the Arab world, with the aim of renewing its horizons, its dialect and its instruments.

An actor and director, Nidal Al Achkar graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA). A cultural provocateur to the core, she founded alongside a group of artists “The Beirut Theatre Workshop” in 1966; it was a period of splendor for the ground-breaking theatre movement in Lebanon, lasting until the outbreak of the civil war in the mid-'70s, and producing tens of plays which shook and provoked Lebanese society because they dealt boldly with contemporary social, political and regional issues. 

In the mid-80s, Nidal Al Achkar established from Amman, Jordan, the “Arab Actors” theatre company; it was the first group to comprise a selection of artists from 13 Arab countries. The “Actors” took its craft to many countries in the region, crowning its tours at the Royal Albert Hall in London.

She trained and worked with Joan Littlewood in Tunis, London and Paris; her encounter with Joan Littlewood changed her life and career.

Through her theatrical body of work she contributed to transforming Lebanese theatre from its elitism to a more accessible and popular form. Meeting this major challenge bestowed on Nidal Al Achkar’s work the quality of contemporariness, of daring and of ever improving standards. She added grace, strength, and creativity through her distinctive performances in a number of important Lebanese and Arab T.V. productions. This led her to occupy a preeminent position among the established artistic and cultural personalities in Lebanon and the Arab world.

Nidal Al Achkar livened up Arab poetry with several innovative recitals, and promoted verse as a popular and dramatic tool to communicate with a wide public. She took this innovative art form to most Arab and European countries, as well as to the Americas, initially as a solo performer, and later accompanied by famous actors, musicians and singers. She participated in many lectures, discussions, conferences, and seminars concerning cultural, social, political and gender issues as well as the arts. 

She participated as a member of the jury for several Arab and international event related to the theatre and movies. She has received numerous national and international honors, most notably by the French Government, as a Knight of Arts and Letters, in 1997.

She founded a cultural establishment, the Al Madina Theatre (Masrah Al Madina), in 1994, which developed into Al Madina Theatre Association for Arts and Culture in Marsh 2005.

Nidal Al Achkar is currently General Manager, founder and animator of Al Madina Theatre Association for Artsand Culture, which she founded after renovating an historic cinema in Beirut and made it available to Lebanese civil society. The Al Madina relocated for it is new location, which was previously a movie theatre.

Nidal Al Achkar renovated this new location and it became available to the civil society.

Why am I:  a woman of the theatre

In our house in Metn, a man with a huge head is hiding in a basement room beneath the floor.

His name is Georges. 

The handsome man with green eyes was also called Georges, Georges Khoury, but in fact his name was neither Georges nor his surname Khoury. 

And he was not related to my mother like she used to tell everyone. 

He was a very famous man from an Arab country, also hiding in our house. 

Later he was killed in Beirut by a broom salesman who was not a broom salesman at all. 

The guards in front of our house were not really guards, they were heroes who did incredible operations with the resistance against the French. 

Even the priest in our village was not a typical parish priest.  He was a poet, very open, courageous and liberal. 

His main work, besides being a priest, was to hide my father from the army that was constantly searching for him. 

That wonderful man there is a playwright and a poet from a very famous family in Lebanon, a Druze family, but here in our house we don't have Druzes or Muslims or Christians, we are a family that believes in a civil non-sectarian society. 

My mother used to visit all these characters, give them codenames, and organize their escape and shelter. 

My beautiful mother, like a fairy godmother, used to find them money and a safe place to hide. 

My father, surrounded by mysteries and imaginative stories, he is here now and he is not here anymore. 

He is there, he is not there, he was here, he is no more. 

                                                                                                       

Today in our village we have a wedding, our house is full of people all beautifully dressed, hundreds of them.  Since my youth I have loved celebrations of all kinds.  Weddings were the first theatre I ever saw, deaths too, circumcisions, everything that brought people together, gatherings, different faces. 

We are still waiting for a priest but my father explained to me that no Sheikh, no priest was coming, that it was a civil marriage. Hyam, a Christian, is marrying Abdullah, a Shite and my father is going to marry them and read from a book. 

Oh, my God, I said, it is even more exciting than I thought! 

Yes, it was.
I started in the real theatre at home (characters bigger than life). 

Everything was imaginative, even when my mother asked me to go to Oum Zakkour and bring her some "mardakoush" quickly (mardakoush is an herb we use for cooking). 

Even then I thought mardakoush was a code and now hundreds of people are going to come out of the bushes and fight.

Maybe that's why I turned out to be a woman of the theatre.

 

Nidal Al Achkar