Beirut on the stage: the Great War in melodrama

In the immediate aftermath of the First World War, two nationalist theatre companies in Beirut staged a new play in 1919 encapsulating the civilian hardships of four years of the war. While little is known of the author, George Murad, details from the preface and dedication to the printed edition would situate him among pro-French Maronite Christians seeking independence for a greater Lebanon under French protection. The play, “Beirut on the Stage,” would appear to have been an example of political theatre seeking to validate the wartime suffering of Lebanese Christians through a vision of independence that, by the time the play was published in 1920, had already been undermined by French measures to colonise, rather the liberate, Greater Lebanon