The Understudy Dares You to Produce This Play: The Green Line

The Understudy Dares You to Produce This Play is a monthly reading series highlighting plays that have not received a Chicago production. Produced by The Understudy’s bookstore team, this series works to expand the variety of playwrights and titles in our vibrant community.

This month, we're reading The Green Line by Makram Ayache, translated by Hiba Sleiman.

Cast

Jo Tannous - Naseeb/Rami
Fantasy Banks - Zidan/Fifi
Marielle Issa - Mona
Sara Sadjadi - Yara

Kseniya Janyan - Stage Directions

About the Play

A poetic, heartbreaking story of intergenerational queer history in Lebanon, The Green Line weaves together civil war Beirut with a contemporary nightclub, following one family’s journey to discover their past.

In the present day, Rami, a twentysomething queer Lebanese Canadian, has returned to the Lebanese mountains to bury his father. To cope with the weight of his grief, Rami, carrying a necklace in the shape of a phoenix left to him by his father, finds himself in a queer Beirut nightclub, where he catches the attention of a powerful drag queen named Fifi, who just so happens to be dressed as a phoenix.

In 1978, in the midst of the Lebanese Civil War, Naseeb is attempting to get himself and his sister Mona out of Beirut and into the safety of the mountains. Mona, however, is secretly in love with her classmate, a woman named Yara, and refuses to leave the city. When Naseeb becomes swept up with the descending political culture of the war around him, he creates a rift between himself and Mona greater than the line that divides the country itself.