Nidal Al Achkar

Nidal Al Achkar (born 1920) is a Lebanese actress and theater director, "the grande dame of Lebanese theater".[1]

Life

Nidal Al Achkar was the daughter of Asad al-Achkar, the Syrian Social Nationalist Party politician. She studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.[2] In 1967 she directed her first play in Beirut, and went on to found the Beirut Theatre Workshop in the late 1960s.

After the Lebanese Civil War, Nidal Al Achkar founded the Al Medina Theater in 1994, restoring the building which housed the old Saroulla Cinema.[3]

Nidal Al Achkar received the Lifetime Achievement Award at the 2012 Murex d'Or. Presenting the award, Lebanese Minister of Culture Gabi Layyoun called her "Lebanon's true expression of enlightenment and culture".[4]

In a 2019 interview she warned that it was impossible to have theater in the Arab world without "real, transformative revolutions" which would allow freedom of speech and openness.[5]

References
  1. Hanan Nasser, LAU Celebrates the Grande Dame of Theater, Nidal Al Achkar, Lebanese American University, March 22, 2019.
  2. Nidal Al Achkar: A Woman of the Theatre, Home Magazine, Issue No. 3, 2018. Accessed 10 March 2020.
  3. Gary Hoppenstand (2007). The Greenwood encyclopedia of world popular culture. Greenwood Press. p. 296. ISBN 978-0-313-33274-6.
  4. Nidal Al Ashkar receives Lebanon culture award, June 24, 2012. Accessed 10 March 2020.
  5. Lebanese Actress Nidal Al-Ashkar: No Freedom Of Speech In The Arab World; Change Would Require Real Transformative Revolutions, memri.org, April 12, 2019.
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