The Amrika Project

The Amrika project is a collaboration between LAU Professor Lina Abiad and a group of five LAU students on the premiere production of a new play, titled "Amrika." The students will travel to New York in April 2022, where they will spend a month in residency and collaboration with students from NYU Tisch School Of The Arts, before performing the new play at the NYU Festival of Arab Voices, representing LAU and the country of Lebanon.

This is a chance to give these 5 students a once-in-a-lifetime experience to join in sharing these Lebanese stories with New York and the world. The Tisch Drama Department has the resources to fund the production of the play and cover the expense of bringing Dr. Abiad to New York. We are reaching out to find support to cover the cost of bringing the cohort of LAU students to the United States. Most of the money has been raised, we just need a final $5500 to cover travel and accommodations.

The play will be based upon the real accounts of women who took it upon themselves to emigrate alone from Lebanon to the US at the end of the 19^th century, many of whom later sent for their husbands and families. We will follow their struggle in their new life, their bitter discovery that there wasn’t so much gold to shovel off the street of “Amrika”. But there was a life to build in this new land. This play is a tribute to these women’s courage and tenacity to improve their life, their children’s, and families’ life.

We also want to salute the women who stayed behind after their husbands left to “Amrika”. These women were not prepared for the role they had to take on. Some despaired, some accepted their new situation and lived up to it and became the heads of their families, taking care of the children, the parents, the land, and became the breadwinner of the family.

Today, after August 4, 2020 and the economic collapse of Lebanon, we face a fifth wave of immigration. Be it the women who left to “Amrika” or those who stayed behind, be it the women who are leaving today, and those who are staying behind, we know these women. In the first case, they were our ancestors and today they are our mother, sisters, and daughters. In the past, they were brave, today they stand tall. This play resonates profoundly with our lives; we yearn for a better life because we deserve it.

As the South African playwright Athol Fugard wrote, there are three conditions required to be a good human being: first you need food, water, and shelter. You also need parents who love you. And thirdly, you need to be able to tell your story of where you came from. Theatre is the place where these stories can be told, listened to and kept alive.

Please consider making a contribution of any size to help our students tell our stories to the world.