Drama Therapy and the Timelessness of Themes

Twelve Angry Men was written as a teleplay for CBS' Studio One, was adapted to a screenplay that was directed by Sidney Lumet and has now been adapted, as Twelve Angry Lebanese, at one of the hardest places on Earth.

The latest – and most unlikely – revival of a venerable courtroom drama is
being staged by inmates at Lebanon’s most notorious prison. Eyad Houssami
reports from Roumieh.

The script, which deals with perceptions of guilt and with preconceptions about people, has always had a power to make people uncomfortable with their first look at the drama. Now it is laying open the preconceptions of a country in the wake of the assassination of Prime Minister Rafik Hariri four years ago.

“It’s a microcosm of Lebanon. People don’t want to see it,” says Daccache,
who first visited the prison 10 years ago as an assistant stage manager with
Clowns Without Borders. “But it’s fertile. Theatre is nourished by people’s
hunger: the bigger the hunger, the bigger the theatre.”

Read the rest of this amazing story.