BEIRUT: “A headquarters,” “a passage,” “a refuge.” These are some of the words that actress and activist Hanan Hajj Ali has used to describe Theater Beirut; the performance space that embraced her remarkable career, and provided the subject of her first book.

Hajj Ali’s book, “Theater Beirut,” is a history of one of the Lebanese capital’s oldest theater venues – nowadays awaiting demolition to make way for development – and the transformations it has undergone since its founding. It is also a gripping tale of the political and intellectual currents that have washed over Beirut since the 1960s.

“It is a book about ‘theater’ but also a book about the ‘city’; it examines each one of them in light of the other,” Ali writes. “Theater Beirut was the theater of a city that was [itself] a theater of drastic transformations.”

Most of all, perhaps, the book recounts Hajj Ali’s dreams, disillusionment and her passion for theater.

Businessman Saeed Sinno founded Theater Beirut in 1965. The Sinno family owned real-estate in the s

easide neighborhood of Ain al-Mreisseh, just west of Downtown Beirut. It was here that he transformed the garage of one of his buildings into a cinema and later, into a theater venue.

The theater staged the early works of such playwrights as Antoine Multaka, Berj Vazilian, Shakib Khouri, Jalal Khouri, and Roger Assaf, the author’s husband and career partner. A number of prominent local actors faced their first audiences at Theater Beirut, among them Antoine Kerbaj, Rida Khoury, Rafik Ali Ahmad and Nidal al-Ashkar, nowadays the proprietor of Hamra Street’s Masrah al-Madina.

The content and themes of the theater’s work evolved over the years along with the audience and the language of performance. In an era when the Arab-Israeli conflict was at its most explosive, Hajj Ali writes that a number of those working in theater started considering performance not only as “a profession but also a space to express views and tackle the hot political issues of the time.”

Conversely, the author recalls, the audience transformed as well and began to include students and proponents of the Arab-left – whether Marxists or Arab-nationalists – as well as representation from the middle class. The language of the theater shifted over time with the audience’s changing cultural orientation.

Theater Beirut was inaugurated with Gabriel Bustani’s French-language play, “The Return of Adonis.” Bustani wrote a series of French-language plays but later decided that theater in the language of the former colonialists was “elitist.” Modern Standard Arabic, later Lebanese dialect, became the theater’s lingua franca.

It was time for Lebanese society to produce its own theater, Hajj Ali writes. “A theater of the ‘here and now,’ a theater that seeks to change the image of theater and the world has taken over.”

Theater Beirut productions became collective efforts, more experimental and more closely tied to the ideas and causes of the people. The plots and themes tackled by Masrah al-Hakawati (1979-82), for example, were directly drawn from the “living memory of the people.”

The role of Theater Beirut changed somewhat after Lebanon’s 1975-90 Civil War ended. As the state concentrated its energies on erasing any sign of material destruction, cultural initiatives – which might have contributed to the cultural and social reconstruction of Beirut – were left to their own devices.

Alternative cultural spaces, cooperatives and associations, tasked with promoting artistic and cultural initiatives, had to be created from scratch. Hence, the Funun Company, the Lebanese Association for Contemporary Arts, and more recently the Shams Collective were born, all making Theater Beirut their headquarters.

“Theater Beirut” is Hajj Ali’s first book, a re-working of her MA thesis in theater studies at Saint Joseph University (USJ), where she graduated in 2005. She felt compelled to document Lebanon’s theatrical experience, she explains, to dispel the long-held idea that theater is an “ephemeral art.”

“Both theater and memory are public spaces that have to be documented in one way or another,” she says, but tracing the memory of theater has proven difficult, “since it consists of revealing the linkages between the past and the present, when a theatrical performance is never durable.”

The book is primarily informed by interviews with those playwrights, directors, actors, producers, and critics who have had direct contact with Theater Beirut. Supplementing the interviews are unpublished academic papers and the author says that “A History of Beirut,” by assassinated columnist Samir Kassir was a key source.

This research is illustrated by theater blueprints and photos of the memorable productions performed at the space. The appendix includes “No to Censorship,” the landmark text novelist and critic Elias Khouri published in Al-Nahar newspaper’s cultural supplement in 1993.

“Theater Beirut” explores several themes related to the venue and the city: The social and political history of the space, the Civil War and the role of censorship all figure among the book’s principal themes.

“Theater is a social construction,” the USJ graduate writes, “a portion of life and a site for living experiences.”

She maintains that the theater scene was an integral part of the capital’s political scene, since Theater Beirut has endured the same sufferings and transformations as the city.

During the Civil War the theater became a shelter for those seeking refuge from the fighting. The various militias that settled in Ain al-Mreisseh during the war made use of the theater too.

If the city impinged upon the theater’s activities, Hajj Ali writes, Theater Beirut has also influenced the city, through the multitude of performances and activities it hosted.

She argues that the theater’s location, “between the city and the sea,” was crucial in shaping its “interactive” identity. Theater Beirut was “a bridge, a passage, or a referee,” Hajj Ali writes, between openness and modernity – the sea – and all that is sedentary – the city.

The theater was an “active party” in this relationship, she stresses, and the proximity between the theater and the street first became palpable during events in 1967 and 1969.

The residents of Ain al-Mreisseh, most of whom were fishermen, Hajj Ali writes, “looked rather warily” at the new theater that had come to their neighborhood. “The theater had its borders and the street too had its borders.”

These borders gradually broke down after the theater started embracing the street’s causes and concerns.

When Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel-Nasser announced his resignation soon after the 1967 war, theater workers gathered outside a grocery store with their neighbors to listen to the radio broadcast of his speech.

“The reaction was the same,” Hajj Ali writes, “and the tears too.”

In 1969, after the Israeli Air Force shelled Beirut International Airport and destroyed 13 civilian planes, actors, technicians and audience members joined street demonstrations, protesting about Lebanon’s inability to take on the Israeli military assault.

“The theater and its workers were no longer frowned upon,” Hajj Ali writes. “They little by little became entrusted with asking questions and protesting out loud.”

The Civil War is a recurrent theme in Hajj Ali’s book. She offers an innovative interpretation of the war, while refusing to blame the idle status of Lebanese theater on the conditions of the war itself.

“Why is war always tied to the inevitable end of theater?” she asks. “Weren’t the works that were born during the war years … a means to defy death, a means of survival?”

The post-Civil War period witnessed the emergence of two contradictory projects, she argues. The first wanted to “completely wipe out” almost 15 years of fighting. But what was needed to rebuild the city was a critical examination of the war years.

“I find the official tale of Lebanon being a rising phoenix nauseating,” she says.

The Civil War was among “the rudest but richest of periods,” Hajj Ali believes. “Beirut was living a permanent festival … [by performing in the capital’s narrow alleys and streets] our audience grew and became more diverse.”

Hajj Ali questions Lebanon’s post-Civil War “peace.” Rather than calling the post-1990 period one of “peace,” the author has concerns about whether the country’s civil strife has actually ended.

“What about the so-called period of peace? Isn’t it a period of latent wars that have uncovered the many facets of Beirut and reconsidered the role of the city and theater?”

The relationship between Lebanese theater and the censor has never been easy. Hajj Ali describes the censor as a “rapist, who strives to tame creativity and thought.” She still mocks the censor’s prohibitions as absurd and is active in a working-group comprised of independent organizations and lawyers conducting a study on censorship laws in Lebanon.

In “Theater Beirut” this story begins in 1969 with “Majdaloun” – the first play to bring an armed fedayeen (fighter) on stage. A unit from the Internal Security Forces broke into the theater part way through to put a stop to the show. When the actors decided to continue the performance, the police dragged them off stage.

The actors, accompanied by some of the public, took the play outside and performed it in front of an even more diverse audience at Hamra’s then-notorious Horseshoe café, nowadays the site of Costa Coffee.

The significance of the “Majdaloun” incident was aesthetic and political. “When theater takes to the street, this means that the street exists and interacts,” she writes. “It could also mean that the street is aware of its troubles and this could be the beginning of salvation.”

The banning of “Majdaloun,” she argues, also sparked a national debate over censorship.

She describes censorship and taxes to be among the main obstacles to Lebanese theater and she admits that the censor has gained more authority nowadays. She also slams the meddling of religious authorities and certain political groups for justifying even more censorship in theater.

“We pay the government money so that the [Surete Generale] can monitor our work,” She asks. “Isn’t that ironic?

“If we can’t tackle sex, religion and politics,” she said, “then what do we talk about?”

Hanane Hajj Ali’s “Theater of Beirut” is out now from Amers editions.