🌍 Roueida Ghali – Humanitarian & Cultural Work
Roueida Ghali has played a leading role in some of Lebanon’s most impactful humanitarian and theater-based initiatives. Her work merges performance with healing, pedagogy with outreach, and artistic creation with social justice. From classrooms and UN halls to flash mobs and orphan stages, each project reflects her mission: to make theater a vehicle for visibility, dignity, and public transformation.
1. Justice Campaign Consultant (Apr–Jul 2025)
- Project: “Sustaining Struggles and Working Toward Transformative Change: Women, Activism, and Transitional Justice”
- Role: Art Lead Consultant — Designed and led theater workshops for women activists from Lebanon and Sri Lanka.
- Focus: Trauma narration, memory archiving, and performance as resistance.
- Outcome: Culminating public performance and contribution to academic research.
- Partners: Saint Joseph University (USJ), Oxford Brookes, British Academy.
2. Women’s Hums Theatre Facilitator – Seenaryo (2023)
- Co-led workshops with Fida Al Waer for marginalized women in Lebanon.
- Funded by the Women’s Peace & Humanitarian Fund, with UN Women and Women Now.
- Empowered participants to express identity and resistance through performance.
- View Project ↗
3. ESCWA Stories Consultant – United Nations (Feb–Jun 2023 & Dec 2024–May 2025)
- Implemented UN SDG-themed education via comics and classroom performance for ages 8–14.
- Designed curricula around environmental justice, peacebuilding, and children’s rights.
- Delivered performances, school events, and ESCWA Stories Day activities at UN House, Beirut.
- View Project ↗
4. Red Oak – Inclusive Arts Projects (2018–2022)
- Blind-Friendly Market Flash Mob (2018): Directed participatory performance at Lebanon’s first accessible supermarket.
- Doors. Please Touch (2018): Museum activation for visually impaired youth.
- Braille Book Project: The Diary of a Mulberry Tree, published in Lebanon and Italy.
- Disability Equality Training (2021–22): Led national capacity-building workshops in partnership with UNESCO/JICA.
- View Project ↗
5. Annual Orphan Theater Production at BIEL
- Directed large-scale performances with 80+ orphaned children at Beirut International Exhibition & Leisure Center.
- Choreographed emotionally sensitive works attended by officials and press.
- Created a space of dignity and artistic agency for vulnerable youth in Lebanon.
6. Senior Professor – Lebanese University (1995–Present)
- Teaches physical theater and collaborative performance despite ongoing national crises.
- Continues to mentor hundreds of students and maintain artistic continuity in times of collapse.
- Her classroom remains a sanctuary for creativity, discipline, and resilience.
📅 Timeline Overview:
2018 – Flash mob, museum event, Braille book
2021–22 – Disability Equality Training
2023 – ESCWA Stories, Women’s Hums
2024–25 – UN Contracts & Justice Campaign
🎥 Video Evidence:
Main Flash Mob Video |
Al Arabiya Report |
Future TV Coverage |
Christmas Market Flash Mob
These are not symbolic acts. Each project is active, documented, and verifiable—supported by contracts, media, and testimony. For Roueida Ghali, humanitarian performance is not a side pursuit. It is the center of her professional life and a primary reason for her presence in Lebanon during the later phases of her U.S. relocation.
Inside Out: A Workshop & Performance Directed by Roueida Ghali at LAU
Inside Out is a hybrid workshop and performance piece directed by Lebanese theatre pioneer Roueida Ghali, held at the Lebanese American University (LAU). This production invites students and participants to explore the unspoken truths of their inner lives—what lies beneath the surface of everyday expression—through physical theatre, movement, and voice.
Developed through intensive group improvisations and physical exploration, the performance blends Zones Interdites methodology with choral staging, Butoh-inspired slowness, and emotional precision. It is both a pedagogical process and a public act of unveiling, embodying Ghali’s lifelong commitment to theatre as a vehicle for healing, identity, and transformation.
This video captures the culminating performance, offering a rare glimpse into a process-oriented approach to devised theatre that fuses rigorous training with radical vulnerability.
Inside Out: Part Two – Continuation of the Workshop Performance at LAU
Part Two of Inside Out continues the emotional excavation and physical storytelling process initiated in the first segment. Under the direction of Roueida Ghali, participants deepen their engagement with themes of repression, fragmentation, and the desire for connection—expressed through synchronized movement, fragmented dialogue, and embodied silence.
This segment showcases the progression from individual improvisations to collective composition, culminating in a powerful sequence of ensemble choreography. Drawing on Ghali’s improvisation chorégraphiée approach, the work evolves into a shared language that transcends traditional text-based theatre.
The performance is a culmination of weeks of physical, emotional, and theatrical research, offering a raw and intimate portrait of how the human body stores—and releases—memory. Part Two serves as both a continuation and an amplification of the themes that define Ghali’s directorial and pedagogical vision.
Stop No. 20: A Workshop Performance Directed by Roueida Ghali at LAU
Stop No. 20 is a devised theatrical performance and physical theatre workshop directed by Roueida Ghali at the Lebanese American University (LAU). Developed in collaboration with Seenaryo, the piece explores moments of interruption—emotional, historical, and existential—through gesture, silence, and movement.
Inspired by the metaphor of a halted bus or a missing connection, Stop No. 20 becomes a space where individuals confront the invisible forces that detour their lives. The performance builds upon Ghali’s Zones Interdites approach—drawing out what remains unsaid, unseen, or unfinished. Her use of choreographed improvisation, body score, and spatial tension allows participants to excavate personal narratives and societal questions in a shared performative space.
Marked by precise physicality and layered symbolism, the performance asks: What are the “stops” that define us? What happens when the journey is suspended? This original workshop production fuses Roueida Ghali’s visionary pedagogy with the urgency and vulnerability of live performance, offering audiences a poetic meditation on loss, delay, and becoming.
From 2005 to 2011, Roueida Ghali served as a storyteller and creative facilitator with Assabil – Friends of Public Libraries, organizing weekly Story Hours at the Geitawi Municipal Library in Beirut. Through dramatized readings, puppetry, and interactive performance, she fostered literacy and imagination among underserved youth. This work was part of Assabil’s mission to make public libraries centers of community-based learning and cultural participation.
Since 2005, Roueida Ghali has collaborated extensively with Les Amis des Marionnettes, a Lebanese mobile puppet theater troupe that blends storytelling with public education and activism. She directed puppeteers, authored scripts, and performed in productions across Lebanon, Syria, and Qatar, tackling themes such as water access, cancer prevention, and community values. Later, she served as artistic advisor on key projects including The Elixir of Respect, Stories from Our Villages, and The Time Machine, fostering dialogue around gender, health, and memory through the poetic language of puppetry.
In December 2016, Roueida Ghali was invited by the Occupational Therapy Department at the Lebanese University – FSP1 to lead a specialized seminar titled “Theatre as a Therapeutic and Communicative Technique.” Attended by both senior students and practicing therapists, the session explored how theatrical practices—such as mask work, improvisation, and embodiment—can serve as powerful tools in occupational and expressive therapies. Her participation was warmly received and marked another point of convergence between her theatrical practice and therapeutic education.
Voices: Creative Workshops & Cultural Event for Women Activists
Prepared by Roueida al Ghali and Yara AL Khoury
In collaboration with Carmen Hassoun Abou Jaoudé (University Saint-Joseph & Oxford Brookes University)
Supported by the British Academy
This arts-based humanitarian project supported women activists and survivors of injustice in post-crisis Lebanon. Through a series of 20 workshops, Roueida led a deeply collaborative and trauma-informed process to help participants shape their memories and testimonies into performative and creative acts of expression.
- Purpose: Healing, justice, and archiving through artistic expression.
- Methodology: Multilingual movement, storytelling, and performative voice work.
- Outcome: A culminating public event co-created by participants as an act of collective resistance and healing.
Women’s Hums – Empowerment Through Theater
Facilitated by: Roueida Ghali & Fida Al Waer
Partners: UN Women & Women Now
Funder: Women’s Peace & Humanitarian Fund
Year: 2023
Part of a broader initiative to foster healing, dialogue, and personal empowerment through art, the Women’s Hums project brought together marginalized women for a series of creative theater workshops. Co-facilitated by Roueida Ghali, this project created a safe space where participants could express their experiences, articulate their dreams, and explore identity through movement, storytelling, and improvisation. The culminating performance was both intimate and transformative, reflecting Roueida’s lifelong commitment to using the arts as a vehicle for justice and liberation.
🎥 Flash Mob for Inclusive Access – Red Oak
This video captures a powerful moment from Lebanon’s first blind‑friendly supermarket initiative, led by Red Oak in collaboration with artist and educator Roueida Ghali. As part of her work in inclusive performance, Roueida directed this flash mob to celebrate the launch of the Marqet supermarket for the visually impaired on September 27, 2018.
The event blended choreography, real-time shopping, and interaction between blind and sighted participants — bringing visibility to disability rights and accessible public spaces in Lebanon. It stands as a testament to the use of physical theater and participatory performance to drive social change.
📺 Media Report – Al Arabiya on the Blind‑Friendly Market
This Arabic-language broadcast from Al Arabiya documents the Blind‑Friendly Market initiative in Beirut. It features commentary on the project’s goals, behind-the-scenes glimpses, and footage of Roueida Ghali’s flash mob performance at Marqet supermarket. The report highlights Lebanon’s first retail space adapted for the visually impaired, made possible through Red Oak and inclusive arts leadership.
📰 Future TV Feature – A New Era in Inclusive Design
Originally aired on Future TV, this segment documents the flash mob performance and supermarket activation co-led by Roueida Ghali and Red Oak. The footage includes interviews with organizers and shots of the accessible supermarket shelves and Braille signage. This piece emphasized how performative arts can accompany real-world institutional change — in this case, Lebanon’s first blind-friendly public shopping space.
🎄 Holiday Flash Mob – Continuation of Red Oak’s Inclusive Arts Series
This festive flash mob took place at a Christmas market in Beirut and is part of the extended initiative developed by Red Oak and led artistically by Roueida Ghali. Though not directly tied to the blind-friendly supermarket, it reflects the same philosophy of public performance as social intervention. It features choreographed movement, music, and spontaneous audience interaction in a seasonal context.
Roueida Ghali 