Women's drama Festival in Tyre, poem collection by a woman inmate in Tripoli

The Istanbouli Theatre and Tiro Association for Arts announced on Friday the launch of the participating drama in the first edition of the International Women Monodrama Festival 2019 to be held from March 8 to 12, 2019. The event comes to mark the International Women’s Day and celebrate the female and femininity, while accentuating a woman’s strength in Arabic on stage and artistically. The festival will be held on the Lebanese National Theatre in Tyre, in collaboration with the ministry of culture and Tyre Municipality. On the sideline, the first conference for theatre in Lebanon will be held to discuss the crisis that theatre is facing in the country and the need to break the federalism of culture, as well as the role theatre in raising awareness and stimulating change. It will also host a seminar by the League for Lebanese Women’s Rights and the Mothers Welfare Association, on the role and aspirations of women in society, in addition to a craft fair by the Southern Woman’s Association. On the other hand, Zarifa Diab, an inmate at the Central Women’s Prison in Qobeh, Tripoli, signed on February 28 her first poetry collection she completed behind the cells. This cultural event is first of its kind to take place at a Lebanese prison, noting that the signing was called upon by the ministry of culture and the Charity for Reform and Rehabilitation. (An Nahar, March 2, 2019)