Sour Lips

Written by Omar El-Khairy Directed by Carissa Hope Lynch An Ovalhouse commission, funded by Arts Council England.

Tue 29 Jan – Sat 16 Feb

VENUE: OVALHOUSE DOWNSTAIRS

I was still living as an Arab Muslim in America.

I struggled with coming out to friends and family, and so I decided to come back to Syria.

It hasn’t been easy. But we are here, just as we are everywhere.

DAMASCUS 18:00 – Amina was walking near Fares Al-Khouri Street when three armed men seized her. According to an eyewitness, Amina was bustled into a red Dacia Logan with a bumper sticker of Basel Assad. The men are assumed to be members of the Ba’ath Party militia or one of the security services. Amina’s present location is still unknown. Following the story of Amina Arraf, the blogger known as 'A Gay Girl In Damascus', and the events fomented by the media's coverage of her kidnapping, Sour Lips fuses fantasy and non-fiction to create its own speculative narrative..

highly ambitious... visually gorgeous... a delightful sensuous experience

Broadway Baby (Burst, Edinburgh Festival Fringe 2010)

This play is a fictional account, inspired by both a hoax and its true story. It contains extracts from Tom MacMaster’s weblog, A Gay Girl in Damascus. However, the characters, timelines and incidents have been changed for dramatic purposes. In some cases, fictitious characters and incidents have been further added to the narrative, and the words are those imagined by the author. The play should not be understood as either a biography or factual account.

Sour Lips is produced by Ovalhouse and Paper Tiger.

Sour Lips is an Ovalhouse Commission, developed from an initial seed commission as part of Ovalhouse's Counter-Culture Season. An earlier work-in-progress version of 'Sour Lips' was presented as 3 FiRST BiTES performances in May/June 2012.
The Counter-Culture Season is inspired by Ovalhouse's history of radical and activist performance, these seed commissions investigate what counter-culture could mean today. Is it possible to be an outsider in a society priding itself on inclusivity? Who gets to be counter-cultural? And who gets to decide?

Sour Lips Gallery