Who is responsible?
Who is responsible for this orphanhood in our world of acting?
Is it the feeble stage that has made acting a passing occupation, from which the professionals drift farther away day after day? Or is it our stunted acting that has made the stage a bereaved forecourt of art?
Do you remember how the Lebanese applauded in admiration of the actors of London and Paris in the courts of our citadel? When will they applaud actors of our own?
And here the story begins.
The story of two men. The first says the second is its hero, and the second says the first is its hero and forerunner!
Mr. Nizar Miqati was a child when he leapt onto the stage to play the part of a sweet little girl... Then Rome drew him, and he hurried there to learn and to train, then returned to his country... And here, on the horizon of his dreams, there remained a tossing stage whose anchor was lost between ebb and flow...
In Tripoli, his birthplace, the members of the Comédie Française watched him act, and they admired and were astonished... As for him, he took heart with an optimism of wide-spread wings.
And in his soul hope kept driving hope onward, until he heard over the radio the voice of a comrade he had never met... Kamel Kostandi... And who has not heard him on the broadcasting stations, producing programs, acting, and speaking? Mr. Miqati rejoiced, and from his depths he cried: "He is my colleague — how sweet my tomorrow on the stage!"...
And here they are today, supervising the dramatic work at the Lebanese Company for Artistic Recordings... and between them and tomorrow stands a promise... a Lebanese performance shall rise at the Baalbek festivals...
But wait... plays are poor in number, and stage scripts are stunted and watery — so where did the choice alight?
On Said Akl's "Cadmus"... in which our poet follows the classical path amid an atmosphere of mythology that imagination has studded here and there.
The family of Cadmus numbers four great figures...
There is Cadmus, whose tunic Mr. Kamel Kostandi has already donned... and Cadmus is a bridge whose story East and West have known.
As for Mr. Nizar Miqati, he is the blind man, mighty in his affliction.
There remain the two heroines, Europa and Miri... their gowns beckon to
Nizar Miqati
Kamel Kostandi