Sour Lips

Sour Lips: Ovalhouse, Paper Tiger

Written by Omar El-Khairy. Directed by Carissa Hope Lynch.

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.

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.