The Art of Conveying Joy: The Late Latifa Multaqa on the Human Connection Between Actor and Audience

 

A pioneer of female directors in the history of modern Lebanese theater, Latifa Multaqa has guided generations of actors since Lebanon’s golden age of theater, embodying the art of theater as an actor, director, and teacher. Multaqa, 92, passed away on April 9, 2024, joining her husband and partner on stage, Antoine Multaqa, who left this world a few weeks prior. Since the 60s and 70s, the Multaqa duo have established their reputation as pillars of modern Lebanese theater, opening doors to experimental theater alongside fellow pioneers Muneer Abou Debs and Raymond Jebara. From the legal pulpit to the stage, Latifa Multaqa laid the groundwork for serious avant-garde theater, and in mentoring students even after she retired from teaching, played an invaluable role in fostering the growth of Lebanon’s theatrical talent for generations to come.

 

Multaqa did not grow up with her sights set on the stage. She spent her youth surrounded by musical arts and science, which paved her way toward the world of theater and her fascination with the science behind its art as an adult. Latifa Multaqa, born Latifa Chamoun on June 16, 1932, grew up studying piano, classical music, and inclination toward physics. However, based on her father’s wishes, she pursued a career in law working with civil cases and practiced the profession for nine years. She said in a 1984 interview with Elham Kassis in Sahar Magazine, “I loved law as a profession that worked on shaping my personality, but the goal I was aspiring to was not a financial goal, and I felt that my dealings with people were only through the material that I abhorred.”

 

Though legal work did not provide Multaqa with the meaningful human connection she desired, her horizons broadened after she met Antoine Multaqa, whose influence inspired her to begin acting as a hobby. Soon enough, theater captured her heart. According to An Nahar, she said, “I loved theater with all my heart, and I practiced it while practicing the legal profession. Thanks to my husband, who introduced me to it, I became more inclined towards it, and I found myself immersed up to my ears in art. Theater has been my obsession since 1969. It consumed all my thoughts and enthusiasm and is no longer just a hobby. Rather, theater became my new world, created by my husband and my artistic culture.”

 

Latifa and Antoine married in 1959. At the same time, they and other fledging actors around Beirut also gathered around the young director Muneer Abou Debs, who had recently returned from Paris to form the Institute of Modern Acting in 1960. Though the Multaqas parted ways with Abou Debs only a year later due to differing views on methodology, the meeting set Lebanon’s experimental theater into motion. It was a starting point for many of the golden age’s pioneers.