The Zoukak Company thrives and engages the world from two principles: diversity and democracy. The company is composed of an extremely diverse group of artists. The members are artistically-diverse, philosophically-diverse, spiritually-diverse, politically-diverse, geographically-diverse, practice a diversity of disciplines, come from a diversity of histories, and have created and are creating a diverse body of work for diverse audiences across extremely diverse occasions. Beirut demands plurality of means, of modes, of memories, and of magic. The historical present is so compacted, every second a rhyming cascade of earlier moments and previous eras, regimes, wars, truces, flashpoints, strange unexpected periods of calm, all shot through with unquenchable urbane life-force, debate, rage, and warmth. The imperatives of hope and shifting solidarities create surprising connections, the contradictions themselves become new paths, and the folly, fakery and fear of the situation provoke onslaughts of humour, despair, heartbreak, and more humour. The act of performance in these conditions and in this vertiginous context must be multiple — mixed emotions, mixed loyalties, layered with simultaneous local and foreign realities demanding virtuosic, improvisatory moment-to-moment negotiation, cultural awareness and death-defying skill.

The second principle is democracy. Not as suggested by American Imperialist, but the day-by-day determination of equality in...