Tala joined Seenaryo as a participant in 2020, co-creating a play called 31/12 in Beirut. At the end of the project, she was one of a small group of participants to be selected to train to become facilitators themselves.

Since then, she’s led theatre projects across Lebanon – from Beirut, to the Bekaa, to the South. Each time, she helps children to find a space for joy and self-expression. But it was in Zrariyeh, South Lebanon in the summer of 2024 that the power of theatre became really clear to her. 

I was born and raised in the South; people here are told to hide what they are feeling, not to appear weak.

Last summer, Tala was facilitating a Showbuild in a town near her home, where the children had spent a year living through Israel’s war on Lebanon. She remembers, “It was hard to shift their minds from the war, all of their ideas were connected to it.” 

But day by day, through movement, songs and stories, they began to imagine something different. “Every morning I’d say, ‘We are here. We are going to leave everything else outside today.’ And it worked.” 

They opened up quickly and created a play loosely inspired by their daily reality, about a group who decide to leave their village because of a strange, relentless noise. The project “changed the psychological state of the kids and of us”, says Tala.

Tala is now a full-time member of Seenaryo’s core team, working as an Education Officer in Lebanon. After years of freelancing as a facilitator, stepping into a permanent role felt like an important shift – a chance to take more responsibility and shape the very projects she once participated in.

Art is my safe place. I want everyone to have this experience – I want to pass it on.