Hezbollah Goes to the Theater
When I first saw the announcement, I thought it was a joke. Hezbollah, the Lebanese militant movement, was staging an “immersive theatrical performance” in Beirut, with three interlinked plays running simultaneously. The invitation noted that there would be live gunfire; people with heart conditions and children under 7 were discouraged from attending. Viewers would be given the chance to walk from set to set through a Gaza-style tunnel.
Hezbollah isn’t exactly known for its avant-garde drama. But these are not ordinary times. The group has been exchanging bombastic threats and near-daily attacks with Israel across the Lebanese border, and about 150 of its fighters have been killed, including a number of high-ranking commanders.
A full-scale war would be catastrophic for Lebanon, which bears the scars of many previous conflicts. Hezbollah is the country’s dominant military force—the Lebanese government is helpless to constrain it—and the group’s leaders are keenly aware that they would shoulder the blame if they provoked Israel into a countrywide bombardment. For all of these reasons, everyone in Lebanon (and beyond) would like to know what Hezbollah is thinking. But the group is famously secretive and rarely grants interviews. So I booked a ticket for The Crossing, as the new play is called, in hopes of gaining a glimpse into Hezbollah’s state of mind.
[Read: Hamas doesn’t want a cease-fire]
It had been raining for days, and downtown Beirut’s colonial-era
