Will it pass, or won’t it?, (or in Arabic Bebta3 aw ma bebta3) was the title of an interactive play written and directed by Lucien Bourjeily --“was” being the operative word. The title refers to the question writers (of plays and films) in Lebanon ask themselves when presenting their scripts to the Censorship Bureau at the General Security office. And in this case, it didn’t.
The play was about someone who goes to the Censorship Bureau to get his script approved – touching on the topics of freedom of speech, freedom of expression, artistic freedom, and the limitations of speech in public and in life. “It is strange that, as an artist, you have to go present your work to a military bureau,” Lucien Bourjeily tells NOW. “And in this play there was nothing from the usual sets of ‘taboos’ that could get censored – no sexual content, no violence, nothing like that. But the story itself criticizes the censorship bureau, and so they decided it was never going to get played.” Bourjeily explains that he presented the play for the usual censorship screening, and instead of taking the usual period of ten days, they got called back a month and a half later, requesting his presence at a meeting with the head of the Bureau.  [Link]