Award-winning Canadian play The Green Line by Makram Ayache opens the 47th season at Buddies in Bad Times Theatre this September in partnership with In Arms Theatre, the MENA Collective and Factory Theatre.

The Toronto Premiere of The Green Line features an entirely Arab cast, all in their Buddies in Bad Times and Factory Theatre debuts: Waseem Alzer, Oshen Aoun, Basma Baydoun and Zaynna Khalife.

Set and costume design is by Anahita Dehbonehie, lighting design is by Jareth Li with associate Kit Norman, and sound design is by Chris Pereira and Heidi Chan, with stage management by Laura Baxter.

A poetic, heartbreaking story of intergenerational queer history in Lebanon, The Green Line weaves together civil war Beirut with a contemporary nightclub, following one family’s journey to discover their past. The play was recently named as a finalist for the 2025 Lambda Literary Awards. It was also a finalist for the 2024 Governor General’s Literary Award, and Winner of the Betty Mitchell Award for Outstanding New Play in 2022.

“It's an honour to offer this story at a time when Arab voices are so acutely being erased and mischaracterized within the superstructures of media and politics. Working with a full Arab team on a bilingual production is the kind of thing I only dreamed I could achieve with this story. We started exploring The Green Line in the 2019 Rhubarb Festival at Buddies, and now, to bring it back as its director, helming my own company, and with the support of Buddies and Factory Theatre, feels like the perfect offering for its Toronto premiere.”

– Makram Ayache, Playwright & Director, The Green Line

Season tickets for The Green Line are on sale now. Visit buddiesinbadtimes.com to learn more.

The Green Line

Written & Directed by Makram Ayache

Toronto Premiere

September 19 – October 4, 2025 | Opens September 25

A bilingual production in English and Arabic, with subtitles at every performance. Produced by In Arms Theatre Company + the MENA Collective in association with Buddies in Bad Times Theatre and Factory Theatre.

Memory is a funny thing, so quiet if left undisturbed.

Two love stories twist together in two Beiruts riven by time and conflict. In 1978, two women share spit on the ends of cigarettes and yearn for tenderness under the tumult of war. In 2018, a foreigner and a local flirt over vodka sodas as their contradictions collect like condensation on the sides of their glasses.

Poetic realism braids past and present into the green line of vegetation that bisected the concrete of Lebanon’s capital during the civil war. The Green Line unearths queer history that has always been there, whether our ancestors wanted it to be inherited or erased.

The 2025 – 26 season at Buddies features work from some of Canada’s most imaginative playwrights and artists, including world premiere productions from Bilal Baig, Jill Connell, and Susanna Fournier, critically-acclaimed work from Makram Ayache and Gabriel Dharmoo, new performance art from xLq, and the 47th annual Rhubarb!—Canada’s longest-running, genre-bending live arts festival.

Photo: Makram Ayache. © 2025 Fran Chudnoff.