Actor, singer, writer and teaching artist from Beirut, Lebanon.
Lama El Homaïssi is a Lebanese trilingual actor, singer and writer currently based in New York City. She moved from Lebanon, her come country, to pursue an M.F.A. in Musical Theater at the Boston Conservatory at Berklee ('19).
She is a member of the Joe's Pub Working Group 2022-2023 and an artist in residence with Safe Haven Incubator for Musicians, a residency program run by AFI, Tamizdat and Westbeth Artists Housing. As a SHIM:NYC resident, Lama has developed an original cabaret entitled Not Harem Material and an original rock musical entitled Radio Beirut, a story about diaspora, homecoming, loss and a generational gift that comes calling.
Lama started her career as a television writer in Lebanon, creating original shows for the Sony Pictures Television Arabia and Talpa Middle East catalogs, developing commissions for clients, as well as adapting productions to the SWANA region (most notably The Voice and So You Think You Can Dance). In 2017, Lama moved to the United States to pursue her MFA in Musical Theater at Boston Conservatory at Berklee, where she honed her skills in acting and storytelling through song. Her capstone project Article 534 was a play about queer identity, resistance, and safe havens in Beirut that combined storytelling with music. The project was titled after the archaic article in the Lebanese penal code that criminalizes the LGBTQIA+ community, deeming queer relations “contrary to the order of nature” to this day. While in Boston, Lama served as a dramaturgy assistant on Daniel and Patrick Lazour’s We Live in Cairo, a new musical about the 2011 Egyptian uprising. She contributed Arabic lyrics to the song “Tahrir Is Now” on the Lazour brothers’ album Flap My Wings: Songs from We Live in Cairo, released in 2020. Lama later went on to work as a Dramaturgy and Publications Assistant for American Repertory Theater’s 2019-2020 season.
Venues Lama has previously performed at include: Joe's Pub, Lincoln Center (David Rubenstein Atrium and Stanley H. Kaplan Penthouse), Club OBERON, Berklee Performance Center, WAM Theatre, Northampton Center for the Arts, The Foundry, foolsFURY, and Metro Al Madina. Her writing has been featured in The Harvard Gazette, The Brooklyn Rail and HowlRound Theatre Commons.
