Partner Perspectives | Leish Troupe Manifesto 2026

A new year begins and the world is on the brink of utter chaos.

Governments are led by merchants and perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity; and the international law is dying in courthouse due to the absence of prosecution that has become a routine.

Societies wake up on events that occurred long ago and begin to cry out, while other societies bury the realities they lived through and continue to live through today, drowning them in illusion and remain in silence. In both cases, the gap widens between them and their governments, which no longer care about anything but their own narrow interests.

Technology is becoming an absolute power with the consent and blessing of the majority, and a global economic system is slowly collapsing in the absence of an alternative.

Culture frames itself within its narrow identities, and most of its institutions revolve in a spiral of self-preservation. Some are willing to pay any price, even if it means losing their role and reason for existence, while others look for other ways out, like someone looking for a needle in a haystack.

As for art, it stands bewildered and lost amidst the speed and ease of this era, the chaos of thought, the absurdity of content creation, the decline of public artistic taste, and the nonsense of social media, struggling with the will to reduce it to mere entertainment.

And here in Damascus, the culture and arts sector is facing enormous challenges and obstacles. The gap is deep and wide between those working in it and the Ministry of Culture regarding the concept of culture itself, which makes it difficult to run its institutions, if not cause them to collapse completely, as is happening in the Higher Institute of Dramatic Arts.

A segment of the independent cultural sector operates with impunity, oblivious to its surroundings, choosing to align itself with populism rather than the public. It exploits a seemingly free space, yet one that remains captive to the ideational framework of the organizations that control and confine it to their own agendas. Another segment takes a step back, contemplating the bigger picture and searching for a way out of the entire system—a system that, with fragile and timid tools, confronts the increasingly dominant and powerful authority of the Ministry of Social Affairs and Labor.

Even more alarming is that Syrian society is experiencing the most severe rift in its history, with ongoing violations, massacres, and infringements on personal freedoms and freedom of expression, with unlimited local and global support for hate speech, sectarianism, and media disinformation.

This is the world we live in today, and this is our Syrian reality as we see it. So, what is the role of art in such a reality?

For us, we have always believed that art is an act of resistance that is inseparable in any way from its environment and historical circumstances, far from the slogans and authorities of funding, close to the necessities and needs on the ground.

Therefore, we see in amplifying the voice of the voiceless and actively contributing to the path of recovery and healing are our basic and ultimate role for today.

To achieve this, we are aware of the need to begin with ourselves, taking serious and honest steps to understand our mistakes and define our responsibilities. This requires a firm decision not to repeat the same mistakes again and again, using the same tools that have brought us to where we are today, and which will contribute in the future to lead us to something much worse.

This requires a sincere and courageous reassessment and rearrangement of ourselves, and a broad openness to abandoning our old acquired knowledge and misconceptions, to make room for learning something new, and re-learning to question what we take for granted.

We need to acknowledge the extent of our responsibilities for what has happened before and what will come after, and a persistent endeavor to invent different tools and strategies that help us to commit to raising the voices that face unprecedented governmental and populist silencing and repression.

We, as a large part of the Syrian patriots, do not want to follow the same paths. Rather, we want a homeland for all, and a life that guarantees the right to freedom and dignity for all, under a state of law that ensures equality in rights, duties, and accountability for all, and within a national sovereignty free from the control of any force, whether hostile or friendly.

Art was born with humanity in every place and time, and it has worked and will continue to work for humanity today, yesterday, and tomorrow.

Damascus, January 2026

Leish Troupe
www.leishtroupe.com