Her Palestinian parents were concerned at first. What if she had fallen into a dishonorable profession? Then, after seeing a story about her on Al Jazeera, the Arab cable network, they were relieved. "They saw I was legit and not wrapped around a pole," she said. Ms. Zayid's popularity and schedule of appearances soared after the first Arab-American Comedy Festival, which she helped found, in 2003. Instead of working only on weekends, she performed in 40 cities in 3 nations in 3 months.
The fourth annual Arab-American Comedy Festival, which will run in New York from Nov. 14 to Nov. 19, was founded in 2003 by Obeidallah and his comedian friend Maysoon Zayid in an attempt to shatter negative stereotypes that have pervaded post-Sept. 11 media. The festival, which began as a three-day blend of standup and sketch comedy, was widely successful among diverse audiences and sold out the past two years. The show this year has been expanded to six days and spans three venues.
As with previous ADC conferences, most of the attendees showed up for the banquets, rather than the panels. Several awards were given. Star-gazers flocked to celebrities. Between panels, the bazaar area’s exhibitors, from the Palestine Center to Imagine Life, attracted crowds interested in their offerings. Each morning, countless panel-goers looked tired from the hafla the night before. And as the comedian Maysoon Zayid pointed out at Sunday's luncheon, the ADC convention still served as Arab America's biggest matchmaking event.
"Who produces a play according to opinion polls?" asked the Palestinian-American comedienne Maysoon Zayid derisively. "I mean, what's that? How many other plays have they polled? It's insane. An American woman wrote the play. Who else has to be polled before we can hear her voice?" "Maybe they're waiting for peace in the Middle East," said Maha Chehaoui of the Nibras Theater, a small Arab-American theater company in New York. Ms. Chehaoui is one among her own marginalized community who, like Ms. Zayid, is making her voice heard.
From the Palestinian woman from New Jersey accused of sending a bomb to her Christian grandmother in Bethlehem to the bossy Arab-immigrant mom concerned about a match for her hip Westernized daughter, Arab-American humor struck a universal chord. The New York festival - headlined "The Arabs are Coming!" - was founded three years ago by stand-up comics Obeidallah and Maysoon Zayid, an actress who performed the first live comedy tour in Palestine. The nonprofit festival's seven comedians and 18 actors volunteered their time for the Los Angeles shows.
