A Lebanese sense of humor meets KSA’s fast-moving, forward-looking spirit this Friday, as 3a Ka3ba returns to Riyadh
By Abeer Abdalla, Managing Editor
It’s a night where sharp improvisation and spontaneous energy come together, joyfully honoring the transformation happening across the Kingdom. Lebanon’s 3a Ka3ba is back in Riyadh this Friday with no script, no plan, and a full room ready to tell them what to do.
Everything in the Kingdom seems to come with a ticking timer. From the metro to the stadiums to the airports, and the new outpost of your favorite Western brand, now Saudized in honor and in celebration of our transformation. But as we get closer to 2030, one thing we haven’t forgotten is to laugh. This Friday, four men from Lebanon will walk on stage with no plan at all, and remind us how to play.
They call themselves 3a Ka3ba, a name that means ‘at random’ or ‘haphazardly’ in Lebanese Arabic, capturing their freewheeling, unpredictable approach to comedy. If you haven’t caught them yet, here’s what you’re walking into. Fouad Yammine, Jad Bou Karam, Anthony Hamawi, and Tony Dagher show up at the Crowne Plaza RDC with nothing written down. They ask the room for a word, a situation, a family drama, and build the whole evening out of whatever we hand them. No two shows are the same, because no two audiences are.
Their manager, Maurice Daou, doesn’t pretend otherwise. “If you’ve never seen 3aka3ba before, come without expectations,” he says. “Because honestly, we don’t even know exactly what’s going to happen.”
We planned for fun, too
Anyone who read the Vision 2030 document back in 2016 knows entertainment was never a side note. It was right there, with a number attached: household spending on culture and entertainment was meant to climb from 2.9 percent to 6 percent. The General Entertainment Authority (GEA) came that same year. Then the Quality of Life Program, with recreation built into it.
We didn’t need a government program to be funny, of course. Tash Ma Tash had us laughing at ourselves on TV from 1993, and Jeddah Comedy Club opened in 2012. But what changed was size. In 2025 GEA launched the Riyadh Comedy Festival at Boulevard City, with more than 50 international comedians on the bill.
Look at the listings, not the festival
But festivals are supposed to be big. The real tell is the everyday schedule. Scroll through dedicated entertainment listing sites in Riyadh over the next few weeks, and there it is: Khaled Jwad on September 25, a comedy night at Six Flags Qiddiya City on the 26th, Tony Abou Jaoude on October 1, Alaa El Sheikh on the 15th. No big campaign behind any of it. It’s just a normal month now.
3a Ka3ba is not new to Riyadh, their Riyadh show at Mohammed Al Ali Theatre in June was sold out, so it wasn’t a question if they should come back, but when. After this week’s run in Riyadh, they head to Jeddah the very next night.
Eight hundred shows, and the years they were made in
The troupe got together in 2019, the same year Lebanon’s economy started to come apart. After that came the devastating port explosion in August 2020. And still, by their own count, they’ve done around 800 unscripted shows since, across Lebanon, the Arab world, Africa, Canada, and Europe, and somehow found time to open LAF Improv Hub back home, a venue for shows, open mics, and workshops.
The Lebanese have a particular flair for mixing joy and pain and continuing on with grace and pride. Eight hundred shows, through all of that. You keep laughing, you keep showing up, and one way or another, you keep going.
Daou puts it plainly. “The Lebanese accent and references give 3aka3ba its identity, but the situations behind the comedy are universal,” he said. “Sometimes a very Lebanese reference needs a little context, yet emotions and human behavior rarely need translation.”
The group primarily performs in Arabic, with Lebanese dialect shaping much of the humor and timing, though they also use English when the scene calls for it. If you don’t speak Arabic, you might miss a few regional jokes, but most of the scenarios and reactions come across clearly through physical comedy, tone, and expression. For non-Arabic speakers, the shows remain accessible and welcoming, drawing laughs from shared human experiences, as much as from language.
The audience writes the script
This is where improv and Riyadh really click. We’re not just sitting there watching. We’re handing them the material, and according to Daou, Riyadh crowds stand out for “their energy and how willing they are to engage and become part of the show.”
Look around during a 3a Ka3ba show in Riyadh, and you’ll notice just how mixed the crowd is. Saudis fill the seats, joined by Lebanese expats, other Arabs, and plenty of international residents who now call the city home. It’s a natural cross-section of Riyadh itself, where laughter itself brings together people from different backgrounds, ages, and even languages. For the Lebanese sitting next to us, it gets personal.
“Sometimes one expression, one accent or one very familiar family situation gets a reaction before the joke is even finished,” he said. “For Lebanese people abroad, that can become a small piece of home for an evening.”
That matters more than it sounds. People stay where they feel at home, and Riyadh wants to be that city, for us and for everyone who moved here to build it with us.
Daou also said something that goes well beyond comedy: “You discover what people laugh about, what they’re comfortable making fun of, what they relate to.”
But even still what remains is a softer and more lasting realization. Joy is a necessary part of any transformation. We’re building a lot of things at once in Saudi Arabia; it’s good to know that laughing together is one of them.
