Step inside a Dubai play: How UAE stage actors leave daily life behind and spin magic from the ordinary

It’s a well-lit garden with chairs.

The patio has cosy couches and an uninvited cat has taken up residence on a couch.

But for the actors in a play, the garden is a quaint British house. It could even be a cruise ship. It could be anything and you would believe it, because that’s what the best theatre is all about as Priya Pinto, a Dubai-based transformational coach, writer and director of The Unfriend, says.

Slowly, quickly and then all at once, it’s this magic of imagination and power of slipping away into pages that fills this space.

For a few hours, the cast forget whether they are students, engineers, or working in the energy sector. They become someone else: maybe a suspicious guest dropping by, a harrowed woman trying politely to evict a visitor, or even a police officer who eats your lunch. That's the essence of The Unfriend, a sharp comedy that focuses on a rather peculiar guest 'Elsa', who might just be a murder suspect. But oh dear, her hosts, the Lindels are a little too polite to say so, even if they're teetering on the edge of insanity by the end of the play.

Before the performance in Alserkal this week, the cast, who is busy rehearsing in Pinto's garden, share their stories — why they joined theatre, what drew them to the stage, and why they keep returning.

Screenwriting, writing and directing

Bright-eyed Pinto, with a zest and energy that is impossible to resist, shares her story. A resident of Dubai for 25 years, she works as a transformation coach, specialised in helping people and bringing joy back to their lives. “Before this, I was a writer. One day BBC was holding a global amateur filmmaking competition and I wrote my own film. The screenwriting bug bit hard,” explains Pinto, who has worked on the series 24, which starred Anil Kapoor.

She would ‘peddle’ her scripts in Mumbai, going back and forth between two countries. She would have continued that journey, but, as she says, she suffered a personal tragedy. “My husband passed away suddenly at 39. My children were seven and nine. And so, I chose to stay back in Dubai, and it has been 11 years since,” explains Pinto, who also runs a support group for women, Widow Warriors, who have suffered through similar circumstances. The sisterhood thrives, and Pinto feels an immense pride and joy to be a part of it.

‘I need to feel that emotion’

Dubai felt empowering for the single mother—she bought her own home. Her children are now studying abroad, and slowly the path to theatre became clearer. “One day, I was sitting with friends, and two of them had bucket lists. They wanted to win Oscars. So, they asked me to write something.”

And she wrote a play for Dubai’s Short N Sweet, where everyone played a character that was completely contradictory to their real personalities. “I had so much fun, and we never expected anything to happen. But purely on energy and not on talent, we made it to the semi-finals,” she says, laughing.

The excitement around Dubai’s theatre scene was electric. Pinto joined Dubai Junction’s director program and soon staged her own plays, each distinct from the other. One, performed at the Al Quoz Festival, explored the tense dynamics of a husband and wife; another was a witty, intimate story of two people discovering more about each other after a single night together. And now comes The Unfriend, which had Pinto laughing out loud while reading the script.

The thread tying all the productions together: A sense of conviction.  “Make me laugh, or make me cry, but I need to feel strong emotions,” says Pinto.  And trust — between actors, and between the actors and director — is crucial, especially when someone forgets a line or needs support on stage. Pinto feels fortunate to have cast that energy every single time.

After speaking to the different members of the cast, you see what she means. From learnings and un-learnings, musical way of learning lines, to breathing artistry for as long as they’ve known, the members show just a hint of what lies within Dubai’s pulsing theatre community.

Dubai, theatre and a sense of family

With a querulous air of dramatics, she says, “He’s been murdered!”

It’s clear: Brittany Wood enjoys her role as the questionable guest Elsa, a little too much. Watching her tug at your mind, pressing all the right buttons, is a delight — and it makes Kat Kinsella’s performance as Debbie Lindel, teetering on the edge of frantic desperation, all the more believable. Wood, who hails from the US and ‘all over the place’, as she says, has been in the UAE since 2021. She is no novice to theatre; she has acted in professional productions back home in the US. “That’s where, I made lifelong friends. So, it’s great to be a part of something similar.”

Elaborating further, “There's just something, in you, when you're playing a character. You learn to be comfortable with other people that you’re taking the stage with. And so, it becomes a lot easier to build that community. Whereas, if I was just going to work and coming home every day, I would never see these people or developed a friendship with them. So, it’s a way of broadening friendships here," she says.

Close friendships over theatre are sparked in different ways: It's the conversations with peoplex throughout. The first initial read-through, where you get to know about each other, and you keep developing a bond through the rehearsal process, as she says.

‘When you’re acting, you don’t act’

Scripts are read, lines are learned, but the real performance is in the alchemy of stepping into someone else’s shoes.

Tanush Singh, a high-school student with several productions under his belt at the Junction, says each rehearsal and lesson has been a learning experience. “Every time I go into a session, I learn something,” he explains. In The Unfriend, he keeps notes on Priya Pinto’s feedback to track where he’s going wrong. One of his biggest challenges, he admits, is forgetting lines. “For me, I write it down and go over it repeatedly,” he says.

For Singh, theatre has been a journey of passion and courage. His advice to new and aspiring actors?  “You have to open up, have a strong mindset, and be ready to think quickly. One of the best lessons I’ve learned is, don’t act when you’re acting — just be in the moment. Another is, fake it till you make it. Just keep going.” He praises Dubai’s theatre scene, noting how directors provide valuable guidance that has helped shape his growth as an actor.

While Singh embodies the curiosity, Seb Murphy brings a completely different energy — a seasoned professional balancing a full-time engineering career with his newfound love for theatre.

‘Learning lines like a rhyme’

It was a good summer—and, well, a good year—for Seb Murphy. He got into theatre, and he got married. “My wife is a dancer, and she kept pushing me to join her theatre group. So I got cast in a play, and that’s where Priya saw me. The Unfriend is my third-ever play,” he says, noting that he has been part of the community for 11 months.

By day, he is an engineer and travels frequently for work. By evening, he is an actor with over 600 lines to learn, and his method is unusually refreshing: he learns them by rhyming, almost like song lyrics. “I just keep reading them every day too, and through repetition, I learn,” he says.

Explaining his character in the play, he says, “I play Peter Lindel, a man who gets deeply irritated but has to remain polite to a woman named Elsa, who might just be a murderer. How do I get into this role? It takes some time to unwind from my work self—I shift gears in the car to get my mind ready.”

From Shakespearean nobles to a policeman who steals your lunch

He’s played a gullible Venetian nobleman in Shakespeare’s Othello. Keeping with the Bard, he also starred in The Book of Will—also staged at The Junction—a sharp, spirited tale about the race to preserve Shakespeare’s manuscripts before they vanished forever. In the Unfriend, he plays a policeman 'who solves crimes and eats your lunch.

Harry Apostoleris, a senior researcher in the energy sector, isn't new to the stage, by any means. In fact, Pinto praises his ability to memorise lines easily, and without much of an ado.

When it comes to explaining what he likes about acting, Apostoleris is honest and doesn't turn poetic. "I only have terrible answers for this," he muses. "I can't say I've always been called to it, can I? I can't say why, it's always just spoken to me. It's just that when I have time, I like to get on stage. It's just a feeling. I wish that I had better words."

Maybe he doesn't need better words. That feeling itself, is enough.

‘I want to keep this part of me very strong’

As Apostoleris reflects on the instinct that draws him to the stage, another cast member steps up with a very different energy—one driven by pure, youthful conviction.

13-year-old Manon Maindivide, the youngest member of the cast, just breathes theatre. Her resume itself is astounding: Born and raised in Paris, she moved to Dubai in 2023. “This isn’t my first production. I have done previous productions on stage, Jekyll and Hyde, Seven Deadly Sins,” she says, explaining that she has starred in commercials, TV shows, and snagged small roles in French films. In fact: She has practically grown up in theatre.

What is it about acting that she loves so much? She answers, “I really like how I step into a character, different emotions and I really love figuring out why is this person staying out. I like the different personalities and I really want to keep this part of me very strong,” she says.

Maindivide’s determination to keep her theatrical spark alive mirrors a larger truth about the city: Dubai’s performing arts scene is built on people who refuse to let that spark dim.

Dubai's Junction

Across the UAE, theatre thrives in many tongues—French, Marathi, Hindi, German and more. These groups are built on the passion of busy professionals who squeeze rehearsals into already packed days simply because the stage gives them something nothing else does. Gautam Goenka, a seasoned director and one of the forces behind establishing Dubai’s Junction in 2015, says it plainly: there’s no money here, only a deeper joy. It nourishes the soul.

He describes Dubai’s theatre scene as a canvas constantly refreshed by those who step in with their own brushstrokes—some natural performers, others determined learners. That’s where workshops come in: “We have workshops on acting technique, methodology, voice modulation, even ones focused purely on facial expressions or communicating with just your eyes,” he says. And people show up. They audition, attend sessions, compete, and commit—driven purely by their love for the craft.