Kristelle Zibara was ready to put acting aside - then she found a perfect fit, playing plus-sized beauty Queen Fatima
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JanJanuary 2021 at 3:06am
Zibara trained at comedy institutions Second City, Groundlings and Upright Citizens Brigade, whose alumni include Amy Poehler, Catherine O Hara and Melissa McCarthy.
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The first time audiences see Kristelle Zibara, she s wearing leggings with pink underwear on top and dancing up a bedroom storm to Britney Spears.
She has the charisma to pull it off.
Zibara is playing a Britney-loving bakery worker and first-time pageant contender, in the anti-romantic comedy Queen Fatima, making its world premiere at Parramatta s Riverside Theatres as part of Sydney Festival.
The Sydney Festival is the premium event of the harbour city summer, with a mix of Australian and international cultural events to keep the city buzzing in the first few weeks of every new year. This year, the global pandemic has necessarily put the brakes on any international aspect of the festival program, and festival director Wesley Enoch says he s relished the opportunity to make this year s event an entirely Australian-made affair: I ve seen it as a bit of a blessing, to be honest! Often I ve been criticised for not being international enough, he says, because my fascinations are about Indigenous storytelling, First Nations storytelling about the Australian context and Australian artists, about commissioning new work. Weirdly, I m a little bit in my element. Last year we had 45 commissions and new works. This year we have 39. You start to go, Oh. it s not that different .
Queen Fatima brings Western Sydney Lebanese sass to the stage
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Queen Fatima brings Western Sydney Lebanese sass to the stage
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Growing up in Western Sydney, James Elazzi and his family watched Lebanese pageants on TV. “They were sort of otherworldly,” the playwright recalls, “and I realised recently that there was a Miss Lebanon Australia pageant. I was quite interested in how they do it here, so I spent a lot of time researching and analysing.”
Elazzi noticed while growing up that there was a huge emphasis on the body in his community, particularly with the women in his life. “I ve always been interested in our perceptions of what we look like and our bodies,” he says. “I wanted to explore the notion of a really confident Lebanese-Australian girl that s not afraid of what she looks like – it s everybody else that s always telling her ‘this is why