The Gazette from Montreal, Quebec, Canada • C3

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2019 MONTREAL GAZETTE C3 Theatre becomes therapy it '19 The Masked Singer on Fox may have a kooky concept for an unscripted show, but it draws big numbers each week, michael beckerfox WHO IS THAT MASKED B-LBTER? Fox's mystery singer format injects new life into a sadly lagging genre Syrians play back scenes of trauma to help them cope BASSEM MROUE BEIRUT The young Syrian woman walked on stage and began telling the story of her brother's abduction in the early years of her country's civil war, wiping away tears as she recalled the 2013 incident that changed her life. The woman, who identified herself as Mae from a government stronghold in the central city of Horns, said Ihsan's disappearance in 2013 turned her into a more tolerant person, despite the eight-year conflict that has killed more than 400,000 people and displaced half the country's population. Inside the theatre in the Lebanese capital of Beirut, Syrians from other parts of the country who support rival factions listened carefully to what she said. Once she was done, 10 Syrian actors dressed in blackbegan re-enacting what Mae had just said, one of them screaming: "Ihsan, I miss you a lot!" Another walked on stage and said: "No matter what our religion or ethnicity is, we are all Syrians." The group of seven men and three women has been training for three months to do "playback theatre" during which members of the audience tell their stories and then see them re-enacted on stage an initiative to get war victims to talk through their trauma, initiate dialogue and help forge reconciliation. The training was organized by Fighters for Peace, which was founded in 2014 by former Lebanese militia members who took part in their country's destructive 1975-90 civil war and are now peace activists.

They havebeen using playback theatre for years as part of their campaign to promote peace and try to prevent another breakout of war in Lebanon. Despite the mostly friendly atmosphere in the hall on the top floor of a building in Beirut, tensions boiled over at one point, reflecting the bitterness and hate that nearly eight years of war has created in Syria. Once they were done reacting, a young man in the audience stood up angrily and shouted at Mae, screaming that the government was to blame for everything that happened over the past years in Syria in a tone that showed he did not care about her brother's fate. "You are hurting me," the woman replied, to which he responded: "I want to hurt you," before he burst out of the theatre. Syria's conflict began in March 2011 with largely peaceful protests against President Bashar al-As-sad's rule but eventually turned into an armed insurgency and civil war after a violent crackdown on the protest movement.

It has occasionally spilled over to neighbouring Lebanon, where the country's population is divided between supporters of the Syrian government and others who support the opposition. Related fighting in Lebanon between rival groups in recent years has left dozens of people dead or wounded, mostly in the northern city of Tripoli. "By reacting to what the members of the audience say, we are supporting them morally and helping them heal," said Maher Sheikh Khodor, 28, a freelance photographer and graphic designer from Syria who has been living in Lebanon since 2014. Khodor, who is from the central Syrian town of Salamiyeh and has been training in playback theatre for months added that the work helped participants meet Syrians from other ethnicities and sects. Another team member, Hassan Aqoul, 28, said the training "broke the ice between us." Aqoul, who has been living in Lebanon since 2012, said those who trained them are experienced, and a few days after the training began "we started feeling as if we have been friends for a long time.

"They have good ideas. They were fighters and now reconciled and discovered that they were wrong," he said. The Associated Press thing has to be a safe bet. Network executives take fewer chances. When something like The Masked Singer comes along, it should signal to the marketplace that outside oftheboxis somethinggood.

We're hopeful the pendulum is swinging back toward unscripted a little bit." The Masked Singer isn't the only series aiming to recapture the go-go early 2000s and its "anything goes" reality mantra. Several of the signature shows of that era are making a comeback thanks to reboot mania including many that originated at Fox under Darnell. USA Network recently revived Temptation Island, while Fox plans to bringback Paradise Hotel. But just like they did a decade ago, networks and producers are also looking abroad to find the next big, loud hit. Coming this summer, CBS has ITV Studios' Love Island, based on the smash U.K.

sexy interactive dating competition. Among the South Korean titles being pitched to networks is I Can See Your Voice, described as a "mystery music game show" in which a recording star must determine which contestants can carry a tune and which are tone-deaf. Another competition show in the market, Small Fortune, hails from the U.K. and puts contestants in a miniature world. The Masked Singer executive producer Craig Plestis said the key to success is to be fearless.

"This opened a door," Plestis said. "Don't be derivative: Be fresh, be different. "People are tired of seeing the same old stuff. I know from my past when I took chances, I always won. And when I played it safe it was a two-base hit.

It's good to take a swing. And this was a huge swing." Variety mm of networks, cable and streamers have phoned and said, 'Thank Wade said. "Because a hit gives you carte blanche, whether you're at my network or another network, to kind of try different things. It's difficult to take risks as a network if nothing is working." It's perhaps no coincidence that, as Fox reports it, The Masked Singer is also the "first of 357 unscripted series over the past 15 years to rank as the season's No. 1 unscripted show in its first cycle." The last program to do that was Fox's Joe Millionaire in 2003 among the most memorable series to come out of reality TV's "Outlandish Age." Reality guru Mike Darnell, who ran Fox's alternative department at the time, was the first person to call Wade the morning after the debut of The Masked Singer to congratulate him on the numbers.

Darnell, now the president of Warner Bros, unscripted and alternative TV, agreed that the show harked back to Fox's reality heyday when the network took chances on crazy concepts like Who Wants to Marry a Multi-Millionaire, My Big Fat Obnoxious Fiance, The Swan, The Littlest Groom, Who's Your Daddy? and Man vs. Beast. "It feels very much like the roots of the company," Darnell said. "I'm very proud of them over there; I think they did a nice job with it. It makes unscripted feel fun, and it also opens up a door to say, 'Hey, the genre still has a lot of life in it it just needs the right thing at the right It certainly couldn't have come at abetter moment.

While peak TV has fuelled a scripted renaissance, reality TV hasn't been nearly as prolific. That's been particularly true on broadcast, with veteran shows like Survivor, Dancingwith the Stars and The Voice taking up most of the prime time shelf space. "There was a long period of time where not a lot of new hits were broken on broadcast," ITV Studios America CEO David George said. "We live in an era where every MICHAEL SCHNEIDER LOS ANGELES Reality TV may have got its groove back, and it's all thanks to a bunch of B-list celebrities attempting to carry a tune underneath elaborate costumes. The success of Fox's The Masked Singer has injected new life in the unscripted world, which has struggled in recent years to generate the kind of buzz and excitement that defined the genre in the early 2000s.

Now, producers are dusting off edgy formats that might have been considered too outlandish just a year ago, and executives say they're feeling emboldened to take a chance on unusual concepts. Much like the early golden age of reality, many of those formats hail from overseas this time especially from territories like South Korea, where the ideabehind Masked Singer originated. "There has definitely been a change in pitches and types of pitches," said Fox alternative entertainment president Rob Wade. "People are definitely thinking in a different way already. They're like, 'Hey, I brought this in five years ago, and I was told I was a crazy person, but what about The Masked Singer features celebs like Ricki Lake, Margaret Cho and Tommy Chong crooning their favourite songs while hidden in costumes that, for instance, turn them into a raven, a poodle or a pineapple.

It's silly, it's visually entertaining and, at the show's core, there's a compelling mystery who's behind the mask? The series has clearly resonated with audiences. Backed by a hefty Fox marketing campaign, Masked Singer opened in January to the highest ratings of any unscripted series in more than sevenyears. It's also TV's top-rated reality show in four years and the No. 3 broadcast network entertainment series of the season (behind This Is Us and The Big Bang Theory). "Nearly all of the senior heads.