More than 50 Arab-American comics, actors, playwrights and filmmakers will perform from Sunday through Wednesday. A festival pass, which includes one ticket for one performance at each event (theater, comedy and film) is $36 at Smarttix. Tickets to individual performances also are available.

Elias EL-Hage, general manager and a co-producer of the New York Arab-American Comedy Festival, remembers with amazement the not-for-profit festival's first run last November. He and his co-producers, New York-based stand-up comics Dean Obeidallah and Maysoon Zayid (both New Jersey natives), had modest hopes. They had plenty of competition from other theater and comedy festivals, and no money for advertising their three nights of stand-up and comedic theater written, directed and acted by Arabs and Arab-Americans.

So they put the word out on some e-mail lists frequented by Arab-Americans and hoped for the best. The festival sold out a week before its start. Then came opening night, and the hordes of reporters, casting agents and people clamoring for tickets.

"It really flabbergasted me," said EL-Hage, 26, who is completing a master's in theater management and producing at Columbia University. "We're in this tiny little theater in the Lower East Side, there's no lobby space, it's sold out and people just keep on coming."

This year's festival has expanded to four nights in bigger theaters and with double the shows, but it is on the verge of selling out as well. While Maha Chehoaoui, a director in last year's festival and an actor in this year's, called the success "inspiring," she added, "I think it also indicates a need. ... There's a high demand for our voices both within our community and outside of it."

It's a demand that started with 9/11 and the media's focus on the Middle East, and it hasn't let up as the Iraqi conflict continues. The comedy festival's appearance on the scene couldn't be more timely, as Arab-American artists look to eliminate some of the stereotypes that plague their community.

"There's this feeling that some other entity is defining us in a bold, thick marker and not necessarily writing everything down," explained Chehoaoui, 30, who was born in Ramsey and spent part of her childhood in Glen Rock, "and decisions are being made based on that in people's hearts and people's minds and in political decisions, and someone has to pick up the pen and write more."

Twenty-two countries belong to the League of Arab States, and all share a language and culture - but not a religion, Obeidallah says. In the United States, roughly 60 percent of Arabs are Christian, and the comedy festival is a mix of Christians and Muslims with a couple of Arab Jews thrown in, said EL-Hage.

Obeidallah, who is half-Palestinian and half-Italian and from Paramus, thought up the idea for the festival with Zayid. The two had been getting a lot of media coverage, and they wanted to share their exposure.

The festival "shows Arabs can play something else than Terrorist Number Three," quips Zayid, who was born to Palestinian immigrants and grew up in North Jersey.

Among the headliners are L.A.-based stand-up comic Ahmed Ahmed, who won the Richard Pryor Award at this summer's Edinburgh Festival and is featured with Obeidallah in the DVD version of Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 911."

EL-Hage and Chehoaoui head up Nibras, an Arab-American theater collective in New York that is helping to produce the comedy festival. Chehoaoui remembers the group's first meeting, shortly before 9/11, as "joyous," with Arab-American artists excited just about being in the same room together. Their next meeting was shortly after 9/11 and noticeably grimmer.

"After we came back, after Sept. 11 there was this strong sense of urgency," Chehoaoui remembered. "Like a palpable sense of now that we know each other, we have to do something."

That "something" resulted in the show "Sajjil," presented at the 2002 International New York Fringe Festival.

The impetus continued to grow, and a year later EL-Hage met Zayid and Obeidallah, heard about their plans for a comedy festival, and signed himself and Nibras on as producers.