L-R: Jana Zenadeen as "Chantal" and Leila Gazale as "Pascale" in Live! With Pascale and Chantal.

November saw New Yorkers introduced to the fabulously outrageous talk-show hosts of Beirut's newest TV sensation, "Live! With Pascale and Chantal."

Pascale, a former Miss Lebanon, is a tall, longhaired brunette who likes to expose her trim figure by wearing bright, skin-revealing tops and bell-bottoms. Chantal, who aspires to be a serious journalist, favors the flirty-yet-professional Ally McBeal look that entails short-skirt suits and heels.

The two women greet their guests with "Ca va?" and address their callers as "Cheri(e)." When not competing for the attention of their participants, they spew dangerous advice about topics such as sex and diet. But don't bother searching your TV guides for the date and time of the show because it doesn't actually exist.

Pascale and Chantal are the alter egos of the real-life duo of Leila Gazale and Jana Zenadeen, characters expressly created for New York's first Arab-American comedy festival that took place last month.

Arab-American comedy is a relatively new phenomenon, one that gained in impetus after the 9/11 tragedy, with the aim of fostering understanding of Arab culture through humor.

Today there are many entertainers exploring this previously lightly examined subject. In fact, when it was time to call for contributors, the organizers of the Arab-American comedy festival were deluged with applicants and finding enough talent to fill a three-day lineup.

The sold-out opening night, which concentrated on theatrical pieces, included excerpts from Chocolate in Heat: Growing up Arab in America a one-act performance about a young Jordanian prince encountering class-ism from fellow Arabs in America, and Sajjil an exploration of what it means to be Arab in America featuring young performers including Najla Said, daughter of the late Edward Said.

Of all the shows, Pascale and Chantal was undoubtedly the most outlandish and amusing. "There is a lot of new theater in New York that focuses on Arab-American or Palestinian struggles, and things that relate to discrimination in a post-9/11 world," says Gazale.

"What we've found is that a lot of people here do not understand that there is a savvy, hip part to Middle Eastern culture. Lebanese know about fashion, European and American pop culture, they speak French, English, they know movie gossip, but they're also very proud to be Lebanese. And that's the side of the Middle East that we wanted people to learn more about."

Having watched a lot of Arab talk shows on satellite television, Gazale and Zenadeen, who met in acting classes in 2002, felt that the Q&A format of those programs was most suitable to the kind of personalities they wanted to portray.

"The Lebanese are very good at taking the one thing they're good at personally whether it is that they are good looking or they are very smart, or very determined and they go full-force with it," Zenadeen says.

"I think our piece shows that Leila is the beautiful, air-head type, and mine is the sophisticated wannabe Barbara Walters. The two kind of embody the drive that Lebanese have and that fascinates people."

This acutely satirical look at Lebanese culture comes from two women who did not grow up in Lebanon but who have a strong connection to the country of their parents' youth. Zenadeen's father and mother are both Lebanese but she spent her childhood in Jeddah. After the 1991 Gulf War, her family emmigrated to Washington, D.C., and she has lived in America since. As a young girl, she vacationed in Lebanon during the summers, and recently, as an adult, she has been back several times to visit, but her exposure to the country has mostly been brief and conflict-ridden.

"I never feel at peace fully unless I'm in Beirut but I don't think I could ever live there because I've adapted to a lifestyle that is so different," says Zenadeen, who wants to be a full time actress.

"On the one hand, I feel so open there ... you can start a conversation with the guy in the dequeni down the street. It's such a warm and generous culture. People in the states are so independent and focused. But living here is very convenient and everything is bulleted: you do this, you get to here, you do that, you get to there.

"In Lebanon, there is no format, it's chaotic; people are honking in the streets, the traffic lights are there for decoration, and prices go up and down depending on who you are and how cute you look that day."
Gazale, who was born in Ohio, learnt about her Arab heritage from her parents, aunts and uncles. Her mother left Palestine in 1948 and moved to Lebanon where she met Gazale's father, a Palestinian. He was at the time residing in America and after the marriage, the couple settled in Ohio. She has only been to Lebanon twice; the first time was three years ago.

"I was fascinated politically with the area," says Gazale, who is a contract lawyer for the Conde Naste magazine publishing empire when not acting.

"When we lived in Michigan, my mother taught bilingual education mostly to refugees from southern Lebanon, and that had a big affect on me when I was younger. Then there was the fact that so many of my friends often go back to Lebanon and I wanted to see for myself what it was like."

Like Zenadeen, she felt a strong sense of belonging physically and culturally but also realized that her American upbringing differentiated her from Lebanese.

Perhaps, ultimately, what makes Zenadeen and Gazale's comedy so poignant is the fact it is written by women who understand the culture and yet are detached enough from it to be fascinated and curious about it.

The play is indeed an East meets and clashes with West exploration. Pascale and Chantal's guest is an American doctor who has written a book entitled Should I or Shouldn't I: Sex in the Modern Middle East. A caller from Beirut wants to know if she should undergo liposuction or "lipo-suk-sion," as the Francophile hosts call it. The doctor says that Lebanon has one of the highest number of plastic surgeries, second only to California, and that a study has shown 67 percent of women regret their choice to have one. Pascale exclaims this isn't true, and goes on to recommend the tabbouleh diet, which she herself has tried, as an alternate way to lose weight fast. The doctor, who can barely get a word in, is horrified.

"The advice that our characters give is terrible, it's based on stereotypes, but that's the humor of the piece," says Zenadeen.

In the show, Pascale and Chantal hold an irreverent attitude toward the doctor and show little patience with their callers (one of them accuses Pascale of dating her boyfriend). A fight ensues between the two hosts near the end about who is prettier.

"The skit goes through lots of ups and downs," says Gazale. "Pascale and Chantal start out very confident and then certain things happen that cut their egos down. And there is this doctor who is the voice of reason but he never wins. No matter what he says, we don't listen. In the end, we come out resilient and strong, and everyone loves us."

It is a very funny show.

With luck the two can perform more Arab-American comedy in the US and Lebanon, promoting better understanding between cultures.