John Achkar is one of the few French-speaking stand-up comedians in Lebanon. He laughs about his daily life, his love affairs, the absurdities of the Lebanese community, always with the aim of bringing together the different religious groups, he who is seen above all as a Maronite Christian.
In his stand-ups, one of which is called "Maronite, divorced and vaccinated", he talks about his father who contests his Aliexpress purchases because "you have to buy from Christians" or who pushes him to close his company and find a job at the General Security because "the administration lacks Christians".
He discovered his passion for comedy at university, when he put on a stand-up comedy show to raise money for his class's trip to Tükiye. After getting his degree in economics, he went on to earn a master's degree in international relations from the same university. As part of an Erasmus exchange programme, he went to the Sciences Po Paris, got a Master's degree in Business Administration from the Singapore Management University and also took management courses at the IE Business School in Madrid. John Achkar worked with various international organisations in Lebanon. He then set up coaching modules and decided, in 2015, to help his mother, Rafka, who had opened a small bookshop in Ashrafieh in 1991.
On the performance side, John Achkar took to the stage of the Beirut Open Space in Mar Mikhaël for the first time in 2017. He continues with Awkword, the first stand-up comedy platform in Lebanon, whose KED theatre was born in the Quarantine area. Between stand-up comedy and his concept store, he continued his journey until 2019, when everything started to fall apart. Today, he divides his time between Lebanon and Dubai, where he went to prospect new markets for the concept store's creations and where, for the first time, he recorded a sketch in English on Tiktok that begins with "Why Did You Come to Dubai? He is currently touring Europe to promote his show "Wein 3ayish" (Where do you live), which is being performed in Arabic in Brussels, Paris, Copenhagen and also in Lausanne on 26 March.