Hisham Fageeh

Hisham Fageeh (Arabic: هشام فقيه; born October 26, 1987) is an Arab American comedian and actor originally from Saudi Arabia.

Life and career

Hisham Fageeh was born in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Fageeh began performing stand-up comedy as a student at the Columbia University, from which he graduated in May 2013. Around that time he began attending UCB Theater in New York, studying long form improvisation. Within a year Fageeh was taking the stage with comedians Dean Obeidallah, Maysoon Zayid, Aasif Mandvi, Aron Kader, and Hari Kondabolu. He began performing in Arabic after his satirical blog YouTube series "Isboo'iyat Hisham" (Hisham's weeklies) went viral in December 2011 joining the ranks with Fahad Albutairi and Bader Saleh in the Saudi stand-up circuits.^[1] He is known as the first Saudi to perform in Gotham Theater and headline an Arabic stand-up comedy tour in the United States and England.^[2]

He was a featured performer in the 2012 New York Arab-American Comedy Festival, both in the "New Faces" and "Haram night" shows.^[3] Fageeh is most known for his performance in the report from New York for La Yekthar. This specific segment of La Yekthar has been covered by many Western media outlets, such as BBC and the GlobalPost.^[4]

His Bob Marley-inspired “No woman, No drive” satire produced with Fahad Albutairi and Alaa Wardi quickly went viral on the same day that a number of Saudi women defied the driving ban in Saudi Arabia on 26 October 2013.^[5]

References