It is 8pm on a rainy Friday in Beirut and a piece of true Arab television is being made.
Inside a converted ice rink complex on the outskirts of Lebanon's capital, a show called Arabs Got Talent(formerly Arabs' Got Talent) is being filmed by MBC, the Saudi-owned TV broadcaster.
Mild teasing from the English-language media prompted the producers of the show to quietly drop the ungrammatical possessive in the show's title - a victory of sorts, even if the revised name doesn't quite make sense either.
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But that doesn't matter. While the show may have an English title and is part of the worldwide, multimillion-dollar "Got Talent" franchise, Arabs Got Talent(AGT) is made by Arabs for Arabic-speaking audiences.
It is one of a growing number of international TV formats being "Arabised" for broadcast in the region, and judging by the audience reaction last Friday in Beirut, AGT is a hit.
Television audiences seem to agree, with the show attracting up to a third of the total number of Arab TV viewers. A second series will begin casting immediately after the 13-show first series.
The Got Talent franchise format, created by the British media executive Simon Cowell, is familiar enough. Fame seekers - some genuinely gifted, some just delusional - audition for the show. They offer, to put it nicely, a wide spectrum of artistic endeavours.
A selected few then take part in the show after a vote by a panel of judges and by viewers through SMS messages.
This is how the contestant Adam Fouzan, 8, from Morocco ended up on the AGT stage. Dressed as Michael Jackson, Adam dances to Smooth Criminal - moonwalk and all - to the whoops of the crowd.
Three judges call the shots: the Lebanese singer Najwa Karam, the media consultant Ali Jaber, and the Egyptian media personality Amr Adeeb.
Other contestants include a man singing old Egyptian songs, a troop of parkour performers, an acrobat in his 60s and a poet who attracts the boos and heckles of the live audience.
Artistic inspiration may be drawn from far and wide but the performers are all Arab. The show stands out from the several Got Talent franchises in that contestants are drawn from across an entire region rather than a single country.
The youngest contestant to audition was just 4 years old; the oldest is in his 60s.
"We have painters, we have musicians, we have ventriloquists, we have beat boxers, we have hip-hoppers, rappers," says Lara Nassif, the supervisor of AGT. "Everything that you see in the West we have."
The winner of the show, which is broadcast on MBC4, takes home a Chevrolet Camaro car and 500,000 riyals (Dh489,713).
But MBC is probably the bigger winner. The broadcaster signs contracts with the candidates on the show and the winning performer is given a deal with Sony International and with MBC.
On top of that, there are MBC's advertising and sponsorship revenues, and the proceeds of text messages sent by viewers voting for their favourite contestant.
Mr Jaber, who is also a media consultant and academic, says importing international TV formats "brings a lot to the table".
"What you are buying with a format licence fee is the mistakes of others," he says. "That's basically it. You buy the mistakes and you get rid of them."
Mr Jaber says that despite being a franchised show, AGT is a true Arabic product created with "Arab raw material".
"It's not importing culture," he says. "I'm an avid supporter of formats and being part of the global television scene.
"You cannot assume that Arab television can survive without looking outside, getting great ideas … however, the Arabisation process is very important. It has to be relevant to the audience you are addressing."
While franchises such as AGT are helping the TV industry in the Arab world to grow bigger and more lucrative, Mr Jaber sees a wider social purpose. He makes a link between the self-expression allowed by AGT and the bigger, more dangerous stage of Tahrir Square during the turmoil in Egypt.
"People are craving for self-expression and empowerment in Tahrir Square or in the streets of Tunis, and what we're seeing here is the same craving for self-expression in the artistic world," he says.
"Arabs Got Talent is probably the only platform that is available in the Arab world for [people to] perform and get noticed. It's all about self-expression, whether it's in Tahrir Square or on the stage. That, to me, is probably the noble side of what I'm trying to do."
However noble that aim, this particular platform of self-expression was not quite what young Adam Fouzan hoped for.
The diminutive Michael Jackson impersonator is voted off the show. One of the judges says his performance offers "nothing new" - a verdict that attracts boos from the crowd.
The boy doesn't cry. He holds his own as he walks off stage, dignified … or as dignified as an 8-year-old in a glittery blue top can be.
One suspects Adam will be back, on any number of new TV formats in the pipeline or an even bigger stage.