The play, Voices of Baghdad, was amazing. Four young Iraqi men, dressed in very basic, uniform clothing that featured a long kaki colored strap wrapped in different ways to create a pattern around their upper bodies. Annette Henneman, the Italian woman, who has worked with them to create the play is dressed in black, head covered looking like a middle-aged Iraqi woman. For the most part it is in Arabic. The four men tell their stories using the straps as their only props. Sometimes they tangle themselves up, sometimes they lead each other around the stage. Sometimes they are connected; other times they are on their own.
There are stories from childhood, one about a boy's seven year wait for his father to get out of prison and about the terror of home invasions by foreign soldiers. Sometimes the four are calm and quiet, lying on the floor and then they are soldiers standing up, moving quickly and making loud shooting noises, fighting, stabbing, dying. Every now and then the woman speaks in English, telling an abbreviated version for non-Arab speakers. Sometimes she is an actor. But, no matter what is being said, we get the drift. It is like an opera, so evocative that I think I know what is being said and it is all very, very sad.
I am sitting in the front row of an audience of 100 or so people, mostly Iraqis. At first, we don't quiet down, there is talking and people are moving around. But as the play moves on things change. I can feel the room gathering around behind me, focused on what is taking place in front of us. The man next to me is shaking his leg so violently that I am also shaking. Periodically he gives his cell phone to someone next to the stage, and asks for a photo. A cell phone rings a few seats down on the other side and to my amazement, the man takes a call and talks quietly. Next to him two very well dressed women are talking again. How can this be? I shift in my seat as a request that they be silent. Then, at some point I think I begin to understand what is going on. This is a play about a certain reality for me, but it IS their reality, I begin to imagine how difficult it is to relive this and I stop shifting in my seat.
At some points, people clap and sing along with the actors. They burst into applause after monologues that I cannot understand. We are with them every step of the way now. I am weeping, they are weeping, we are all swept up in the drama unfolding in front of us after a long day of meetings and discussions at a conference in Erbil, in northern Iraq. We have been talking about the very serious problems that continue in the country. We are meeting to discuss and formulate strategies and plans of action --ways civil society organizations can help. The context, the background to our discussions is playing out in front of us.
In the final scene, one of the young men is getting married. A drum appears and the singing begins. The five of them are dancing…really dancing, smiling and clapping and moving in wild celebration. After some minutes they dance off the stage. These last moments have transported us away from our sorrows, we feel the possibility that tomorrow could be better a better day. What a magnificent ending.
We jump to our feet, clapping and trilling. The actors bow with solemn pleasure. This was their first performance. People jump onto the stage hugging, exclaiming and posing for photographs. It is a triumph. I met Annette earlier in the day, and spent a long time talking with her about Baghdad and theatre. I give her a huge hug and think--next summer in Northampton.
I am still crying. I'm thinking back on the summer's production of Aftermath and the final evening of Having the Life--our three day arts extravaganza. I remember the heavy drama of Thursday, and then I remember Azeel leading the dancing on Friday evening, handkerchief waving above her head, Layaali playing as we danced in a circle around the room. The experience is profound--we sit facing a difficult truth together, led through the darkness to experience the other side--the possibility for real joy and reconciliation.