Iraq

• CinemaMarch 2, 2021 - 6:08 pm

  Cinema is a political satire which criticises the fragility of the Iraqi political status quo and delves into the perspective of the dead. The play is set in a graveyard where four corpses rise from their graves, and start a conversation about how and why they ended up there. The figures are: an officer from the Iraq–Iran War; a female journalist who died in one of the bombing explosions in Baghdad after 2003; a young man who failed to find a job as a postgraduate student and decided to work as a taxi driver, but was killed during the ethnic violence; and a poet. All are joined later on by the graveyard keeper who shares with them his daily problems and strife in a lawless city. The play is a black comedy that criticises politicians, wars and systematic corruption, but most importantly it mocks death. The four corpses get up from their graves to protest against the increasing numbers of dead people buried in the graveyard.

• LayalinaFebruary 23, 2021 - 4:15 am

  In 2003, newly wed Layal plans a future with her family as they make plans to immigrate to the U.S. from Baghdad. 18 years later, just outside of Chicago, Layal’s life and responsibilities look unimaginably different from what she had envisioned two decades before. Layalina examines how families maintain their love in the midst of turbulent global and social change.

• Ishtar in BaghdadFebruary 23, 2021 - 2:49 am

  Ishtar in Baghdad focuses on female detainees. The play is based on a real incident in 2004 in which female Iraqi prisoners were insulted, beaten and raped. One of the prisoners managed to smuggle a letter to her tribe and urged them to bomb the jail. This coded letter meant that they had been raped and thereby dishonoured, and the only way to purify them was to kill them. The script is a dramatical fantasy, as the events are told by Ishtar, the Mesopotamian goddess of war, sex, beauty and fertility, and her lover Tammuz, the god of food and nature. The two deities descend to Baghdad in 2004 to share with Iraqis their descendants the calamities of war. Ishtar is caught by the US marines and imprisoned in Abu Ghraib prison where she meets Iraqi women detainees. As Ishtar gets into the cell, she witnesses women’s miseries. They are all naked, curled in one corner; they are arguing about the way to purify themselves from this disgrace.

• Godless WomenFebruary 23, 2021 - 2:34 am

  Godless Women is a personal prism of (three) Arab women who have escaped from political oppression, intellectual co-option, or religious custody in their homelands. The play depicts a significant phase in the life of the three women, Ameena, Mariam and Reyhana, when they hover between the past, the present and the future. The characters journey to reach Germany with ruthless smugglers, who seize each chance to exploit their powerless passengers. As they reach their destination, they realize that they are now under a wider and a more complicated type of oppression: an all-pervasive Western superiority, subordinated by an epistemological and ontological clash of civilisations and citizenship. Ameena, Mariam and Reyhana are jeopardised by identity markers of inferiority as women, Arabs, Muslims, and refugees. The three women come to Germany on fake passports or through illegal routes, either by walking across borders or coming by boats. They are aware that their nationalities, religion and race cannot grant them legal entrance to Europe – especially after the Arabic Spring/upheavals. They belong to a geographical area where lives are ungrievable.

• NooriaFebruary 23, 2021 - 2:29 am

  Nooria is about a female corpse-washer, whose work is to wash dead female bodies before they are placed in their graves. Nooria meets Death as a male figure and, through an external monologue, starts a ghostly dialogue. Nooria recalls milestones in her life: her marriage to a soldier who went to the Iraq–Iran War and never came back; the financial hardship that she and her young child suffered during the economic sanctions; the patriarchal and systematic oppression practised upon her as a lonely woman with a young child. Nooria was not aware that Death has come not for her but for her son, as he was about to die in a bomb explosion. In a fantastical move, Nooria decides to take her son back into her belly to protect him from Death, and covers her body with one of the shrouds around her. The play utilises shadow theatre as a background to Nooria’s grotesque monologue, and the choreographers behind the huge translucent screens reflect her frustration, anxiety and fear.

• Fetch/Grab the King! Fetch/Grab Him!February 22, 2021 - 11:49 pm

  Written mostly in an Iraqi dialect, the play is adapted from Aristophanes’ AssemblyWomen. Naeem added new characters like the First Chef and the Second Chef, who are both comedic and sarcastic. She also changed the characters’ names and some of their motivations, and took out sexual content and references. The story of the play starts when the women gather in the parliament in the absence of their husbands to form a government. They try several tricks on their husbands, so they don’t come to the parliament, such as hiding their socks or underwear. The play ends with the women declaring the formation of the women parliament. Both Aristophanes’ play and Naeem’s adaption criticize the current parliament led by men.

• AssemblyWomenFebruary 22, 2021 - 11:44 pm

  Written mostly in an Iraqi dialect, the play is adapted from Aristophanes’ AssemblyWomen. Naeem added new characters like the First Chef and the Second Chef, who are both comedic and sarcastic. She also changed the characters’ names and some of their motivations, and took out sexual content and references. The story of the play starts when the women gather in the parliament in the absence of their husbands to form a government. They try several tricks on their husbands, so they don’t come to the parliament, such as hiding their socks or underwear. The play ends with the women declaring the formation of the women parliament. Both Aristophanes’ play and Naeem’s adaption criticize the current parliament led by men.

• O Lord!February 22, 2021 - 11:30 pm

  In this play, a mother who has lost her children protests against God and negotiates with Moses. The woman is sent to speak with God as an ambassador for mothers of the country who have lost their children to war, violence, and sectarian and ethnic displacement. Moses meets with the woman as God’s representative in Tuwa Valley, where God spoke to Moses. The mother presents her demands: stop the killing and destruction, preserve the lives of the remaining children, and spread love and harmony among all people. If these conditions are not met within 24 hours, she vows that all prayer, fasting and other acts of worship will be stopped. Moses tries to persuade the mother that nobody can impose their will on God, and that the earth’s misfortunes are caused by the creature (humankind), not by the Creator. Moses fails to convince the mother, and so he invites her to pray to God until He responds. However, the mother refuses to do so. Feeling powerless, Moses leaves his staff behind in heaven, and joins the mothers in demanding that God fulfill their wishes. 

• The CartFebruary 22, 2021 - 11:24 pm

  A simple man named Hanoon possesses only his vegetable cart  (arabana), with which he earns his livelihood on the streets of Baghdad.  His obsession with the news provokes constant anxiety. The play starts as Hanoon’s wife, Fedhila, and their children, prevent the drunken vendor from setting himself on fire. Shortly thereafter, he dies of a heart attack in his sleep. Hanoon anticipates a conversation with Munkar and Nakir, the two angels appointed by God to interrogate the dead in order to test their faith and assess their deeds. Hanoon’s life plays out before his eyes. Back in school, he argues with his teacher about the truthfulness of certain proverbs and the meaning of the words ‘house/home’. In the military, he is humiliated at the hands of a sergeant. Later, a politician in the post-Saddam era tricks Hanoon into voting for him with empty promises, then disappears. Afterwards, Fedhila goes to meet with the politician (whose name translates as “whatever you want”), but he escapes out the back door. These episodes are followed by the appearance of Bouazizi, the Tunisian street vendor whose self-immolation started the revolution in Tunisia, which then spread to other Arab countries., He talks with Hanoon about their deaths and the deteriorating situation in Tunisia and Iraq. At the end, both Hanoon and Bouazizi exit, leaving Fedhila pushing the cart with her four children. The play ends with the sound of an explosion followed by that of the squeaking cart. 

• Wild WeddingFebruary 17, 2021 - 7:28 pm

  The play revolves around a meeting between a teenager and his mother, who was raped brutally by invasion soldiers, resulting in the young man, who was raised neglected and tortured for the sin of his mother. The play is significant as it represent a prophecy at the time of its writing (1991) for what actually happen in Iraq after 2003 with all its themes and symbols. The translation included a third character that was added by the translator (Alyaa A. Naser) for the significance of explains and clarifying ideas in the original script for the English culture speakers.

• AshesFebruary 17, 2021 - 6:57 pm

  A reporter is following a lawyer who trued to re open the case of a murdered woman by recalling her dead soul by her grave and interrogates her.

• Women of LorcaFebruary 17, 2021 - 6:52 pm

  The play uses Lorca’ female characters to represent Iraqi women and their suffering first under the control of their own society and then by themselves as they gradually became addicted to the dictatorship of their own selves. Even when they try to break free of such control, the create a new controller by themselves.

• Love, Bombs, and ApplesFebruary 17, 2021 - 6:31 pm

  A Palestinian actor learns there’s more to English girls than pure sex appeal. A Pakistani-born terror suspect figures out what’s wrong with his first novel. A British youth suspects all is not what it seems with his object of desire. A New Yorker asks his girlfriend for a sexual favor at the worst possible time. Love, Bombs & Apples is the comic tale of four men, each from different parts of the globe, all experiencing a moment of revelation.