Stories of Gazan women pitched to 'king of Scotland' told in new play
The play is inspired by Greek tragedy Hikétides, translated as The Suppliants
A play which sees stories of real Gazan women pitched to a fictional king of Scotland to ask him to take action in a reimagining of an Ancient Greek tragedy is to be performed in Edinburgh to highlight the ongoing situation in the territory.
The Gazan Women, inspired by Hikétides by Aeschylus, which is credited with being the first play to discuss the concept of democracy, tells stories of women from a student trying to connect to Egyptian internet from her refugee camp to continue her studies, to a doctor working on the frontline in a Gazan hospital and a woman giving birth during the conflict.
The play is to be performed at the Scottish Storytelling Centre by Art27, an organisation which promotes human rights through arts and culture. It will also see audience members process into the centre's garden, where tents inhabited by the women have been set up.
Robert Rae wrote the script and adapted the idea of Aeschylus’ Hikétides, which was written in 463BC. The original play tells the story of a king faced with the choice of protecting a group of women, which would likely involve a war with Egypt; or rejecting their plea for protection, which would mean offending Zeus, who might punish him and his country in response.
Mr Rae said: “In my play, the women are coming to see our fictional king of Scotland, who they're asking to intervene to stop the genocide. The king says, ‘Well, I can't really decide, but I'll ask the people’.”
He said: “Everyone can access the statistics, but what is very hard to get actually, is what's this like for human beings experiencing this?
”A lot of their insights really made you think how would I cope? What would I do in their situation? They’re just ordinary people trying to get on with their lives and give their children some sort of future. But how do you do that when everything around you is reduced to rubble?”
A young Gazan woman living in Edinburgh, Farah Ashour, made contact with a range of women in Gaza and interviewed them for the piece.
He said: “She asked a whole series of questions that revealed a side of it that isn't told: what is it actually like on the ground to survive a genocide and to really try to do that with dignity.”
One of the stories tells of a young woman whose parents constructed a tent within a tent at a refugee camp near the border to give her a space to study, with internet picked up from Egypt.
Meanwhile, another tells of the human impact on a doctor working in a hospital where she lived under constant fear that one of the badly injured patients would be one of her family members.
Mr Rae said: “It felt like they were saying, ‘this is not a part of a movie. This is real life. We're not heroes. We're surviving to keep life together. We're doing what we can to look after our kids’.”
He recalled a visit to Gaza before the current invasion when he visited three “vibrant” theatres and a school for deaf children.
“They are all reduced to rubble now,” he said. “It's very difficult from when you look at the pictures, to remember what an extraordinary, vibrant and cultural place it was.”
The Gazan Women will be performed at the Scottish Storytelling Centre in Edinburgh on Friday 15 to Sunday 17 May.
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