The cast of the reading for HTYP's The Book of Ashes at Stages
Today at Eastern Front Theatre’s Stages Festival I attended a reading of Halifax Theatre for Young People’s newest project: a production of Emil Sher’s play The Book of Ashes. The cast that Artistic Director Tessa Mendel has assembled for this reading was absolutely superb, and I hope that they will all be involved in a future iteration of the play.
Based on true events during the invasion of Iraq by the American and British militaries in 2003 Sher’s play tells the story of an Iraqi librarian and her young volunteer who are concerned, as the threat of bombs approach, that the library that houses over 40,000 books, some dating back to the 1300s, will be destroyed unless they take brave and immediate action to save them. The play shows very beautifully how the threats in war can be nuanced and also twofold, as it shifts the power structures within a city and country under siege, and power, perhaps especially during chaos, corrupts. In this way the civilians in the play are up against the very people who are supposed to be defending them, as they ask the question of which buildings and artifacts hold our cultures, our identities, our histories, and how far are the people willing to go to rescue what cannot be replaced?
We got a sense of the direction that Katrin Whitehead’s design and Laura Stinson’s use of puppetry may go to help bring the magical world of a storybook alive, while also rooting the reality of the play in a place on the edge of destruction. With just four days of rehearsal together, the ensemble cast of nine year old Laith Abadi, along with Ateka Yaghoubi, Natalie Abdou, and Pasha Ebrahimi really stood out for their beautifully unaffected performances, filled with subtly, humour, pathos, and relationships with one another that already feel easy, comfortable, and communal.
Emil Sher, who also wrote Hana’s Suitcase, writes engaging plays for students about difficult subjects, but, as with Hana’s Suitcase, The Book of Ashes is a poignant story for adults as well. Given what is happening in Palestine, in Sudan, and Congo right now this play, unfortunately, couldn’t be more timely to help root us all back in not the politics of war, but the bleak reality and humanity of war, and its cost, not just to people, although of course that is the most devastating, but also so many other secondary losses to history, to culture, to the land and the water, and to the animal kingdom.
The Book of Ashes will have a fully staged production by Halifax Theatre for Young People in the future, so make sure to keep your eye out here for more information about that. Eastern Front Theatre’s Stages Festival continues tomorrow, June 9th, 2024, at Alderney Landing Theatre. For more information and to buy tickets please visit this website.
