24 February – 4 March
Writer Ahlam began writing You Bury Me back in 2015. Already the great promise of the Arab Spring of 2011 had receded, with the hopes of a generation diminishing as the military dictatorship once again tightened its grip. You Bury Me is Ahlam’s dream of how life and love could and should be… freely expressed in a vibrant city crying out for change. Her play follows the lives and fortunes of six young Egyptians as they explore their sexuality, sometimes at great personal risk.
Ahlam describes how the play was rejected many times for not being, as she describes, trauma-porn centric, or driven more by the politics surrounding the narrative. But thanks to a collaboration with Paines Plough, the national touring theatre company dedicated to new writing, that also founded the Women’s Prize for Playwriting, awarded to Ahlam in 2020, she found sympathetic support. You Bury Me Director Katie Posner is joint Artistic Director of Paines Plough. “I could feel this deep, painful, conflicted love pour out of her when she spoke of Cairo. I understood how deeply she felt for all the characters in her play. It drew me in and made me want to explore the many layers to Egypt.”
Listening to the reaction of last night’s predominantly young and diverse audience, Ahlam has undoubtedly got her finger on the pulse. Although set against an oppressive backcloth, You Bury Me is never heavy-handed in its approach, and is often very funny, as our protagonists fumble their way through first awkward sexual experiences and cathartic moments of deep attraction and love, something we will all recognise as part of ourselves.
For the most part on an empty stage, save some painted cubes held aloft decorated with flying birds and in one case a golden tank, the six players created a sense of seething intensity, both representing themselves and, at times, the living city of Cairo itself which ‘spoke’ through the ensemble.
Nezar Alderazi is Rafik, 25 and gay, and worried for his heterosexual friend Osman (Tarrick Benham), a journalist and blogger who he suspects will be hunted down by the police for his opinions. There is interfaith love between 22-year-old Alia (Hanna Khogali) who comes from a conservative Muslim family, and Tamer (Moe Bar-El) who comes from a traditional Christian background. And there is a dawning of same sex love between the effervescent 18-year-old Maya (Yasemin Özdemir) and 17-year-old high schoolgirl Lina (Eleanor Nawal). Ahlam’s writing captures, absolutely, their irrepressible energy and the pressure they are living with and under.
To write is still a dangerous act in Cairo, the threat of being ‘disappeared’ ever present. Ahlam has chosen to become a literary version of Banksy, a virtually anonymous creator, the better to write what she feels. In this vibrant and passionate play, her newly come-of-age Egyptians are determined to defeat the forces of fear, if only for a moment at least.
★★★★☆ Simon Bishop, 1st March, 2023
Photo credit: Pamela Raith Photography
