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Kuhel Khalid brings surreal experiences of war to an experimental production at Camden’s People Theatre and the Cockpit

September 11^th, symbolically named, is the debut London play by Iraqi director Kuhel Khalid. His plays have been performed in Canada, US, Iran, Syria and Iraq, where he set up his theatre company Red Zone, named in contrast to the ‘Green Zone’ area of Baghdad, where foreigners and governmental departments are usually based.

I went to see the production at the Camden’s People’s Theatre, which from the outside looks like a nondescript council block, but this small, intimate theatre holds big ambitions as a space for innovative and unconventional plays. It supports emerging artists, such as Kuhel, and plays that tackle the political, social and culture issues of the present time. The play, September 11^th, despite being named after the attacks that took place nearly 16 years ago, aims to explore issues of Arab identity, western paranoia and the effects the wars on terror have had on contemporary Middle Eastern society since that day.

The play has five main characters, each emblematic of a component in the chaotic and dehumanising milieu of war: a clergyman figure who doles out retribution, a rebel who is abused and swears vengeance, a woman wearing a burka who personifies the female victim of war, a hunchback figure who exemplifies depravity, and a smartly-dressed woman who is complicit in some of the violence, but is also victim to it. The characters, each through physical theatre and sparing dialogue, depict scenes of the grotesque realities of war where extreme violence is commonplace and the desire for religious deliverance prevails.

This play sets out to explore these weighty themes through use of allegory and symbolism. For instance, the backdrop of the stage is a large unfinished painting of the Twin Towers, which an artist slowly works on finishing throughout the play. Bakhoor or incense burners, illustrative of both Arabic culture and the process of purification and healing, are situated next to the clergyman’s pulpit on the stage. And a sacrificial lamb carcass lies at the front of the stage alluding to its strong resonance in Islam.

I spoke to Kuhel, aged 34, about the play and he told me that his style has been fundamentally shaped by the five wars he has lived through. Experimental theatre is important to him because “there is no logic in life,” he says, referring to the traumatic experiences he has witnessed and recreated in his plays. “I try to create a mood in my play of constantly being at unease,” he explains. He aims to paint a picture of the atmosphere in Bagdad, which in addition to the presence of foreign troops, experiences regular sectarian violence.

It is important to Kuhel to bring the sensory experience of Baghdad to British audiences, he adds, because these experiences are what have shaped him as a person. The bizarre instances of actors dropping to the ground in his plays and the constant presence of an austere street sweeper come from experiences that that run painfully deep. The falling actors resemble the time he witnessed an actor gunned down next to him while working in Iraq – the shock of seeing a once living person become lifeless in an instant. The street sweeper character comes from a memory of seeing a Baghdadi street sweeper piling limbs on the road side after a car bomb had detonated, which killed Kuhel’s close cousin. These memories are etched into him and resurrect themselves in his plays.

Through these connected scenes of absurd and surreal brutality in September 11^th, Kuhel re-enacts the visual and physical experiences of living in a war zone, giving the audience a sense of what it can do to people and what it destroys. This play attempts to explore valid questions earnestly: who are we, and what can we trust?

The use of allegory to encapsulate trauma and scenes of war works well for the most part, but at times, it notably falters. For example, the symbolism the characters are meant to represent, though bold and daring, risks falling into the stereotypes it attempts to tackle. Certain scenes are reduced to spectacle, and meaning, if any, becomes difficult to discern. But what holds the play together are the actors’ brilliant and impassioned performances and Kuhel’s sobering and powerful style of storytelling.

Kuhel presents an authentic vision in this carnal yet noble play and leaves audiences, as promised, confounded and with “more questions” than before. The importance of such authentic voices cannot be understated in the current political climate.

September 11th is running for the next two nights at the Cockpit Theatre (20 – 21 February 2017 at 7.30pm) after showing at Camden People’s Theatre last week.

Photo Credits: Red Zone Theatre