Theatre / Ahlam
Setting the stage for Ahlam’s award-winning ‘You Bury Me’
Written by Ahlam and selected from over 1,100 entries, You Bury Me was joint winner of the inaugural Women’s Prize for Playwriting in 2020 (founded in 2019 by Paines Plough and Ellie Keel).
“The unanimous acclaim for You Bury Me from our judging panel was entirely justified,” recalls Keel. “It’s a funny, heartwarming and astutely observed play about youth, love and hope in an oppressive and sometimes dangerous world. I have no doubt that audiences will be deeply moved by Ahlam’s powerful and unsentimental writing.”
Now, directed by Katie Posner, the play has been produced for the stage by Paines Plough, The Women’s Prize for Playwriting, 45North, The Royal Lyceum Theatre Edinburgh and The Orange Tree Theatre, in association with Bristol Old Vic, where it begins its tour on February 24.
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Photo: Paines Plough
Preferring to maintain their anonymity, Ahlam writes under a pseudonym, but is an Egyptian playwright who was living in the UK at the time of writing You Bury Me in 2015, which is also when the play is set.
In 2011, following the Arab Spring, which in Egypt had, after 18 days of protests, seen the overthrow of the Mubarak regime, there was a series of interim governments presiding over a turbulent political landscape.
Following a coup, the current military regime assumed power in 2014, punishing any opposition and banning protest.
Against this backdrop, the six young Egyptians around which the narrative is centred – Alia, Tamer, Lina, Maya, Osman and Rafik – are coming of age, finding friendship and falling in love as they navigate the gauntlet between secrecy and truth, identity and rebellion.
For Posner, it’s an incredibly affecting lens through which to understand and care about its context on a deeper level. “This play has such a powerful core of emotions which run in your bones,” she reflects.
“There is absolutely no way this play won’t make an impact on you because audiences are going to fall in love with those six characters,” – played by Hanna Khogali, Moe Bar-El, Eleanor Nawal, Yasemin Özdemir, Tarrick Benham and Nezar Alderazi.
“They all intertwine and it’s very satisfying for an audience, but there’s also this huge undercurrent of political, seismic shifts within countries and within people – it’s a very powerful message.”
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Currently in rehearsal, the actors are able to take their characters off the page and get to know them on a much deeper level. “You can have tons of ideas about your character when you’re sat down doing script work,” says Özdemir (playing Maya), “but you only find out what works and what feels right when building the story of the play with everyone else, from start to finish.”
For Nawal (playing Lina), the interplay between Ahlam’s writing and Posner’s direction is electrifying. “Katie (Posner)’s process is so much about exploration through play,” she reflects, “unlike the usual cerebral table work and discussions.
“This play is so much about the visceral and the emotional; it’s so much about Cairo, and nothing feels more Cairo than a baptism by fire.”
You Bury Me is at Bristol Old Vic on February 24-March 4 at 7.30pm, with additional 2.30pm matinee shows on March 2 and 4. Tickets are available at www.bristololdvic.org.uk.
Main photo: courtesy of Paines Plough/Bristol Old Vic
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