"I want to make the world know what is going on in Iraq, where we have to fight to make art, to communicate with the world, to scream we are still alive and able to make a new Iraq”
Yasir Kareem
Teatro di Nascosto - Hidden Theatre will come to Oxford’s Pegasus Theatre this July with four Iraqi actors and a performance of theatre reportage devised in Baghdad by these four young men under the direction of Annet Henneman. Performed in Arabic, their personal stories, woven together with songs and translation where necessary, have created a fast and powerful piece of theatre (reportage): Voices of Baghdad.

Voices of Baghdad Voices of Baghdad

Three wars in the last three decades, and bombs that continue to claim tens of lives of civilians and security officials every month across Iraq, in Baghdad, Karbala, Kirkuk. Yesterday (13th June), across Iraq, there was a further wave of bombings, leaving at least 93 people killed - but these words can mean nothing.

Voices of Baghdad are those of ordinary Iraqi citizens, of Ali, Fouad, Yasir and Mostafa: four little boys playing ‘count the dead soldiers’ on the road from Basra; four little boys marching to war; four young men singing for their country over a woman fighting to have her voice heard; one young Muslim man singing Hallelujah for the 58 victims of yet another explosion (in Our Lady of Salvation Catholic Church, Karade, Baghdad).

Voices of Baghdad Voices of Baghdad

This July, 19th-29th, the four young Iraqi actors and their director have been invited to come to the UK to tell their stories and to participate in the workshops, debates, collaborations between 100 young people from Oxford, and 100 others from across the world at Pegasus Theatre’s MESH youth festival 2012.

The performance will be on Thursday 24th July, provided they can raise the outstanding funds.

In the last weeks before they are due to come, they need your help to make it happen!

If you are interested in supporting this work, please see the document attached for further details, and/or contact Arabella Lawson: arabella.lawson@gmail.com or +44 (0)7793 273954

Voices of Baghdad Voices of Baghdad

For an example of Teatro di Nascosto - Hidden Theatre’s work, see a short YouTube video documenting ‘The Auction,’ a theatre reportage on stories from Iran and Palestine that was performed in London on Friday 8th June, and will be in Ramallah, Palestine in 3 weeks for the international youth theatre festival hosted by the Ashtar Theatre (Gaza Monologues).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCDw5_32UlE