The Stage

Terrorist acts

Published Thursday 8 September 2005 at 15:45 by Anna Costin

Anna Costin investigates how theatre has tackled the subject of terrorism in the wake of recent events

From lugubrious opera to whimsical musicals, terrorism has been a widespread theme at Edinburgh this year. A whole range of conflicts and issues has been covered, from the grilling of an alleged IRA informer in Danny Morrison’s The Wrong Man to Mark Ravenhill’s Product, a monologue about a writer pitching a film script about an Al-Qaeda cell, and Omar Marzouk’s War, Terror and Other Fun Stuff.

However, the emphasis has been on the most high-impact and recent terrorism affecting the West - suicide bombers, Al-Qaeda and Palestine. The material could definitely be said to be mirroring the current mainstream British news agenda, with little or no representation of under-reported militant conflicts or groups that continue to kill and maim many people on a monthly basis, such as Chechnya, Kashmir, the southern Thai separatists and south east Asian Muslim militants Jemaah Islamiyya.

Festival Fringe director Paul Gudgin, says there has been nowhere near this scale and breadth of terrorism-themed shows in previous years, nor such a strong, dominant thread on any one subject before: “For the artists there is a vibrancy about the challenge of using topical material.”

Terrorism is always going to be a topical subject, with constant developments changing the global situation month by month, not least since 9/11. July saw the IRA issuing a statement pledging to lay down its arms and two weeks ago Israel completed its withdrawal from the Gaza Strip. All of the shows were written and produced before the London attacks on July 7, so how did the companies deal with the prospect of performing in a British city just over a month later?

Gudgin says that a couple of companies and writers - mainly those less experienced - contacted the Fringe office before the festival started, taken aback by the media interest in their shows in the light of the bombings, to seek advice

“My response was, ‘don’t sanitise the piece in order not to shock the audience’. I said to them, ‘what do you want the impact of your work to be?’.”

Comedian Andrew Maxwell did have to cut material from his routine about how a British Muslim could never be a suicide bomber. Gudgin believes that the arts can play an important part in the wider debate on terrorism, with drama trying to explain why this is happening, musicals being hard-hitting emotionally and comedy being formed through our fear factor.

Terrorist! The Musical takes a flippant approach to the topic. Written and performed by the Bad Penny Theatre company, the premise of the production is a group of terrorists, purposeless after George Bush has won his War on Terror, having to work in live entertainment for a living.

Jessica Beck, the director, says the point of this show is to provoke discussion. Interestingly, this musical included no high-profile Al-Qaeda terrorists among the characters, where one almost expected see an all-singing, all-dancing Osama Bin Laden. Scenes include nneo-Nazi London nailbomber David Copeland making a highly offensive joke against Jewish people, Menachem Begin, former head of the Irgun militant group in Israel in the forties and later the country’s prime minister, making a risque joke against the Kurds, and Carlos the Jackal trying to romance a female North Korean terrorist.

Despite the frivolous tone, Terrorist! The Musical manages to turn the greater political or ideological struggles of the terrorists into interpersonal struggles within the group. An example of this is the Palestinian situation. Menachem Begin asks a Palestinian terrorist to move out of his space onstage. She responds by saying that although he had been there a few hours ago, he had vacated the space, so she had taken possession of it and it was unreasonable to shift her to one corner now that he had returned. She then goes onto make an impassioned speech on fighting for a homeland and never giving up.

When Patti Hearst, granddaughter of US publishing magnate Randolph Hearst - kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army and subsequently joining them - was asked what she was fighting for, she could only talk of what she was fighting against, not knowing the purpose of her cause. The show ends on a very sombre note, with the final line sung in desperation by one confused character, after debating the use of violence to achieve their goals - “Is there another way?”

The antithesis of this show is Keith Burstein and Dic Edwards’ opera Manifest Destiny, about a Palestinian poet turned would-be suicide bomber, eventually redeemed by her own love for life before tragically killing herself in Guantanamo Bay. This opera was first written in late 2002 and remains as relevant three years on. It is a dark, powerfully emotive production that unashamedly denounces the neo-conservative values of the current US administration and in the Washington think-tank the New American Century. Its power lies in the way it both sympathises with terrorism from a Middle Eastern perspective and at the same time shows that there is another way - answering the final question posed by Terrorist! - through peaceful means and a love for humanity.

Manifest Destiny is not the only opera on this subject to be performed at Edinburgh this year. The Edinburgh International Festival’s programme included The Death of Klinghoffer, about the murder of a disabled Jewish-American hostage aboard the hijacked Achille Lauro cruise ship.

Away from Edinburgh, an innovative play that gives a voice to the real-life perpetrators of such violence - so often silenced or merely the subject of media speculation - is Talking to Terrorists, which toured around the UK this year, most recently at London’s Royal Court theatre in July. Written by Robin Soans and directed by Max Stafford-Clark, this piece of documentary theatre was produced after a year’s research talking to people who were at one time involved with or affected by terrorism, including the late Mo Mowlam, former Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, and Terry Waite.

All of the characters recount their experiences with a mixture of sadness, anger, frustration and humour. This play takes a more comprehensive approach in the regions and campaigns covered, including a Kurdish separatist guerrilla and a female Ugandan child soldier. The story is balanced between giving the five former terrorists - including one based on Brighton bomber Patrick Magee - a chance to put their actions into context and bringing home the devastation caused by those actions.

However, the anger felt by the marginalised terrorists towards powerful Western nations explodes towards the end of the play when the former head of the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades demands: “How can you judge me unless you have lived the life I have lived? You, my British friends, who gave my country to the Israelis, you, who are behind all the trouble in Ireland. What do you know of hopelessness and despair?”

This was a truly moving piece of drama as one was aware that this was the true personal testimony of terrorists and their victims.

There is some concern among writers, directors and performers that the proposed new law banning incitement to religious hatred will seriously curtail their artistic freedom in coming years. Dramatic art is one way of dealing with the consequences and debating the causes of terrorism and is also another medium for expressing dismay with governments other than, say, protest marches. Undoubtedly there will be many more productions on this subject to hit the country’s stages in the near future. The pieces that have recently aired in Edinburgh and around the country, including those less serious or without a blatant message, must surely have served as food for thought for even the least politically aware theatregoer.

* Anna Costin is a reporter for Jane’s Terrorism and Insurgency Centre and author of An Introduction to Peace Psychology, to be published by Cambridge University Press later this year