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New London play "Guantanamo Boy" opens this week
A theater in east London is staging new play "Guantanamo Boy" this week. The production, based on a 2009 novel of the same name, opens on Tuesday at Stratford Circus, located in an area with a large Muslim population.Director Dominic Hingorani said, "Stratford wanted to start making emotionally challenging theatre for a teenage audience and we are in east London with a lot of Asian resonance. It (Guantanamo Bay) obviously has a lot of resonance with people here." Hingorani said his adaptation of the novel looked at Guantanamo through the eyes of a Muslim teenager from Britain who is detained during a family visit to Pakistan because he is suspected of being a terrorist. Although fictional, the novel was inspired by the incarceration of teenagers like Mohammed El Gharani, released in 2009 after more than seven years in captivity, including at Guantanamo. "We are reimagining this experience through a teenagers' eyes. It was very important to keep an eye on the fact that we are taking the audience with us in order that they can engage." Hingorani said. "I am trying to give the audience an experience that is unsettling and intense and to some degree a sense of how violent and upsetting that environment must be," he explained. "Whatever your politics, we are talking about human rights and the consequences of human rights being expendable," Hingorani added. Posted by: ryuge 2012-01-31 |
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