A MOTHER’S JOURNEY
Play tells of trek from Syria
It seems so far away. Yet the humanitarian crisis in Syria is also close at hand as Alma Theatre launches a new show, Hagar, at the ATB Financial Arts Barns from June 1 to June 8.
The play is a mother’s story. That it is penned and performed by two now-Edmontonians who fled Syria several years ago makes Hagar all the more relevant.
The artistic duo, writer Aksam Alyousef, 51, and lead actor Amena Shehab, 45, are a married couple with three children. Though born and raised in Syria, Alyousef and Shehab had been living with their youngsters in Qatar, where they worked as producers for the broadcaster Al Jazeera. Upon returning to Syria, they realized the situation was untenable. The journey to Edmonton was long and circuitous, and saw Alyousef living away from Shehab and their children for three years.
This family did not have to board a rickety dinghy for a treacherous sea voyage. But they know people who have. Hagar is a composite of those people and that plight.
“This is not my play. It is the Syrian people’s play,” said Alyousef.
The story stars Shehab as Hagar, a mother of a one-year-old boy trapped in war-torn Aleppo. She has been abandoned by her husband and must cut an unsavoury deal with his friend to gather the funds for a difficult sea voyage to possible safety and freedom.
As the play opens, Hagar is celebrating the first birthday of her son, Jamal. Mother and baby are holed up in an apartment whose windows are protected by sandbags. Shots and explosions can be heard outside. As the stakes get ever higher, and the situation more threatening, Hagar weighs the danger of staying with the danger of leaving. “Oh sea, whose waves swing in time with the moon,” croons Hagar to her baby. “My dreams have been lost, and my wounds are laid bare to the waters.”
Though Alyousef and Shehab (who just became a Canadian citizen) have had a busy few years, getting their children settled, learning English and upgrading their job skills, they have not set aside their artistic ambitions.
Both worked in the theatre in Qatar in a variety of capacities and, since coming to Edmonton, they have written and performed in two plays, Souls (a 2017 Fringe production about the conflict in
the Middle East) and Nuts and Honey, part of the 2016 Sprouts New Play Festival for Kids. They have another show in the works for the 2018 Fringe, called FOB (or Fresh off the Boat), a comedy about newcomers to Canada.
Shehab also appeared in the 2017 production of the Maggie Tree’s 9 Parts of Desire and in the title role of the Studio Theatre production of Medea at the University of Alberta.
Part of Alyousef ’s motivation for writing Hagar, which is funded in part by the Edmonton Arts Council’s Diversity in the Arts program, was to put a face to the thousands of refugees who have been received by Canada in the last few years. It’s also meant as a thank you to the nation.
“Canadians, in their hearts, want to help,” said Alyousef. “This expresses how Canadians are, and how much humanity is inside them.”
There are two shows of Hagar in Arabic. Hagar’s director Morgan Norwich (who directed the Fringe favourite Redheaded Stepchild in 2012 and 2017) says that while the two different audiences will take different things away from the production, there are few audience members who would not relate to this story.
“I think when we see this story told, we are all in that boat. I think that’s the feeling the audience will have at the end of the play,” says Norwich.