Ryan Sero’s new play is all that’s good about indie theatre in Hamilton
Ryan Sero’s new play is all that’s good about indie theatre in Hamilton
Hard on the heels of Stephen Near’s “Your Own Sons,” Ryan Sero’s powerful one-man show “Kafir” (Unbeliever) is reason to cheer Hamilton’s burgeoning indie theatre scene.
These folks produce avantgarde works that offer something different. These are not productions you’d likely see at local community theatres, where populist plays mostly rule.
These are edgy, contemporary dramas that peel away the outer skin of the onion, exposing present day issues. They are trenchant works, filled with critical ideas.
Sero’s new play is, in fact, edgy with a capital E. A disturbing look at how freedom of expression can have terrible consequences, “Kafir” asks frightening questions.
More than that it details how artistic satire can be dangerous. It suggests how pungent criticism aimed at religion can create a violent backlash that ends in tragedy.
Based on the 2015 murder of 12 writers and cartoonists at the satiric magazine Charlie Hebdo in Paris, Sero’s take is fictitious. It does, however, echo every horror of that heinous affair. It tells how far extremists and religious fanatics can go to silence critical voices.
When killers in balaclavas entered Hebdo, an enclave of intellectual expression, brandishing assault rifles, they took down everyone in sight. There was no place to run, no place to hide. A stubby, worn pencil is no weapon against an assault rifle in the hands of a killer. It’s the same in Sero’s play.
Because Charlie Hebdo dared to publish a controversial cartoon on its front cover, a cartoon that some people found offensive, 12 people were murdered. Retaliation for the magazine making fun of the Prophet Mohammed, this was also an attack on freedom of expression. Ditto in Sero’s shocking play.
The question “Kafir” raises is a good one. In magazines, books, plays and the arts, how free are we to criticize others? How do we respond to a wave of terror and death that destroys people who are exerting their right to free thought through publication?
No, Sero is not talking about Hebdo specifically. The names are changed as well as the places. But he is making a strong and important distinction between spreading expressions of overt hate and serious criticism.
When is a cartoon, for instance, an evil weapon and when is it political, religious or social
satire?
He also makes a point about the way institutions, including the media, proffer support and outrage in condemning the killings, but ultimately cave in when it counts most.
In Sero’s story Kelly and his pal, an ex-Muslim, create Wet Ink, a provocative magazine. As it grows in influence, satirizing pretty much everything, it becomes known for its front page cartoons that some consider racist and blasphemous.
When Kelly dares to print a cartoon that makes fun of the Prophet Muhammed, all hell breaks loose.
Beyond the inevitable cranks out there, ready to take pot shots at anything are madmen with automatic rifles, willing to cut down cartoonists and writers who dare to make satiric fun of religion and its leaders.
Kelly and his crew get off on becoming wilder and wilder in their cartoon images. They even start a pool to see who receives the most hate mail.
Have they perhaps gone too far? The play asks this question as well as many more.
It’s a bold and provocative piece of theatre, superbly performed; it will hold you in thrall.
And you know, I don’t think for a minute Sero’s 75-minute play about freedom of speech was written to make money, not in this age of flimsy comedies and trivial musicals that are theatre bait for the masses.
I think this is much more than that.
If you go, and I think you should if you care about serious theatre, don’t expect anything warm and fuzzy.
There’s no pap, nothing to buoy the spirit, and no place to hide. “Kafir” is always in your face.
As you might have guessed, there is also no happy ending. Sero’s play crackles with energy as it leads us to its ultimate conclusion.
Alone on stage for the duration of the show, Sero plays his role with terrifying commitment. Abetted by Nicholas Wallace’s illuminating cartoons that pop up intermittently on a stark white screen, we are offered visual evidence of the power of pictures.
Director Luke Brown provides intelligent support that amplifies Sero’s text and no doubt helps to shape his performance.
Sero’s play, and his feral image, are certainly worth more than the handful of people watching “Kafir” with me on opening night. Go see it and strike a blow for freedom.