Displaying items by tag: Marina Johnson

“The Shroud Maker” is a look into the world of Hajja Souad, an 84-year-old Palestinian seamstress, plying her artisanal trade amid the rise and fall of violence in Gaza City adjacent to Israel. Her specialty: shrouds used in Islamic funerals to wrap the deceased.

Unfortunately for the world, Souad’s business is good, and demand trends offer a depressing timeline of decades of violence in what had been Palestine. Boiling down a lengthy history, in 1948 the British relinquished control in the region pursuant to a U.N. mandate that partitioned Palestine to create a place for modern-day Israel. Surrounding Arab states launched a war against the U.N. action, and in 1948 the Arab League established a state for Palestine, which along with Israel claimed Jerusalem as its capital. And the rest is more war-striven history.

A businesswoman and expert in crafting finely stitched shrouds, Souad has seen it all over the years, and is played ably by Roxane Assaf-Lynn. The 70-minute monologue by noted Palestinian author Ahmed Masoud is drawn loosely from a real individual. Souad shares the gallows humor that is a familiar companion to those whose lifework is death.

Souad is also a survivor, someone who has suffered personal loss as one by one, over the years, every member of her own family became collateral damage in someone else’s wars. Her non-stop descriptive chatter tells her own epic story—against the backdrop of that of the people of Palestine.

Set in Gaza City, the opening scene finds Souad mid-way through an animated phone conversation, where she is warned yet again that she is in danger and should evacuate her home. This time it’s because of a limited Israeli incursion into Gaza, intended to destroy border tunnels through which contraband flows, some of it the very cotton she uses for shroud making.

“I’m not going anywhere….Besides your bloody tanks are everywhere,” Souad yells into the phone. “Your freaking army will have to kill me first.” Is she just a cranky, unreasonable old woman?

We learn she is much more than this in the course of the play, and Souad voices other characters in her life: her younger self, her father, an adopted son, and his wife, and Ghassan, their child. Two more characters from her past also appear, all of them voiced by Souad, who at 11, was removed from her farm (along with her parents) to make way for a kibbutz.

During the period before Israel was formed, her father Mahmoud was hired by the British High Commissioner Sir Alan Cunningham, as a gardener for his estate—the same Sir Cunningham whose British Army forcibly removed Mahmoud from their farm. Lady Cunningham takes a liking to Little Souad, and enculturates her as a British girl with piano lessons and training in posh British English. Essentially she is wantonly stealing Souad from her parents to replace her own child, now lost. But Lady Cunningham also teaches Souad to sew, and in her later life, Souad applies these skills to producing traditional Palestinian garments, including shrouds.

The production by the International Voices Project is nicely directed by Marina Johnson with set by Jonathan Berg-Einhorn. Ahmed Mousad’s script leans a little more toward literary—something to be read—than to stage delivery, though he generally weaves exposition in effectively. The story comes across, though the emotional side is not fully expressed. Even the best actor would be challenged, especially the demand to voice numerous characters. But the story is so authentic and compelling, coming as it does from those living in Gaza, that is is one the must be heard

“The Shroud Maker” runs through April 8 at Chicago Dramatists, Fridays and Saturdays at 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 3:00 p.m.