I had the opportunity and pleasure to see a new show Friday night at the New York Theatre Workshop. It’s called Aftermath and is written by Jessica Blank and Eric Jensen who took interviews they conducted in June 2008 with Iraqi refugees in Jordan and crafted them into a show that interweaves the stories of average Iraqi citizens before, during and after the US invasion in March 2003.
Everyone should see this show. I fear few will muster the courage given the heavy subject matter and the fact that it will remind us that we as Americans are all guilty through our complicity in what happened. And continue to be guilty in our aversion to wanting to face and really know what happened. Thankfully there is humor early on in the show, necessary for the dark turn all the tales take, but to hear firsthand accounts of the lives lost and destroyed by our unlawful invasion only highlights the troubling truth about our government’s meddling in other nations to which most average American citizens turn a blind eye.
War situations unfortunately strip the “enemy” of their identity and humanity and these characters return us to the complex, three-dimensional lives of the people “over there.” The characters are all compelling and the acting superb. You hear from Muslim and Christian Iraqis, a suave dermatologist and a pharmacist, an Imam and two couples all held together by a translator. The monologues are tight, the actors tapping into a range of sometimes difficult emotion and outrage to bring these people to life that must exhaust them by the end of each performance. I loved the choice early on to overlap the translator and character he was translating for, hearing his English translation beneath their story and then his voice fades to allow the character he is translating for to speak for him- or herself as that character switches to English, creating the illusion that we are hearing them in their own language. But even the translator does not go unscathed as some of the characters highlight how translators are at times part of the problem, not translating accurately or telling the Americans what they think they want to hear.
The set is bare bones and rightfully so as anything more elaborate would take away and distract from the power of the stories, so all you will find is just a number of different chairs set-up on the stage with benches in the back for the characters to sit on when they are not up in a chair telling their story. The lighting is also subtle with gradual changes and spotlights on the characters when they speak.
There’s so much to say about the show and the audience reactions to facing these stories. You will be made uncomfortable, but in all the necessary and right ways.
Here’s a short video about the production: