May Our Faces Haunt You- the bloody truth of war- a harrowing play

international | arts and media | news report Monday December 01, 2003 21:34 by dunk - FUSPEY duncancrowley at hotmail dot com

for one day only the hugely powerful play "may our faces haunt you" was put on, yesterday in the focus theatre at 3pm and 8 pm- both shows were followed by heated discussion..

it is essential this story gets told

"May Our Faces Haunt You brings together both Irish women and women from ethnic minorities and it exposes the reality of war as experienced by women and children caught up in its horror and brutality. The play tackles sexual violence as a deliberate weapon of war as witnessed in Bosnia, East Timor and Rwanda. It examines the systematic war on women of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan where medical care, work, education, human rights and justice were denied to them. Nor has their lot improved in post-Taliban Afghanistan. However, all over the world, women are speaking out and finding the courage to remake their lives. The play argues that education and fair trade together with a concerted effort to tackle aids and end the arms and sex trade industries can help to end the nightmare of women in majority world countries. May Our Faces Haunt You is a play of commitment - to peace, justice and equality. "

i personally found the play harrowing,
it focused on 3 places: afghanistan, rwanda and bosnia

it is essential that more and more people hear this story. we think we know what has gone on-

all stories from the play are true and based on a report from the UN warcrimes investigations.

the most difficult to imagine actually happened was in bosnia, somewhere around banja luka i think
a muslim couple were taken by serb soldiers, she was 8 months pregnant, she was tied or nailed to a door and had her stomach slit open- the live baby was taken out and chopped up- she took 15 minutes to die. her husband was forced to watch all this, he was then forced to eat part of the arm of his baby, he too was then cut and left to die.


you can imagine how difficult it was to watch a play about this-
a heated, open, free flowing discussion happened after.

fighting for peace, was one thing that came from the discussion
what can people do?

the play cost 5 euros
it was the 4th showing of it i think
there was a mixed audience: young, old, man, woman, black, white, afghan, african, irish. and im sure more
it was filmed and im trying to get it put onto cds and distributed

one idea that came from last night was to do the play again mid january, when the world social forum is on in mumbai in india- and for indymedia to set up a live web braodcast. so that it could be seen in realtime in mumbai as it is acted out in dublin.
other indymedia nodes could also set up live screenings of this event.
it would be an experiment into what we can do.
these things are possible, we can use communication systems in a more efficient, effective way.

if we do, perhaps we can help stop the suffering
if we sit around and do nothing........

the play was written by mary moynihan, she is part of the coolock based drama group; smashing times

the photo i used is from http://www.bosniaaftermath.com/exhumation.html#
-examination and identification of the 1992 victims of "ethnic cleansing" in bosnia

please spread word, see this play, help stop the madness