WHEN a microphone is passed out to the audience in the second half of Egyptian playwright and director Laila Soloman's all-too-personal set of testimonies from the frontline of her homeland's revolution, the effect is moving and powerful.
As each reads from a sheet of paper demanding justice for named "martyrs of the revolution" killed by one form of state oppression or another, the communal litany that gradually forms is a very quiet form of solidarity that challenges the oppressors. The first half finds three Egyptian actors recounting experiences without fuss or anger as English subtitles flash up on a screen behind. An everyday tale of Molotov cocktails, military brutality, there is little need for embellishment in Soliman's compendium of testimonies from lives beyond the heroic newsreel footage flickering behind.
It is a stark and unflinching form of documentary theatre Soliman utilises in this Mayfesto companion piece to A Play, A Pie and A Pint's One Day in Spring season of work by young writers from Arab countries.
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