Fallujah:  Journalism as Theatre

By Hilary Hesse

(Al Jadid Staff Writer)

The 2004 U.S. offensive against the Iraqi city of Fallujah has been described by some as one of the more egregious cases of human rights abuses in recent times. The so-called "city of mosques" was reduced to rubble, while many of its citizens, including a sizable number of white flag-holding women and children, were wiped out. Accused of having breached over 70 articles of the Geneva Conventions, U.S. forces bombed schools and hospitals, impeded the distribution of necessary medical supplies to the citizenry, and are believed to have deployed napalm as part of their strategy to "pacify" the city. Many of the actual details of the atrocity remain murky, as most journalists were either kept or forced out during the siege. However, after attending a seminar conducted by British generals and journalists at Oxford, British director Jonathan Holmes became convinced that this should no longer be so. What emerged was the documentary-style play entitled "Fallujah," which ran for a month at London's Old Truman Theater last May.

Antiwar in spirit but new to war talk, Holmes found the contents of the seminar "immediately theatrical." With the participation of such figures as Shakespearean actress Fiona Shaw and triple Nobel Prize nominee Dr. Scilla Elworthy, the 31-year-old senior lecturer at Royal Holloway University of London, Holmes was able to concretize and put his vision on stage. Using eyewitness accounts by British antiwar activist Jo Wilding and freelance American journalist Dahr Jamil, along with a slew of others, Holmes fashioned a verbatim script meant to "publicize the disgrace and condemn it noisily." A promenade production, the play demanded 90 minutes of standing or shuffling about, with the audience often compelled to accompany actors on such futile missions as delivering medical aid to injured victims.

According to the New York Times, the "anti-American theme is relentless," with one British soldier making the assertion that "war is an American way to teach geography."  Interestingly, conservative British newspaper the Daily Telegraph saluted it as a "necessary act of collective penance," while the Guardian dismissed it as well- intentioned but ineffectual. The papers seemed similarly ambivalent about the set and sound effects, with the Daily Telegraph opining that the simulation of aerial bombardment bore more resemblance to "being at a rave than under siege." Nevertheless, the play drew considerable attention for its specificity in an ever-growing canon of pieces on Iraq. If not for individual theatrical elements, the play should nonetheless be praised for its commitment to the revelation of facts, which, with a dexterous cast that includes Imogen Stubbs, is part of its core.  

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