In dialogue with researchers

SUPPLIANTS OF SYRIA.  Photo: John Cobb

SUPPLIANTS OF SYRIA finally had its first performance run last week at Hoxton Hall, and I'm very happy to say it was really well received. Flo London called it "Impactful theatre...  Necessary theatre", while Beyond the Curtain said it was "a stimulating, confronting and eye-opening piece of theatre". But the best piece of writing about the play was actually written before the author had even seen it, and that's Natasha Remoundou-Howley's programme note. "The stage" she writes "becomes a contested space of citizenship and rights: where belonging, inclusion, and diversity are questioned, scrutinized, and rehearsed. This is theatre that demands visibility because the agents of this claim are refugee women performing their inalienable right to exist, to be heard, and to be seen."

I first encountered Natasha's research and critical writing when I was planning the play, I suppose around 2022. I Googled "Suppliants Aeschylus Syria", and a piece she had written in 2017 appeared. It was called The Suppliants of Syria: Narratives of Displacement and Resettlement in Refugee Performances of Greek Tragedy. So that was where our title came from. Some time later I sent Natasha a note via her Academia page, thanking her for the article and explaining what we were up to. Over a year passed, and I thought no more about it, until in September 2025 I got a very apologetic reply: Natasha had somehow missed seeing the message, and was excited to hear more. We met in Dublin, and now she's a board member of our Irish company!

Revisiting that original article today, I realise it's not so preoccupied with Aeschylus' Suppliants as I had thought. The play is discussed, but the main focus of the piece is on some other contemporary pieces of theatre which are based on Greek models, and which involve female Syrian refugees. One of these, Queens of Syria, I saw when it came to London in 2016. I also made use of the film version as part of our workshop for THE PROMISED LAND in 2018, with Zoe Lafferty, who had directed the London staging, coming to talk to our group. Natasha's article recounts how this was largely a platform for testimony, and how its international reach foundered when the US refused artistic visas to the women on the grounds that they were refugees living in Jordan.

That was in 2014. Two years after that, the EU-Turkey deal brought brought about a situation where the vast majority of Syrian refugees cannot travel at all. I came to understand the background and details of this cruel policy through a dialogue with another academic friend, İlke Şanlıer who leads the Migration Research Centre at Çukurova University in Adana, Turkey, and who became our co-producer for the play. The fact that the women were confined to Turkey shaped both the subject of our play and its form. As in Queens of Syria there is specific personal testimony - but for our project it was impossible for this to be delivered directly from the stage. Instead we had to film the women's interviews, and this necessity came to symbolise the wider issues of exclusion and othering which surround the discourse on migration. This in turn led to the use of the Greek theatre model - three professional performers set against a large community Chorus - to create our dramaturgical structure. 

It’s important for our work that we should be self-aware in making the piece, and so move the audience towards a similar reflexivity. Simply putting a refugee’s personal story on stage does make a statement, but as an intercultural theatre company we also need to consider the act of watching, the role of the spectator, and so the role of the society in which the event is happening. A carefully considered contextualisation deepens the meaning of the testimony: without this, it is far too easy for a British or European audience to become self-satisfied in the mere act of listening to people from the Arab region. In the case of Syrian people confined to Turkey by the EU-Turkey deal, there is a real responsibility to be considered, and this goes much deeper than the specifics of one particular situation. Why do Europeans exclude people from the region? Why the  prejudice? Why the constant assertion of superiority? Why the fear?

Facing these questions in dialogue with the material offered to us by the Syrian women, we found ourselves making a piece which confronted the rise of fascism across the world, across Europe, and particularly in our own communities. We realised that there is nothing specifically Arabic or Islamic about the institutional cruelties practised and indeed performed by ISIS: this sort of fascistic tendency is present in our own society, and made manifest in the prejudices displayed against refugees, the demonisation of Islam, and the attitude which many men continue to display towards women. 

At the centre of the performance was a debate with the audience, and I think that symbolised the way in which the play placed itself within a discourse. I'm incredibly grateful to the researchers who helped to generate that. 

The Death of the Mask-Maker

Masks for Aeschylus' Suppliants by Thanos Vovolis

A few months ago, I had an online chat with the Greek designer Thanos Vovolis. I had been thinking about the use of masks in Ancient Greek theatre, wanting to employ them in SUPPLIANTS OF SYRIA. Thanos is a superb mask maker, and his approach is rooted in deep research, both archival and practical. It was Thanos who really developed an understanding that the Greek theatrical mask was more like a helmet than a face covering, and that its internal echo was what made it a powerful resonator for the voice in open-air spaces. “It was designed for epic, mythic communication”, he said to me, “for the gods to call across the mountains.”

Thanos is very conscious of just how anachronistic the mask has become, even in his own lifetime. Hyper-naturalism is the fashion now, even in the avant-garde, and there is a deep distrust of mythic scale. As the Epstein controversy shows, we relish the mundanity, the squalor of those who dare to lead us. No gods and heroes now. 

There is one exception to this prevailing theatrical trend, and that is the Théâtre du Soleil, under its extraordinary octogenarian director Ariane Mnouchkine. As Thanos said to me, Mnouchkine’s work, which is always rooted in the mask, seeks to find the sacred even in the grubby histories of the present age. Working with the actors of the Soleil in CRE-ACTORS and THE LEGEND OF EUROPA, I’ve also realised how much the company’s use of mask (coupled with costume and props) emphasises the materiality from which a character emerges. It’s a Marxian approach at the same time as it’s a mythic one. As Peter Brook used to say, a theatre that combines the Holy and the Rough. 

A masked performer in Mnouchkine's L'Ile d'Or

On February 14th, Erhard Stiefel, who had been the Théâtre du Soleil’s mask maker for many years, passed away. He was, of course, still working to the end. He wasn’t particularly famous or noticed - unlike Mnouchkine or musician Jean-Jacques Lemêtre, he was not to be seen nightly at the Cartoucherie. He worked quietly in the background. But Mnouchkine constantly impresses upon the actors that the masks are “nos maîtres” (our masters). Their holiness is what enables the characters’ spirits to enter into the performers’ bodies.

Five days later, on February 19th, Ariane Mnouchkine finally announced that she would have a successor as director at the Théâtre du Soleil: Sylvian Creuzevault.  She is approaching her 87th birthday, so retirement has been on the cards for a while. But two things struck me about her timing. One was that she made the announcement in a speech that was also a response to the accusations of sexual harassment and cult-like behaviour that have been made against her company in the media - accusations that all the company members I know regard as malicious. (There's a useful analysis of this here). To be dragged into the world of the petty would not appeal to Ariane. The second was just how quickly the announcement came after the passing of Erhard Stiefel. Without that high priest of her theatre, the creator of the sacred, the lone figure emerging from the stillness of the Holy of Holies with the actors’ spiritual masters in this hands - without Stiefel, Mnouchkine’s practice must, of necessity, come to rest.  

There are other mask makers, of course. Thanos is a great one, and so is Erin Jacques, who has made the beautiful pieces we are putting on stage this week. But after decades of intimate collaboration, it feels right that at this moment, she should finally step away.