Directed by Anmar Taha, the performance titled Pillars of Blood will be staged on 27 and 28 September at the small hall of the Cairo Opera House.
The play is created by Iraqi artists who are currently residing in Sweden. The history of the troupe named Iraqi Bodies goes back to 2002, when it consisted of students of theatre and performance art at the Academy of Fine Arts in Bagdad. When in 2007 one of the troupe's members was killed in a religiously-motivated attack, the troupe froze its activities. Anmar Taha was wounded in the same incident.
In 2009, Taha emigrated to Sweden, where he began working with the troupe members who fled there around the same time.
The play represents an exile theatre, in which the actors tackle the memories of their war-torn homeland, unveiling the human atrocities of the world today. Toying with concepts such as death, killing and suicide, in several scenes, the actors wear animal masks suggesting comparisons between what is human and what is animalistic.
Pillars of Blood is being performed as part of the 23rd Cairo International Festival for Contemporary and Experimental Theatre which runs between 20 and 30 September.
