Du 9 au 21 mars 2010

A Line in the Sand

By Guillermo Verdecchia and Marcus Youssef
Directed by Mike Payette
Staring : Mike Hughes, Glenda Braganza and Chip Chuipka

“In Autumn 1990, during Operation Desert Shield, two young men, one a troubled Canadian soldier, the other a teenage Palestinian black-marketeer, meet in the scorched Qatari desert. Exploring the psychological and cultural roots of a war fought by Canada and dozens of other countries, this play imagines one story of inexplicable violence buried deep in the chaos of a devastating and brutal international conflict. It asks us to imagine how horrors like these could be perpetrated with our money, in our name, and by people much like us.”

Inspired by Albert Camus’ unforgettable novel L’Etranger and true events, A Line in the Sand takes us to the middle of the Qatari Desert of the Persian Gulf.

Private Mercer, a 20 year old Vancouver-native soldier, ventures out into the desert on his day off from guarding base perimeters. There he meets Sadiq, a 17-year old Palestinian black marketeer who has been sent by his boss to sell merchandise to American soldiers. The two find themselves and are comforted by an unlikely friendship that brings their pasts to the surface and tests their understanding of their lives as they know it.

At the peak of the mission, Sadiq is found dead having been brutally tortured. Among the list of soldiers involved, Mercer becomes the centre of an investigation that reveals that he was at least a witness to the murder of the boy with whom he shared a secret bond.

Written partly in response to Middle Eastern identity in Canada, writers Guillermo Verdecchia (The Noam Chomsky Lectures) and Marcus Youssef (Otherwise Occupied) weave an imaginatively tragic yet beautiful story of two seemingly opposite young people during a politically charged war.

à venir

..