Another reading of my play, 'Brides Look Forward', will take place next week in Massachusetts. As with the performance in October, the piece will be presented alongside poems, plays, paintings, and musical arrangements created in Basra and Boston through a process of cultural interchange. 

In my play, 'Brides Look Forward', an Iraqi mother compels her daughter-in-law to search for her missing husband after the British Army withdrawals form the port city of Basra. When writing the play, I drew on transnational conversations that took place during our ongoing artistic process, but also on my memories of Iraq in 2007: the translators, the journalists, Iraqi citizens, incoming fire, kidnappings, reunion, violence---and resiliency. 

Here are the details for the reading, pulled from the Fort Point Theatre Channel website. 

​Performance: Friday, November 4, 8 pm
Exhibit: November 4
@ Arts at the Armory, 191 Highland Avenue, Somerville
Free Admission

Basra-Boston Connections: An Iraq-U.S. Collaboration in Theater, Poetry, Art, and Music is a free evening of new work offering the fruits of connections among scholars and artists at the University of Basra and their counterparts in the United States, principally in the Boston area.

In a special dual-nation presentation, the events will include a video from Iraq Panorama Joy, composed for the project by Qays Qwda Oasim. Following the video, Boston musicians Jorrit Dijkstra (both nights) and Jeb Bishop (October 1 only) will improvise around Qasim's composition.
Works will be presented also include workshop performances of two plays written for the project: Brides Look Forward by John Meyer, a veteran of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and In the Reeds by Amy Merrill, one of the project coordinators.

Amir Al-Azraki, a Canadian-Iraqi, playwright who is one of the project coordinators, will read and talk about the poetry and accompanying art of Elham Al-Zabaedy. Poet Mitch Manning, from the Joiner Institute for the Study of War and Social Consequences at UMass Boston, will read from his own poetry. Visual artists Anne Loyer and Asmaa Samir Al-Hasan will present original art.
Free admission but space is limited so reservations are recommended. Click here to make reservations for the November 4 performance. 

Basra-Boston Connections is #16 in the Fort Point Theatre Channel Exclamation Point! series of short works, always offered for free. 

PLEASE JOIN US for a BEDLAM OUTREACH PRESENTATION:
A sneak peek into Bedlam Outreach’s Monday Night Classes for Military Veterans.
 
WHO: The Veterans/Actors of Bedlam's Veteran Outreach Class, MC Jenny Pacanowski, Mission Continues Fellow, J. M. Meyer, teaching artist Judy Molner, and Bedlam's Director of Veteran Outreach, Stephan Wolfert. 
 
WHAT: An informal opportunity to meet the Veterans/Actors of the Outreach class and to observe their work in progress, which includes performances of  Shakespeare scenes, monologues, and readings of their own personal writings.
 
WHEN: Monday, October 10th
6:30-7:00pm: A very informal “meet and greet” between Veterans/Actors, Bedlam Company Members and YOU.
7-8:30pm: The presentation, which features scenes from Shakespeare and personal writings on the themes of ‘homecoming’ and ‘infancy.’
 
WHERE: Intersections International
145 West 28th Street, New York, NY 10009, 11th Floor
 
WHY: At Bedlam, we believe in the power of the performing arts to help reintegrate Veterans back into civilian life, and to help them articulate and understand their experiences through the communal process of making theatre.
 
Our "Open Houses" are an opportunity for Veterans and civilians to exchange in an open dialogue toward bringing a deeper understanding between these two communities.
 
The most successful Veteran reintegration programs include camaraderie, communalization of trauma, and Veteran/civilian integration. Bedlam’s Monday night classes provide the opportunity for camaraderie-building as well as the communalization of trauma, but you provide the opportunity for Veteran/civilian integration just by showing up.
 
To learn more about Bedlam and our Veteran Outreach please visit:
http://www.bedlam.org
 
We hope to see you there!
 
RSVP at Outreach@Bedlam.org
 
Admission is free but donations are always welcome.
 
Outreach “Agreement”
I AGREE to be a part of a safe, secure space where we may “speak what we feel, and not what we aught to say” (from Shakespeare’s King Lear); I also agree to keep what others may share, inside of the room.

Basra, Iraq, is in the news this week as it opens its new antiquities museum, housed in one of Saddam Hussein's former palaces.

Saddam built some seventy palaces throughout the country, usually as a way of dominating the landscape and providing a permanent reminder of his presence. The coalition forces seized the palaces during the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and typically used them as headquarters for their units; during my deployment to Baghdad, I saw the inside of at least three of them, the most opulent (and best preserved) of which was the Republican Palace. The Republican Palace was apparently built on the orders of Faisal II, the deposed king of Iraq who was murdered in 1958. It nevertheless bore Saddam's distinctive signatures, such as his numerous murals devoted to his personal mythology as a great warrior and defender of Mesopotamian heritage against foreign influence. It was very beautiful, with rooms of marble, colored like the emerald green of the Tigris.  

The palaces were often built with the cooperation of foreign engineers, and hardened against both ground and air attack. Thus, the palaces weathered mortar attacks and crude technological 'improvements' remarkably well. The one in Basra suffered damage when the British abandoned it to Shiite militias in 2007; but as the photographs in the article suggest, there is only so much damage that the militias could do to the buildings without heavy machinery.

Now the palace in Basra has been transformed into an antiquities museum, and the people of Basra will be able to see the inside of the palace which Saddam never actually bothered to visit. The leader of the refurbishment, Mahdi Aloosawi, states that the palace was built not with bricks, but with the blood of the people.

The new museum has been curated by its new director, Qahtan al-Obaid; the last director was shot dead in 1991. The British Museum is helping to curate the exhibits. The British have a tradition of alternately developing and conquering Basra that stretches back to the First World War.

The museum is cooperating with the British Council to further develop the space, potentially opening additional rooms for theater and visual arts. The Friends of Basrah Museum is a registered UK charity dedicated to assisting in the project.

'Last Saturday, the Fort Point Theatre Channel artistic collective produced my play, Brides Look Forward, alongside Amy Merrill's absurdist drama In the Reeds.

The plays were of wildly different styles, but I don't think Amy and I could have been more pleased with the results: it was an engaging, interdisciplinary evening of performances, with live music, sounds streamed in from Iraq, and poetry in both English and Arabic.

You have one more chance to catch the Basra-Boston pieces as a collective: Friday, November 4, 2016, 8 pm, at the Arts at the Armory, 191 Highland Avenue, Somerville, Massachusetts.

In response to reading on October 1st, I have 'adjusted' my play a bit. Many thanks to the excellent Kathryn Howell, who has cast and directed the piece each step of the away!

Fort Point Theatre Channel's Marc Miller has done most of the hard labour of producing the show thus far--I do not think this project could have happened without his help, and I deeply appreciate his kindness and hospitality.