Trudie Lee
Team researches stories of war at the source
It’s not often that one encounters a play where the story about its creation is just as interesting as the show’s narrative. Jonathan Garfinkel and Christopher Morris’s Dust — premièring as part of Alberta Theatre Projects’ (ATP’s) Enbridge playRites Festival of New Canadian Plays — is one such piece. In fact one could write a book about the experience.
Of course not every playwright enters a war zone deals with the Pakistan army or interviews Taliban widows which are the sorts of adventures Garfinkel and Morris embarked on during the course of their research.
Dust is comprised of three separate stories linked only by the common theme of loss. Each story is set in a different geographic location: Canada Afghanistan (and Canada) and Pakistan.
Morris who is also the artistic director of Toronto’s Human Cargo says the inspiration for Dust came via a CBC Radio interview he heard in 2007 featuring a woman whose husband was a Canadian soldier serving in Afghanistan.
“Hearing her speak about what the families and children go through really struck me” Morris says. “I didn’t want to tell a story about soldiers. I decided I wanted to tell a story about the families of soldiers and the women and children.”
But Morris didn’t only want to write about the impact on Canadian families so he broadened his scope to include Afghanistan as well.
“In all things it’s good to have a healthy perspective on an issue. Too often we don’t think beyond ourselves and the circle we are in” Morris explains. “A mother is a mother anywhere. A kid is a kid anywhere. A wife is a wife anywhere.”
Pakistan wasn’t part of Morris’s original plan until he visited a friend there in 2008 while on a research trip for Dust and terrorists bombed a Marriott Hotel in Islamabad during his stay. He says watching the news report on Pakistani television was an eye-opener.
Morris says that event alerted him to the massive number of Pakistani soldiers who have died fighting terrorism in their own country not to mention the staggering number of civilians. “Hearing that story I realized it would be impossible to create a play about the war in Afghanistan without involving Pakistan…. Pakistan is at the centre of all of it.”
Despite that revelation about the complicated political situation Morris stayed true to his plan to focus on people rather than politics. “I’m not interested in theatre that’s a discussion of intellectual ideas and debates. I want to create theatre that involves human stories about real people with real stories” he says.
To that end Morris and Garfinkel along with the assistance of Pakistani actress Samiya Mumtaz — who also acts in Dust — set out to interview families of the Pakistan army people who had experienced bomb blasts and lost family members because of the conflict. They spoke to the families of Pakistani soldiers only with the permission of the Pakistan army and perhaps surprisingly Morris says people were willing to share their experiences with the westerners.
The army also arranged for Morris and company to interview a Taliban widow who was being held by the army as a prisoner in the hopes of luring her missing 14-year-old son back on their radar as he was suspected of Taliban activity. “It was a precarious situation” Morris says adding that they entered Pakistan’s Swat Valley — where the woman was living — under military escort.
Morris says anything she recounted about her late husband in front of the armed Pakistani soldiers surrounding her was “predictable” in that she claimed to disagree with his Taliban affiliations. “Once she started discussing her son though she started to break down. It was a very odd situation to be a part of” he says adding that at the conclusion of the interview the woman invited Mumtaz into her house.
“She (the widow) lifted her burka from her face and they hugged each other and wept. It was this feeling that they were just women” Morris says.
That interview provided the focus for the Pakistan-based story in Dust about a widow and her son who is being lured by the Taliban.
While in Afghanistan Morris interviewed families of the Afghanistan National Army as well as the former Taliban ambassador to Pakistan. Morris says the story at the centre of the Afghan section of the play is based on the experiences of an Afghan actress who he originally cast in Dust in 2008. In December of that same year the actress’s husband was murdered — the rumour was that he was killed because of her involvement in acting.
Eventually Morris and Garfinkel helped facilitate her relocation to Canada along with her two children. “The story of immigration and integration (into Canadian culture) stood out. It emerged as the most important story to tell coming out of Afghanistan” Morris says.
To write the Canadian section of Dust Morris and Garfinkel spent time at CFB Petawawa interviewing military families there and gathering “hundreds of pages of interview material.” They were struck by the story of one woman whose husband was at war and that became the basis for the Canadian story.
As for a book about the creation of Dust Morris says that just might be a possibility — in addition to being a playwright Garfinkel is also a novelist and has penned a memoir. In the meantime however Morris says he hopes all the research he and his team embarked upon will serve to create a memorable theatrical experience.
