Letters from Area C
Dr Who’s Sil in benefit for MAP
Nabil Shaban, a regular performer at the former Theatre Workshop, is returning to Edinburgh this weekend to appear in SpartaKi Theatre’s rehearsed reading of Letters from Area C, by Jim Aitkin.
Staged at Area C Coffeehouse on Leith Walk, the play is set in Area C – the 72% of the West Bank area under full Israeli civil and security control – and concerns prisoners Yusif and Jamil, and two sisters, Laila and Hanin.
Writer Jim Jim Aitkin and performer Nabil Shaban. Photo SpartaKi
Shaban plays Yusif, with Jamil played by Manjot Sumal who is currently appearing as PC Surjit Singh in Scot Squad and was a writer and performer on fringe hit How To Make A Killing In Bollywood.
While the two prisoners talk politics and draw maps in their cell, Leila (Lubna Kerr) is devising a plan to pass letters between her younger sister Hanin (Habiba Islam) and Jamil.
Shaban is typically forthright about his involvement in the production: “Why did I want to be in the play? Because it tells a story of the great injustice the world served on Palestinians by allowing a bunch of foreigners to steal their land from them, and then create a new apartheid state which regards the indigenous people as inferior, and deny them the right to exist in their own land.”
Shaban, who is known among Doctor Who fans for his creation of hideous, reptilian alien Sil, was nominated at the CATS for his performance of Mac the Knife in the Theatre Workshop (Edinburgh) production of Threepenny Opera, and created the hard-hitting First to Go, about disabled people in nazi Germany for Boilerhouse.
Letters from Area C is being directed by SpartaKi’s artistic director Karen Douglas, with Margot Taylor and Carl Q Ling also in the cast. All proceeds from the performance will be donated to Scottish MAP (Medical Aid for Palistinians).
Letters from Area C
Area C Coffeehouse, 239-241 Leith Walk, EH6 8NY.
Saturday 29 November 2014.
7.30pm.
Tickets: £5 (£3) on the door; at Area C; or email: lettersfromareac@gmail.com
ENDS
