A letter from the writer of Multiple Casualty Incident — Sami Ibrahim.
13 May
Hello,
My name’s Sami, I’m a playwright and I’ve got a play on at The Yard called Multiple Casualty Incident. I can’t really wait for the play to finally meet its audience so I thought I’d write a letter to you.
I don’t really know who you are. And you probably don’t know who I am. But I suppose, if you're reading this, you’re probably someone with at least a vague interest in theatre. Or perhaps you’re someone who once got drunk on a night out at The Yard. Either way, I hope you’ll find this interesting.
I wanted to use this space to give you a glimpse into why I wrote the play. And, with a bit of luck, by the time you get to the end, you might start thinking: huh, this thing sounds alright, it’s about charities and role play and the content warning says there’s blood and sex, I’d give that a watch.
It started a good six years ago as a conversation with a friend in a pub. He’s an actor and his job at the time was to find other actors willing to participate in training sessions for volunteers about to work in refugee camps and conflict zones. The actors were there to perform role plays: variously pretending to be “angry villagers” and “aggressive border guards” for the trainees to deal with. He hated the job. Not least because the actors were asked to behave in a way that would deliberately rile up a bunch of strangers. And there were no guidelines for this: everyone was just told to go for it and hope for the best. It sounded slippery and disconcerting and I was pretty sure there was a play in it.
Except then I had to figure out how to write that play. I knew I was writing something about a charity which provides aid to a Middle Eastern refugee camp. I knew I wanted to set it in the training sessions which charity workers do before going abroad. I jotted down a list of characters, wrote out a schedule of what training might look like and started experimenting.
There is an alternative universe where I decided to set the play in an actual refugee camp. But something about that idea felt off to me. In my writing, I usually find that I’m interested in the way that the ‘West’ looks at the ‘Other’ and it made sense to replicate that in the form of the play. Instead of having an audience look at a refugee camp, I wanted the characters - and the audience - to have to imagine that refugee camp. Letting an audience watch an actor playing a character who does a role play as an aid worker in an imaginary medical centre in a made-up Middle Eastern country.
Somewhere in that muddle was the start of an idea about charity and help.
As draft one took shape, I remember waking up one morning thinking that the play was terrible: it seemed obvious that my characters were all good people who were sacrificing their comfortable lives to help strangers on the other side of the world. Nothing was interesting about seeing wonderful people do wonderful things.
Then I woke up the next day and thought: these characters are actually terrible people who are complicit in an unaccountable system of neo-colonial do-goodery, in which the suffering of others is a currency for rich Westerners to exploit.
There’s nothing complicated or interesting in watching bad people working for a bad charity so I figured I was writing a self-evidently boring play.
After a few days of going back and forth, I realised that the world I’d stumbled into was about as complicated and interesting as it comes.
In some ways, the play is basically that episode of Friends where Joey and Phoebe argue over whether there’s such a thing as a truly selfless act. On one level, wanting to help is a straightforward and very human thing. But when you start to dissect the motives for helping others, then put the person who needs help in one country and the person helping in another, things get very mucky very quickly.
Sorry.
I should apologise - on behalf of the play - because I’m making it sound intellectual and serious.
The truth is, I love this play because I love the characters in it. I love how weird and funny they are. I love watching them interact with each other and I love watching a group of brilliant actors breathe life into them. I’m writing to you during the show’s tech from my seat at the back of the theatre, watching an excellent creative team bring the show together on The Yard’s industrial stage.
It’s a theatre I’ve loved coming to for years on end. Once upon a time, I made trailers for The Yard (for Buggy Baby and This Beautiful Future) and even took part in their programme Live Drafts in 2017. Two years after that, I first pitched this idea and, five years after that, I’m still surprised and thrilled as the play finally comes to life. It’s hard to describe how exciting it is to see these actors saying my words, whilst standing on a beautiful set, parading about in some excellent costume choices.
So, yes. I’ve spent a long time mulling over some very highfaluting ideas about aid and help and western gazes and white saviours. And, given the state of the world at the moment, I’ve thought a lot about the act of giving to charity. Particularly to charities providing emergency relief. Particularly emergency relief in the Middle East. At times it’s been strange and at times it’s been difficult but - in part - I’ve been able to navigate my way through it with a bunch of characters I’ve grown to love. I hope you’ll be able to do the same with this play: negotiate thorny and difficult questions via a play that can be funny and heart-filled - as well as stuffed with a load of violence and dread just to top it all off.
Thank you for bearing with me. I hope it’s been interesting. I hope you’ll buy a ticket (or two) and come down to The Yard. Give it a try. Donations also welcome.
Sami
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