QUEENS OF SYRIA at the GFT

One of the oldest plays ever written about war and its affects om Woman Euripides Trojan Women
 was staged in Amman, Jordan last Winter, a two thousand year old play about war and its aftermath and the catastrophic devastation of civilian life. But in this unique staging the  actors , none who have previous acting experience before  had gone through identical experiences to the characters they portrayed, just just across the border in their home of Syria where they were all refugee survivors living the existence of day to day concerns , worries , anxieties in an uncertain present with the prospects for the future lying between bad and worse as their Families and Homes are destroyed by the ongoing war in their beloved homeland for which they pine , long and yearn for on an hour to hour basis.Many tell harrowing tales of a lost husband, a son, a brother.
 Like Hecuba, the queen of Troy,  each of them had suffer grief and loss in their own way.

The women work to incorporate their stories into the play, as a way of communicating to the world what had happened to them and plead to hear , empathise and accept their story. This film will tells the story of 40 women who were brought together in a drama workshop to tell the world their 21st century stories through an ancient play from 415BC, in one unique performance.

  Queens of Syria trailer from Yasmin Fedda on Vimeo.

This review from The Variety gives a very good overview of the project and the delicate , revealing and tender filming by director Yasmin Fedda

"Fedda’s interest is the process — how these traumatized women react to Euripides, and how they respond to Abu Saada and coach Mohammad’s exercises, in which they’re given freedom to incorporate their stories into the performance. Some blossom: Confident, sociable Fatima sees the play as a way of communicating and understanding her experiences: “Hecuba is so close to me.” Another identifies with Cassandra and her desire for vengeance. As the weeks pass, those who remain visibly relax before the cameras, benefiting from the experience of working together as a group and the energy that comes from the act of self-expression. The final staging is both choral and singular, the stark immediacy of their traumas given added potency, thanks to the uniform blackness of their clothes and the minimalist production design.
“I have reached the end of my sorrows,” the women recite in unison, similar to Hecuba’s line as she departs from Troy: “This surely is the last, the utmost limit this, of all my sorrows.” Like Euripides, Fedda knows this is a sorrow that lingers, and as their refugee status becomes ossified, and the women face ever more difficult decisions about the possibility of returning to a destroyed country, their grief will not have reached an end."

You can get a lot more information including background to the project , the profiles of the film makers from the dedicated website for this exceptional and endearing story.