Reviews 2006
Reviews 2006
✭✭✭✭✩
by Ashwatthama JD,
translated and adapted by Sally Jones & Ashwatthama JD
Rasik Arts, Factory Theatre Mainspace, Toronto
November 23-December 3, 2006
In 2004 Indian actor and playwright Ashwatthama JD won the Dora Award for Best Actor for Ek Qatra Khoon. Now Rasik Arts has brought back JD and his one-man show for a return engagement. Originally staged in Urdu in Jodhpur in 2001, the show has only grown more relevant attempting as it does to make the central event of Shiite Muslim history speak to a non-Muslim audience.
In 680ad Hussein, the grandson of Mohammed, and all his male relatives were killed at the Battle of Karbala (now in present-day Iraq) because Hussein refused to accept Yazeed, a tyrannical ruler of Syria, as the next caliph. JD’s narrative relates Hussein’s martyrdom to those of Socrates and Jesus and indeed any who refuse to compromise their beliefs by bowing to authority. JD, a Hindu, enters bearing what looks like a wooden cross that is, in fact, a plow, thus establishing at once his play as a profound commemoration of those who would beat swords into plowshares.
JD masterfully plays at least a dozen characters in making the inexorable fate of Hussein come alive. The show is beautiful in its simplicity. Candles lit, blown out, relit, the plow, incense, a bowl of water, rosebuds symbolizing both blood and sacrifice--these are the only props JD uses to tell a tale that enlightens both the past and the present.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: A version of this review appeared in Eye Weekly 2006-11-30.
Photo: Ashwatthama JD.
2006-11-30
Ek Qatra Khoon - A Drop of Blood