‘Scorched’ shines a light on the role of maintaining identity through hardship

Aya Saleh’s father gave her a play to read when she was 13 years old.

Now, Saleh is directing the same piece as her senior thesis within the theater department.

“Scorched” will premiere Friday at the Little Theater in Macgowan Hall. The story, originally written in French by Wajdi Mouawad in 2003, follows twin siblings, Janine and Simon, in the aftermath of their mother Nawal’s death. Through her will, they’re tasked with traveling from Canada to Lebanon to find the father they never knew and a brother they were unaware of.

The narrative touches upon the harsh reality that Lebanese people faced as the civil war tore their homeland apart from 1975 to 1990, Saleh said. Specifically, the graduate directing student said the nonlinear narrative explores both the past and present of Nawal’s life, paralleling her struggles to Lebanon’s.

“We’re presented (with) the country that suffered so much trauma and that has been continuously ripped apart,” she said. “I think it’s interesting that (Mouawad) represented the country as a very female energy.”

The Lebanese Civil War resulted from myriad religious and political issues, Saleh said, but the immediate cause was an invasion by Israel which led to 15 years of conflict. Being Lebanese herself, the director said the story is close to her heart because her parents and loved ones lived through the war. In one scene, for example, Nawal is late and misses her bus only to learn all of the individuals aboard were killed by armed men. Saleh said this event parallels a real incident in 1975 when Palestinians were massacred on a Lebanese bus. She said she also sees pieces of her mother – and many other Lebanese women – in Nawal because of their shared connection to the war.

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This pain forces Nawal to keep secrets from her children – most notably their lineage – and also leads her to stop speaking for five years. She goes mute the day of a tribunal where she is faced with her rapist from the war. This is a stark shift from her youth, when she was known as the “women who sings,” because of her musical abilities.

Inhabiting Nawal’s character was difficult, said Ceridwyn Quaintance, a first-year theater student who portrays the mother. However, she was drawn to the character arc because Nawal had many beautiful experiences in her life, yet is unable to overcome the traumas she endured, such as having her first love taken away, Quaintance said.

“The fact that Nawal stops talking for five years … that takes a lot of restraint but also a lot of trauma. The reason she doesn’t tell her children about what happened to her and who she really was, is because she didn’t want to pass on her trauma,” she said. “That was her only way of protecting them.”

As the twins cope with the revelation of their ancestry, the dynamic between the siblings becomes a focal point of the play, said Madelyn Rose Davis, a first-year theater student who plays Janine. Being mixed-race herself has allowed Davis to understand Janine’s struggle of feeling split between Lebanon and Canada, she said. She worked closely with Derrick Rose, a second-year theater student who plays Simon, to understand the complex dynamics between the siblings.

“It’s so much more interesting if it’s not just anger and hatred,” Davis said. “That underlying love is what is really beautiful about their relationship.”

She and Rose decided that the first time Janine and Simon walk on stage should be together, rather than entering separately, to emphasize the twins’ close relationship despite their differences. Saleh said this duality – between love and hate and right and wrong – permeates the play signifying the moral ambiguity in life, especially during wartime.

“Nothing can be one without the other, and that goes back to Lebanon. There can be no peace before you accept violence,” she said. “During the war everyone did good and bad things … and the lines between them begin to blur.”

Though the play is specific to Lebanon – evident through references of locations such as Nabatieh and Keserwan – the country is never explicitly stated to make the story feel more universal, Saleh said. She believes Mouawad did this so the work could feel relatable to those who aren’t Lebanese, as the main theme about the complexities of identity can be understood by all, she said.

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But the play also exposes western audiences to an authentic story about the Middle East, said Michael Aghasaryan. The second-year theater student who plays two roles – a shepherd and a revolutionary leader – said it’s important to present an honest narrative of what Lebanese individuals experienced during the war. “Scorched” describes the aftermath of living through such brutality told through one family’s perspective, he said.

“It’s about how keeping silent about the past and keeping silent about your identity never resolves itself. It never leads to good,” he said. “That’s where bitterness and conceivable distances are made, and that’s what this family’s going through.”

Email Bhatti @[email protected] or tweet @bhatti_umber.