Event

Basra-Boston Connections

On Saturday, October 1 and Friday, November 4, the Basra-Boston Project presents a free evening of new work, offering the fruits of connections among scholars and artists at the University of Basra and their counterparts in the United States (principally in the Boston area).

Works to be presented include workshop performances of two plays written for the project: "In the Reeds" by Amy Merrill and "Brides Look Forward" by Johnny E. Meyer. Also, in a special dual-nation presentation, the events will include a video from Iraq of Panorama Joy, composed by Qays Owda Qasim for the project. Following the video, Boston musician Jorrit Dijkstra will improvise around Qasims composition.

Amir Al-Azraki, a Canadian-Iraqi playwright who is one of the project coordinators, will read and talk about the poetry and accompanying art of Elham Al-Zabaedy. Poet Mitch Manning, from the Joiner Institute for the Study of War and Social Consequences at UMass Boston, will read his own poetry.

Visual artists Anne Loyer and Asmaa Samir Al-Hasan will present original art. Their work, as well as that of Elham Al-Zabaedy, will be on display at Atlantic Wharf, October 1-3, and Arts at the Armory, November 4. Loyer, a visual artist and coordinator of the Basra-Boston Project, co-created Tamziq: Scattered and Connected, an international and local collaboration between artists from the United States and the Middle East and Iraq. Al-Hasan is a teaching visual arts at the University of Basra.

Additional events are planned for this winter in Basra.

The Basra-Boston Project is a collaboration of Fort Point Theater Channel, the Merrill Family Foundation, the Joiner Institute for the Study of War and Social Consequences at UMass Boston, the University of Basra, the Center for Arabic Culture, playwright Amir Al-Azraki, and the Odysseus Project