Interview with Writer Ahlam & Director Katie Posner of You Bury Me

With The Women’s Prize for Playwriting 2020 winner, You Bury Me, opening at Bristol Old Vic this February, Ahlam and Katie Posner, Writer and Director respectively, tell us about this explosive coming-of-age production.

Interview with Ahlam and Katie Posner

Tell us a bit about your journey with You Bury Me since winning the Women’s Prize for Playwriting.

Ahlam: "Since winning the prize, we've had a couple of exciting developments. It's been a really joyous but also challenging process. The script now is in a really, really good place.

The main challenge was that when I wrote the first draft in 2015 there was an urgency to it, because it was responding to events in Egypt at the time. Now, that urgency has shifted in the narrative and in the storytelling. I had to work really hard to find a different entry point to the framing of the play and why this story needs to be told now. I asked myself, how do we tell this story now, and why is 2015 significant now? 2015 isn't a year that's significant on an international level, but it was a dark year in Egypt and no one wrote anything about that time. I wrote the play in 2015 and about 2015. There was an urgency to it back then and it was about reconnecting with that urgency and finding a different framework for it."

Katie, how did you feel when you first read the script?

Katie: "The first time we read the script was within the context of the Women's Prize for Playwriting and it was amongst a bunch of very strong, brilliant plays by amazing women.

I read You Bury Me and I remember texting Phillipe Cato (our New Work Associate at the time) and just going, 'Oh my God, have you read You Bury Me? It's so good!' And he was like, 'Yes!' We had this very hot, fiery exchange of messages about the play – saying it was just so funny and human and painful and political and kind of everything that you want in a script, in a really knotty play. So it was just a very exciting journey to see that: for the script to be read by the judges and to be unanimously held up in the same regard.

It was a very poignant moment for me, knowing that a post-revolution play which was written in that place of urgency was gonna be produced. It was really special.

It's not a historical play – it's about humans, and it's about living and navigating life in Cairo and all the challenges that come with that and the beauty of the city. And there's a real love of what Cairo means to these people, which I also think is incredibly universal. As much as it absolutely has to be about Cairo, I think it's universal for anyone who has a connection to the complexity of what it means to call a place home. So it means a lot to me, and I feel really proud and privileged to be on this journey. And I feel like it takes a really special writer to win a prize and actually relook at that play and say, 'okay, well I have won that and that's brilliant, but actually what is the play now'? And to be able to continually develop that, it takes a really special human, and that's Ahlam for sure."

What does your day-to-day look like when you are working together on You Bury Me?

Katie: "For me personally, as the director, the development of any play is very bespoke to the writer. With Ahlam, the way in which we both work best is much more around the kind of bigger conversations rather than granular. I think what really excites me about our development process is that we have these big conversations, and Ahlam goes 'leave that with me'. And then you get presented with this insane scene, and you're like, 'What is this amazing scene? Oh my God!' I do think – in acknowledgement of process – there are times where perhaps I have been more suggestive of moments which maybe aren't as successful because it doesn't come through the writer's own connectedness to their play. I think I do quite like leaning into [these bigger picture issues]. That's an observation I've had."

Ahlam: "I've really enjoyed working with Katie. Katie will come over and talk in half sentences with me. And I don't know if this is specifically to me, but there's a lot of sounds and gestures and a lot of like half-thoughts where you can't quite find the word. And I really respond to that. People trying to find the right words is sort of where my head space is at all the time. So I need to understand something sort of subconsciously, or in the body – intuitively – before I can explain it. I think Katie gives feedback in that way. Katie's always given enough notes without it being overwhelming, just enough to just sit with it. Then slowly, slowly, it's like a seed and it starts to grow. And I'm like, 'Ah, okay, what if we do this and that...' I think that's a brilliant relationship to have with the director.

As a writer, I love giving a lot of space for directors to have their input and have their experiences come into the room and stuff. So it's really fun. It feels like suddenly the shape is really starting to come out and then suddenly the play makes a lot more sense to me than the draft that won the prize."

Katie: "To add to this, I remember you shared previous drafts of the play with us in the National Studio. And again, that was a really useful insight into knowing where your head was, and where ideas and things had been seeded.

What I love about working with Ahlam is she'll go, 'oh, I'm just going to send you this article' and it will be really incredible and interesting, with not often too much [context] behind it, but just enough for me to gain something. And then I really look into something, which we then talk about and, you know, perhaps features in the play or not."

Ahlam, what was your inspiration for the play?

Ahlam: "Originally I wanted to write a play about love in a police state. I wanted to write about a coming of age story like Romeo and Juliet, all the sort of romcom teen flick stories that I love. I wanted to write a play about that set in Egypt where the stakes – particularly in 2015 – were just a bit higher. Or different, maybe.

People find ways to love. That's what I wanted to talk about – even if it's in a very conservative state, even if it could potentially be violent, all these sorts of obstacles are just obstacles. People find ways to be together. People find ways to have sex. People find ways to discover their sexuality, to be queer."

What are the themes of the play?

Ahlam: "I'm really interested in dark humour because I think there's something incredibly absurd about violence and about state violence particularly. There's a quality to it that sometimes you have to laugh, because otherwise it's just too much. I'm really interested in that type of work. In general, I'm really interested in political satire. I'm really interested in dark humour as a way to sort of process and talk about injustice and oppression.

In 2015, I was quite a new writer at the time, and I was still learning how to write and back then I was a very responsive writer. So I'd respond to events as they were happening. In 2015, Egypt had settled and was about a year into the new military regime - the new military dictatorship that's still in power now – and it was a dark year. I remember in 2015 saying that it's a year of 'post-hope'. We've not only lost hope, we're beyond hope. The revolution failed fully. People were being punished, activists were being punished, young people were being punished – my generation was being punished in particular. We had a crisis of forced disappearances, so people were being kidnapped by the state; usually they would show up in a prison or dead, but not always. Sometimes people would stay missing for a significant amount of time, and there would be loads of hashtags around 'we need to find this person' and 'we need to find that person'. There were lots of arrests, and lots of executions as well. At the time, people were given death sentences for speaking out. There was a real sort of counter-revolution and a show of power that I felt I couldn't ignore.

As I was writing the script, it just felt like I'm talking about young people. I'm talking about young people's bodies. These are bodies that really were put on the line during the revolution. People really risked their lives, their safety, their physical safety during the revolution. A lot of people died over the years as well, not just in the initial uprising. So I was like, I can't talk about Egyptian bodies without talking about state violence. I can't talk about sex and love and discovering your sexuality without talking about state violence. And I know in the West, that's a difficult connection to make. But in Egypt, that's a really easy connection that goes without question. When you talk about your body and you talk about your safety and your freedom, a lot of the battles are enacted on bodies. Whether it's women's bodies, queer bodies, political prisoners' bodies, that's where the battles occur. And so the play became about that as well. So it became about state violence in a very direct way rather than sort of in the background or always watching, or always the threat of it or... It's sort of the companion. State violence is always sort of a companion. It becomes quite a big prominent part of the play. And that's why I chose You Bury Me as the title because it's a way of saying, 'I love you' in Arabic, which is, 'I hope you bury me before I bury you' because I don't wanna live without the other person. We don't use it in Egypt as much, but I still thought the translation works here. Because there's something about death and love always being connected.

That's as brief as I can make my answer to that. Yeah, there's a lot to say about what the inspiration was, but I guess in the retelling of it, in the reframing of it now, the play is very much about honour. Honouring and memorialising and documenting the people who have died since 2011, people who died fighting and struggling, for a freer, more just Egypt. And people are still paying the price. People are still in jail, people are still in exile, people are still in danger. So it's an honouring of all of those people, whether they're alive or not."

What would you want the audience to take away from the play?

Ahlam: "I think it depends on who's in the audience. I hope it just deepens an understanding of that part of the world, talking about Egypt specifically. I would like British audiences to deepen their understanding of Egypt or a story from Egypt where that [story] is not really seen on stages and in a lot of art scenes. I rarely see a representation of Egypt that resonates with me. And if the audience are Egyptian or linked to that, again wider, Middle East or North Africa, then I hope they feel honoured, or they feel able to partake in that honour. I hope the audience actually partake in the honouring, and the honouring of the stories and the characters. They're fictional, but they're based on an enormous amount of people that I've read about or that I know or that I've met. I don't want them to be entertained and go home and that's it. I would like them to really take an interest and want to discuss it, want to look into it, want to read more literature or look at films from that part of the world, engage with that part of the world on a different level, on whatever level they feel they can. Theatre has a social purpose and I want people to engage. I want people to discuss it and think about it. I hope it resonates with people."

And that's the point of theatre, right? To trigger conversations and when anyone consumes different art, you know something's really special when you want to go home and actually learn more about it or research more about it, watch more art about it.

Katie: "Absolutely! I want to share the first five lines of the play, because this is what I want audiences to take away. It says: 'In 2011, Egypt had a revolution. We have to mention this because it's been a long time and you might not know, or maybe you forgot. That's what's scary: that we'll all forget'. That's what I want – I want an audience to go into that theatre and watch a play that gets deep into their body and into their bones, and I want them to go; 'well, maybe I didn't know enough about this revolution that was – and is – hugely significant for Egypt, and also for the Middle East and the surrounding areas'. Look what's happening in Iran!

The most powerful thing humans can do is come together to fight and create seismic change within a country through revolution. And there's a loss and a tragedy which sits alongside this fight for political change, which the West have a very comfortable perception of, trying to understand it from a distance. But this play has such a powerful core of emotions which run in your bones, and as long as I don't mess it up, there is absolutely no way this play won't make an impact on you because audiences are going to fall in love with those six characters. They are funny as anything, and just very human, and audiences are going to go on their individual journeys. They all intertwine and it's very satisfying for an audience, but there's also this huge undercurrent of political, seismic shifts within countries and within people – it's a very powerful message.

One of the lines I constantly talk about is when one of the characters says: 'Nobody cares about us. Nobody cares about Egypt'. And I think there is a perception – again, within Western culture – around the kind of stories we tell time and time again. But this play, on these huge stages, is talking about Cairo, which isn't something we generally hear about. And this story that we're telling, and caring about, is Cairo. And for me, that's the best kind of theatre, when you leave and think 'I did not know enough about that', and you go home and learn more about it because you're ashamed at how little you know. And this play is not about teaching – it's not that form of theatre – but those characters will land in your heart and you will care about them afterwards."

You Bury Me launches at Bristol Old Vic 24 Feb in the Theatre, before heading to The Royal Lyceum Theatre and The Orange Tree Theatre.