Samatah: Memory of Stones
by Hanna Eady and Ed Mast
(at the Library)
June 19, 20 SATURDAY & SUNDAY 7:30 pm
“Sahmatah: Memory of Stones”
By Hanna Eady and Ed Mast
Directed by Hanna Eady
Sahmatah was one of over 500 Palestinian villages which were destroyed during the founding of Israel in 1948. Some residents were driven out of the country. Some still live nearby but even 60 years later are not allowed to return and rebuild their homes.
In SAHMATAH: MEMORY OF STONES, a one-act play for two actors, an old man takes his grandson on a pleasant walk over a meadow of pine trees and scattered stones. But as they walk, the memory of the place rises from the ground itself, and the grandfather leads his grandson through the appalling story of the destruction of Sahmatah, and of the people that once lived where nothing but pine trees grow now.
“Sidi,” an old man, tells of the joyous life and horrific destruction of a tiny village of olive growers based on interviews with a Nakba survivor, conducted over the bare stone ruins of the man’s ancestral home in Israel. Sidi, the grandfather, relives this string of vignettes with his skeptical grandson, giving voice to the ghosts of the villagers as they were forcibly “resettled.” Eady and Mast handled an explosive topic with a grace and poignancy that drove some audience members to tears. The onstage chemistry of Franken and Eady was instrumental in keeping the narration accessible and engaging as well as evocative. Though not the least apologetic for its starkness, the play doesn’t sermonize and allows viewers to form their own perspective on the ongoing tragedy in Israel/Palestine. Ultimately, Sahmatah transcends politics to give a human face to the mortality statistics we read in the “World” section of the newspaper. —JENNA NAND <http://www.seattleweekly.com/related/to/Jenna+Nand>
<http://www.seattleweekly.com/related/to/Palestine>