A review by Eiman Abbas El-Nour in Warscapes:
Three Eritrean students working on their MA degree in Theatre Studies at the University of Leeds in 2001 and 2002, decided to go a bit further, and write and produce plays. Their objective was to use these plays in Eritrea’s educational institutions to support English teaching, as well as teaching drama in schools. They also wanted to help in the development of Eritrea’s theatre after the newly won independence, and to introduce Eritrean culture and theatre to the outside world.
The plays were first performed at the workshop theatre in Leeds in 2001 and 2002. They plays are: A Village Dream by Mesgun Zerai, The Snare by Solomon Dirar and Aster by Esaias Tseggai. In her introduction, the editor Jane Plaistow briefly introduces the three plays and sets the background of their writing together with the historical and literal context. The readers are also presented with a short biography of each of the three playwrights, who are veterans of the Eritrean independence struggle, who were in their forties at the time of writing. Although each of these plays is written about a different topic, they all depict aspects of the writers’ views of life during Eritrea’s struggle for independence. All are very short...[continue reading]
