By: Cathryn Macey
News. It is everywhere and since the explosion of social media and the rise of online misinformation, it can be difficult to verify the authenticity of accounts and reports about serious events like war.
However, what cannot be disputed is the devastating impact war has on the lives of the innocent children caught in the crossfire. “A Grain of Sand” is a harrowing insight into what happens to young people whose entire lives are uprooted by war.
Sarah Agha plays Renad. From the Gaza strip, Renad is everything an 11 year old should be. Imaginative, dramatic, intelligent and sassy, Renad’s personality is depicted by Agha as incredibly magnetic. Agha’s petite frame, pig tails and pin striped dungarees enhance Renad’s youthful and exuberant energy whilst she steers us through her account of life in Gaza in 2023 and 4.
Stark on stage lighting (Jonathan Chan) with the house lights up intensifies the audience’s bond with Agha; there’s nowhere to hide from the “truth bombs” she is about to detonate.
Agha’s feisty yet vulnerable performance as Renad focuses on the aftermath of an attack on her town. We watch Renad escape the bombing of her house before being flung into the reality of not knowing where her family are, or if they are even alive. Lurching from location to location in a futile search for sanctuary, Renad is confronted with situations no child should ever face. Sound effects of the shelling and bombings (Nick Powell) bring the horror of Renad’s account to life, but they’re used subtly so they do not become gratuitous or a distraction from the narrative.
Playwright Elias Matar’s skill is his perplexing ability to weave hope and the magic of childhood into a play that explores infanticide. Agha’s dialogue sometimes focuses on fun anecdotes and Palestinian folklore. Flipping between English and the casual and occasional use of Arabic, Renad’s family are brought to life through the tales she recalls about trips to the beach and amusing stories about her Grandmother and siblings.
There’s even a Neil Gaiman quality to Matar’s writing style when Agha affectionately waxes lyrical about “Anqa Mughrib”, or the Palestinian phoenix which has become a national symbol of resilience.
Under Matar’s direction, Agha uses her arms balletically to capture the beauty of the mythical bird her Grandmother once told her about. Agha’s elegant physical performance combined with the poetic nature of Matar’s script create meaningful moments of dreamy escapism that are a reprieve from the real life stories explored.
These tall tales and Renad’s preoccupation with folklore also explore the joy of childhood which, amazingly, Matar portrays as a quality that even war cannot completely destroy.
Although the main bulk of “A Grain of Sand” is about Renad’s story, many more accounts from children affected by the conflict are delivered throughout the performance. Agha briefly steps out of character to read, in a neutral voice, short quotations taken from a booklet called “A Million Kites.” These real-life testimonies from children in Gaza are also sometimes read out in poetic form or softly sung aloud. The names of the interviewed children are projected onto a screen in the background and the audiences’ stomachs collectively reel when their ages are revealed.
Ultimately and unsurprisingly, the end of the show is highly moving. I couldn’t help but think back to Binyon’s poem about the young men killed in World War One (“For the Fallen”). As the show slowly moves to its sad conclusion, we are encouraged to think about and remember the children killed during the conflict in Gaza. Their names are shown, together this time, on the screen behind Renad and the room falls silent; we shall remember them.
This is theatre not for the faint hearted but by creating such a powerful and likeable central character in Renad, the audience response is centred on respect, remembrance and not just pity. As conflict in the Middle East rumbles on, there isn’t a better time to watch “A Grain of Sand” and to take some time out from worrying about petrol prices or interest rates and to think about what really matters; the small humans behind the headlines.