SCORCHED

BY WAJDI MOUAWAD

TRANSLATED BY LINDA GABORIAU

DIRECTED BY AL MILLER

SCORCHED

sept 25 - oct 11

fri and sat at 8:00

sun at 2:00

The Theater Project in Brunswick will present the Maine premiere of "Scorched", by Lebanese-Canadian playwright Wajdi Mouawad. Set during Lebanon's civil war in the 1970s and 1980s, "Scorched" has been called "powerful", "haunting", and "a beautifully penned story that paves a path to a mother's unspeakable pain". Thematically similar to the Greek tragedies, in particular the Oedipus cycle, "Scorched" was written and originally produced in French as "Incendies". The play opened in Montreal; the English translation by Linda Gaboriau received its East Coast premiere in Philadelphia in 2009.

Mouawad grew up amid Lebanon's civil war, then moved to Paris and then Montreal, where he studied at the National Theatre School, from which he graduated in 1991. He has said he is "Lebanese in my childhood, French in my thinking and Quebecois in my theatre. That's what happens when you spend your childhood in Beirut, adolescence in Paris, then try to become an adult in Montreal."

"Scorched" tells the story of twins Janine and Simon's search for their heritage after their mother Nawal dies. Each receives a letter with a shocking assignment. To carry out their assignments takes them to their mother's war-torn country and to the heart of their mother's own story. How they deal with this revelation empowers them to continue or to end the cycle of violence that is their family's history. "Though never mentioned, Lebanon and its civil war are clearly the setting for Scorched," Theater Project founder Al Miller says. Miller taught in Lebanon during the sixties and early seventies and still travels annually to the Middle East to teach and visit friends.

A very special thank you: Wal-Mart and Charlie Crosby