2017 TOUR
for the National Arts Festival, Grahamstown, South Africa
Personal history is world history in The Crows Plucked Your Sinews
The Crows Plucked Your Sinews invites us into the world of a young Somalian woman coming to terms with her positionality in a world charged with Islamophobic hostility.
Written and directed by Hassan Mahamdallie, the play illustrates how the histories weaved into the metaphoric quilt of one’s personal heritage are simultaneously the fibres of political history.
Video by Athini Majali
Aisha Mohammed, the sole actress of the play, compels the audience to journey with her in this delineated narrative about the great matriarchs of her family. Mohammed’s character shares the anxiety of feeling both alienated from and proud of her Somali identity. She speaks about her ambivalent relationship with her nostalgic grandmother and great-grandmother, who was a valiant Dervish warrior.
The play’s form, done in the lyrical tradition of Somalia, inspires us to rub the prejudice from our eyes. The Crows Plucked Your Sinews demystifies Somali culture with a bilingual performance and the ambiance of Abdelkader Saadoun’s live music, consisting of drums and an oud.
The Crows Plucked Your Sinews boldly reclaims authorship of Somali history. This refreshing retelling jostles with problematic attitudes about Islam in the context of the West’s dubious War on Terror.
By Ayanda Gigaba
Once the gateway to the British Empire – a bookend for deplorable voyages and ill-gotten riches -it is fitting that Liverpool should provide the backdrop for a tale of triumph over colonialism.
The Crows Plucked Your Sinews, performed at The Unity Theatre as part of Liverpool Arab Arts Festival, follows the story of two Somali women found in opposing ages. The first, Suuban, resides in a Woolwich council house in 2011, the other, Suuban’s great-grandmother, is a Dervish warrior fighting in the ranks of Sayid Muhammed Abdullah ‘Mad Mullah’ Hassan in 1913. Both women are engaging in a similar battle against oppression at the hands of the British. One dodges colonial bullets, the other takes cover from sharpshooting soundbites and loaded rhetoric.
Written and directed by Hassan Mahamdallie, the stripped back production relies on the intimacy of spoken world to illuminate the conjoining narratives of two contemporary conflicts. Aisha Mohammed, the sole actor on stage throughout the performance, switches between both roles, linguistically dancing from English to native Somalian tongue with a continual flow throughout the 70 minute performance. A hijab swiftly transformed into warrior dressings announces the change of character.
The performance begins with Suuban delivering a pensive monologue under a sole spotlight before a singular chair. Applying wit and lyricism to soften the harsh reality, she talks of her and the Somali people’s ‘invisibleness’ within 21st century British society. “We are the true nomads”, she explains. Later, we’re introduced to characters within her home (all voiced by Mohammed): her drug dealing brother, dispassionate mother and dementia suffering grandmother, who languishes on the top floor of her house speaking as if to ghosts, while regularly filling up a spit jar due to medicinal intake.
One evening, after tuning into the news and absorbing the reports, Suuban is jolted into detailing the state of her ancestor’s homeland – a country regarded as a failed nation, ravaged by civil war since the 1990s. A situation stoked by British endeavours in the horn of Africa at the turn of the 20th century.
From one uncelebrated conflict to its opposite, a dogmatic Barrack Obama beams onto the back of the stage to announce the discovery, killing, and disposal of Osama Bin Laden. The words “no American’s were harmed” repeat from Obama’s enlarged mouth; Suuban ponders the “USA” chants and studies the presidentially approved murder before disclosing how she feels sorry for the once orchestrator of terror. The scene evokes a feeling of awakening; that behind the imperious speeches of western leaders, there is always unsung victims of such spoken aggression – especially those who happen to resemble natives of the Arab world. Being left to solely rely on the innate strength sewn into their culture is not enough.
Assuming the role of the great-grandmother, the Dervish warrior battling against the British army of Richard Corfield, aka Koofil, Mohammed recalls tales of slaying the unfortunate British soldier ‘Tommy’ – an act eloquently aided by reading aloud heartfelt letters exchanged between him and his mother, which are also projected on stage. A closing rendition of Koofil, written by Sayid in commemoration of victory over Corfield in The Battle of Dul Madoba, closes the performance as Mohammed commands the lines: ‘”The Dervish are like the advancing thunderbolts / of a storm, rumbling and roaring.”
As the centrepiece, Aisha Mohammed is captivating from her first line to the last. Both incarnations of her character possess the same vocal prowess, subtly underlining that both women are fearsome warriors in their own respect. The play itself is direct, and doesn’t hide behind corners within its narrative. As does the bold lyricism and poetry, with each line generously fleshing out the minimalist set design.
Writer Mahamdallie is right to question the way in which the US carried out the killing of Bin Laden, and neatly juxtaposes Obama’s authoritarian announcement with Sayid’s emboldened poem, Koofil. From white British nationals, to those with Somalian heritage, or even people who find themselves unmoved by pictures of the Mediterranean refugee crisis, this performance will leave you emotively challenged, albeit with an energy to challenge those who command our armed forces with little regard for life, or the consciences of those closer to home.
The great structures birthed by Britain’s colonial wealth often cast a shadow on the suffering endured to enable their creation. The Crows Plucked Your Sinews uses a beautifully crafted narrative to deliver a stark history lesson. One that delicately shows how Britain’s past brushed colonial suffering into the gutter beside the foundations of its celebrated empire – of which the effects can still be felt in present day.
Upon leaving The Unity theatre, the peripherals are filled with stunning Georgian town houses lining the street, with a short walk into the city centre accompanied by further stately architecture dating back to the 18th and 19th century. Perhaps we ought not to rely on the powers of theatre to be reminded of Britain’s conflicted past.
The Crows Plucked Your Sinews was performed at Unity Theatre as part of Liverpool Arab Arts Festival
The Crows Plucked Your Sinews – Unity Theatre, Liverpool
Where some writers and performers may shy away from taking on the opposite side of the coin when it comes to war, director and writer, Hassan Mahamdallie’s production took no such restrictions.
Through the eyes of his one-woman play, Mahamdallie’s writing, along with some clever and subtle artistic input incorporating lyrical tradition of Somalia with English and spoken word, he depicts the struggles of one Somali woman and her family in modern-day London to fit into society.
The production arrived as part of the Liverpool Arab Festival this month, with the multi-talented Aisha Mohammed making her theatrical debut on this tour.
Mohammed is our Somali woman in modern day London, specifically Woolwich in 2011. It is her journey her character portrays and it is not just the struggle she and her family go through, but also, through the visions of her dying grandmother, what their ancestors went through back in Africa whilst Somalia was under British occupation.
With no more than a single prop box on stage, Mohammed paints a picture of what her character goes through each day, where one of her main responsibilities is feeding and taking care of her critically ill Grandmother.
But, as we begin to find out, it is more than a day-to-day challenge in Woolwich. As her Grandmother still lives, Mohammed’s character comes across drawings created by her Grandmother that depict her Grandparents’ generation in Somalia in the early 1900’s, when the British looked to restore authority from the clans that ruled the East African nation in those times.
As a result, Mohammed flits between 2011 and 1913 and the stories of different generations of Somali people. In 2011, she is seeing the death of Osama Bin Laden unfold on global TV, and in 1913 she is a ruthless Dervish warrior in Somalia as the British continue the hunt for ‘Mad Mullah’.
Whether she was depicting the on-going battles between Somali clans and the British forces, or the struggles at home when her character’s brother is drug-dealing and attacked by an addict and interrogated by the authorities, Mohammed brought a relentless energy and passion to proceedings.
With the performance relying on one actor, credit must go to Mohammed’s tackling of such a demanding script and maintaining the energy of a dialogue-heavy performance.
With that in mind, the Unity Two space seemed a large one. With the intensity of emotion and passion, in my opinion, the play could have had even more impact by utilising a slightly smaller space.
Changes in character and scene were made clear through subtle costume change, Mohammed’s headscarf for her London character, would then be used as battle robes across the chest when she depicted her fearsome character from Somalia in 1913.
Furthermore, her depiction of the arrogant British soldiers during the early 20th century were indicated by khaki pants worn underneath her dresses. All this made scene and character changes clear and smooth.
Mahamdallie’s dialogue painted a vivid picture of each scene, meaning that the minimal set used was all it took for Mohammed to describe to the audience what was happening. The dialogue was a fearless and ruthless riposte towards what some may think towards British involvement in Africa over a century ago and of, in some cases, the treatment of people from other backgrounds in today’s world.
Subtle interludes of Oud music from Abdelkader Saadoun, visuals from Rachel Gadsden, and Film work from Adam Radolinksi were also key to the atmosphere in the performance. On a projector on stage we saw the Grandmother’s drawings brought to life, clips from President Obama’s speech when announcing the death of Osama Bin Laden, and letters to the Commander of the British forces in Somalia in 1913 from his mother.
In some ways, what this performance and the play itself challenged was how we, as Brits, we should think about what we have done in our past, and what we are doing now to accept those from other cultures. It showed not only the unrelenting violence and power of an empire, but also the fire and passion of resistance, and what cost that whole conflict has on both sides.
Far from being an outright criticism of we as people around the world, the play tells us to open our eyes to the cost our actions can have on others. Did we as Brits in Africa, in our mission to restore authority, contribute towards the harm of the Somali culture? Have we created a society today in which we are struggling in accepting and embracing others? These are questions I began asking myself.
It is for this reason that not only did I get to see a passionate performance, but left that theatre with debates running around my own mind. For a 70-minute performance, certainly plenty to have the mind ticking over!
Reviewer: Robert Pritchard
Reviewed: 11th July 2017
North West End Rating: ★★★★
Liverpool Sound and Vision
The Crows Plucked Your Sinews, Theatre Review. Unity Theatre, Liverpool.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Cast: Aisha Mohammed.
Time is perpetually offering the same kind of scenario to people, to humanity, it is just the view point and the way it is observed that changes. History doesn’t so much as repeat itself but has the hallmarks of constant rehashing and frightening ability to make us understand that as a species with so much going for us, so much potential to grow and bond, we keep making the same mistakes and wondering why our planet is ultimately doomed.
The race for colonialism, the war for African soil and colonies far beyond the adjoining landmasses is one that the European mind must surely remember to atone for, to never forget the untold damage that has been done in the act of growing empire and the subjugation of a people and the lack of respect shown to their customs and lives.
It is the thought provoking sentiment and unleashed anger that sits at the heart of The Crows Plucked Your Sinews, however for crows, read European Victorian Era aggression, for in the eyes of a young girl having witnessed on television the death of Osama Bin Laden, nothing has changed since the days since her Great Grandmother took on the British in Somaliland; all men in power of their homeland have the ability to become warlords and conquerors of another after all.
Written and directed by Hassan Mahamdaillie, The Crows Plucked Your Sinews unravels the past and colonial war, the carving up of African sovereignty and the effects it had on the women who bravely stood alongside the men in rejecting such despicable acts and to whom then saw their families displaced by coming to the very European Capitals that they were at war with.
The 70 minute monologue was beautifully captured by Aisha Mohammed, in what has been her theatrical debut, a powerful sense of betrayal and rage coming through in a voice that understands the sense of conveying rhythm and inflection to show pain and bitterness, to portray slow released grief as the worlds of the uprising in Somaliland and the despicable 21stCentury war of racial profiling by security services clash and cause further division in a place where peace and prosperity should be the only way to live.
A tremendously informed play and one carried with great passion by Aisha Mohammed, The Crows Plucked Your Sinews is a great production to catch and one that does the Liverpool Arabic Arts Festival proud.
Ian D. Hall
2016 TOUR
British Theatre Guide
The Crows Plucked Your Sinews
Hassan Mahamdallie * Dervish * Albany * Theatre * 5 March 2016
Walk into any city centre and you will find statues celebrating famous men and very occasionally women. Outside certain buildings there will be plaques to remind us of the important people who once lived there. These are small markers of a community shaping its identity. But something is missing.
There is a dangerous amnesia about so much of Britain including why we are a society of different ethnic groups.
Planes will fly out from Britain to bomb faraway places, forgetting how many planes previously have flown similar journeys dispersing the people beneath the bombs and helping to create a new troubling identity back in Britain.
The Crows Plucked Your Sinews by Hassan Mahamdallie dramatises the way recent history impacts on one young woman living in Woolwich with her Somali family
The play opens with Suban (Yusra Warsama) standing outside a mosque the day of her grandmother’s burial. She speaks with a London accent and asks us how we see her. Do we see her as black, white, a colour or perhaps merely a shadow or even an infection that will create the next terrorist?
In a gripping monologue that is sometimes funny and at times lyrical, she describes a sequence that led her to this point in her life.
Much of her time was spent looking after her grandmother who suffered from dementia. She would come downstairs and take a break, watching news reports which disgusted her with their crude depictions of the conflict in Somalia.
She describes with irritation the stupidity of her drug dealing brother who, though not in the least bit interested in religion, is taken to a police station and pressured into giving the name of someone who has shown signs of becoming more intensely religious. It’s just something the police do, but it could have terrible consequences for her brother.
As these events unfold, Suban comes across the faded picture of her great grandmother, a Dervish fighter in the early part of the twentieth century.
Yusra Warsama becomes the woman in the picture telling us how she had helped under the leadership of the Somali nationalist leader Mohammed Abdullah Hassan to defeat the British invaders of Somalia.
It is a fine performance in which Yusra Warsama moves about the stage switching easily and convincingly between characters, changing accents, modifying gestures, using only a white scarf to indicate a change of appearance.
Suban recalls watching the TV news in 2011 when President Obama announced the killing of Osama Bin Laden. Behind her, a huge screen shows clips from the speech. The words “No Americans were harmed during the fire fight” are repeated several times. There is no mention of whether any non-Americans are harmed.
As the crowds outside the White House chant “USA”, Suban thinks on Obama’s description of Bin Laden’s body being taken “into custody” and feels sympathy for Bin Laden.
Hassan Mahamdallie has written a fine, important play about the way Britain’s foreign adventures are shaping one young London woman’s identity. It also shows us why an approach like the government’s Prevent policy will not work and might generate the very thing it fears.
Britain needs to remember its past more clearly. Coming to see this moving, well performed show would be a useful part in that process.
Review by Keith Mckenna
The Crows plucked your Sinews
The Door, Birmingham Rep
*****
HASSAN Mahamdallie is a thoughtful writer and director with a message to challenge and educate audiences.
In The Crows Plucked your Sinews, he explores British and Somalian identity and tells us how they co-exist with each other. It is a representation of Britain today, but also rich in history, performed by actor Yusra Warsama.
The play takes place in two different times and settings, performed by the captivating Warsama as Mahamdallie cleverly intertwines two strong characters with different experiences of their own Somalian culture and moulds them into one.
Suban is a young woman of Somalian culture and lives in the London Borough of Woolwich with her mother, brother and a grandmother who suffers with dementia.
After a stern word from her father, Suban opens up to her grandmother after rendering her invisible. She soon learns about her Somalian past, and what it means to be Somalian in Britain today.
As Suban becomes a guardian to her frail grandmother, she recalls her talking in ‘her own universe’. It is through this platform that we are transported to Somalia in the time of British colonial rule, through the guise of Suban’s great-grandmother.
Warsama takes on the role of both Suban and her great grandmother, living in early twentieth century Somalia, fliting between the two characters with utter ease. She gives the audience a perfect understanding of each moment in time.
Suban, is the young girl from Woolwich who has problems of her own. She talks about the story of her drug dealer brother, being stabbed in a racial-induced attack and when Warsama becomes the great-grandmother, we are exposed to a completely different Somalian experience.
MAJESTIC AND MYTHICAL
As a female fighter of a Somalian clan, Warsama embodies a strong and captivating character, almost majestic and mythical, talking about the conflicts between British soldiers and fighting for their territory.
Warsama’s performance is moving on all accounts. By a simple change of accent and a single scarf used as a prop to flit between the modern lady and the fierce Muslim fighter, the story is incredibly easy to follow and with Warsama’s beautiful performance, we are presented with the question of how Somalia has shaped Britain in the past and its contribution to British culture today.
The performance’s atmosphere is shaped by an oud* player at the side of the stage. At the beginning, we see Suban approach musician Abdelkader Saadoun and put money into his hat. Later he becomes just as an important part of the production as the performer herself.
His contribution to the background music and setting the tone links in beautifully with Warsama’s performance and contributes to the shift in time and place. Saadoun’s rendition of Sam Cooke’s cultural and poignant song A Change is Gonna Come was interestingly placed at the end of the production.
Both stories of the past and present give way to incredibly clear and insightful direction, thanks to Mahamdallies passion for teaching and speaking to new audiences. It is clear that the audience learned something fascinating and new. By marrying the past with the present, Mahamdallie challenged the British audience to discuss and think about the importance of culture, and how this shapes the British experience today.
The play’s dialogue is lyrical and poetic. It is fitting that Mahamdallie wrote this story having one particular performer in mind. Yusra Warsama is a poet, actor and writer based in Manchester and captures the audience in each and every moment with an attention to the intricate rhythm and lyricism of both the English and African dialects that are purposefully shown.
The show is a wonderful indication of what Britain is today, made up of many cultures, pasts and people. Its strong feminist connotations are inspiring to audiences of every walk of life. Mahamdallie cuts away every stereotype of Somalian culture and shares his vast and extensive knowledge for us to be inspired, changed and challenged.
Elizabeth Halpin 10-02-16
* An oud is a Middles Eastern stringed instrument similar to a lute.
THE CROWS PLUCKED YOUR SINEWS – AN EXHILARATING CONTEMPLATION OF VIOLENCE IN CULTURE
by Olu Alake FEBRUARY 5, 2016
She stood strong, defiant, proud – and it all made sense. The past of her ancestral warrior great-grandmother, the present of disenfranchised confusion and cultural discombobulation, which were all leading inexorably to an uncomfortable, uncertain future – it all made sense. Hassan Mahamdallie’s brave, contemplative and educational new play is in some ways an exercise in the impossible: weaving a golden narrative through a barely known and increasingly forgotten history of a marginalised people, the enduring legacy of colonialism in both the colonisers and colonised’s lands, social disconnection of a Diaspora community, the disturbing congelations of identity, religion and culture, and the institutionalisation of violence as presented on a media platform of uneven power relations into a one hour one-woman play? And he pulls it off.
The history of the Somali nationalist leader Sayid Maxamed Cabdule Xasan is not one well known to many – probably not even to many Somalis. Derisively better known as The Mad Mullah thanks wholly to imperialist British propaganda, Xasan was subsequently acknowledged by British military scholars as a military genius who had just cause, and his strategies were studied and in fact copied in subsequent military skirmishes in places such as Myanmar. Even lesser known about Sayid is his widely used and probably unique (certainly uncommon) use of armed female warriors on horseback in his dervish army, including two of his wives being generals of Divisions.
One of these dervish female warriors is discovered to be the great-grandmother of the key protagonist in the play, a young second/third-generation Somali named Suuban, living in a council flat in South London, who discovers a faded photograph while caring for an alzheimer-ridden grandma who spends all her time communing with ghosts. These and other characters are channeled with controlled ferocity, sensitivity and immense skill by actress and performance poet Yusra Warsama, never more powerfully than while questioning the value placed on the culture, history and indeed lives of minority Diaspora communities such as Somalis in Britain, she incredulously contemplates Barack Obama’s (in?)famously announcing the killing of Osama Bin Laden with the chilling reassuring caveat that “no Americans were harmed during the ensuing firefight”.
Mahamdallie skilfully uses the interwoven stories of characters set 100 years apart to ask some of the very big unresolved questions of our time around culture, identity, belonging and violence. Some of the questions will be disturbing, and it remains to be seen as the play tours how the immanent complexities will be interpreted by a wider public more familiar with the monochromatic presentation of these issues by our modern mass media, as is evident by the popular touch-points Donald Trump readily harnesses.
At the very least, this play should make us think deeply about how we are all complicit in the ‘single story’ told of people simply rendered to stereotypes of religion, culture and politically convenient selected narratives. The irony that I watched this in the company of an American who had flown in from New York just to see the play on the day Obama visited a mosque for the first time as President was not lost on me.
We need more stories like this, especially when so well told.
‘The harmonious interweaving of different languages – an everyday reality for us third culture kids’
THE CROWS PLUCKED YOUR SINEWS is a one woman play “about Somalis in Britain and Britain in Somalia”. The piece – written and directed by Hassan Mahamdallie with the assistance of Jamil Dhillon – explores colonialism and empire, politics, and ‘culture and tradition’ through the eyes of young British-Somali – Suuban – played by Manchester-based actress Yusra Warsama.
The hypnotic performance begins at the burial of Suuban’s alzheimer-stricken grandmother. From the opening scene we are immersed in a time-warped journey through a desolate war-engaged Somalia, and a grimy modern-day South London. A plethora of themes are explored in the hour-long performance; we meet Suuban’s great-grandmother a great fearless woman warrior. We discover the letters from the mother of the dead English Tommy warning her young son of the “men in the bushes”.
We are inundated with the names and titles of Somali scholars living in exile who have become self-proclaimed ‘experts’ on ‘the war’ – leaving no room for womens’ or non-middle class voices.
Using a man and a guitar, a talented British -Somali actress, and a simple set design directors Mahamdallie and Dhillon gracefully present us with multiple complex narratives through the oldest form of story-telling – the spoken word.
Suuban tells us of the times during the war when men used to pass on secret messages through poetry. The play itself can be described as an ‘epic poem’. Were I not so engrossed in the rhythmic dance of Suuban’s loose plaits I would have taken out my notepad to jot down the many gems that were dished out throughout the play.
The piece explores many important, and often, overlooked themes such as racial-profiling, and racism and violence from working class English folk. For me, however, the greatest delight came from the capturing of the mundane. The many conversations of Suuban’s mother to relatives in Amsterdam and Kenya in an attempt to find a passport for her brother to flee the country, ‘Our sons are similar in age, we all look the same to them anyway”.
The description of the cramped house filled with exquisite furniture that clearly belongs in a compound in a lavish part of Mogadishu rather than a council estate in Woolwhich. The twirling of the fag; the description of grandma in a box room in the attic. The development of the relationship between Suuban and her grandmother, which goes from precarious to almost over-protective solidarity between the two women – these for me are the nuances that can only be captured when a work is written by someone with lived experience and/or great consideration for capturing the ‘realness’ and complexities of other cultures. The bigger themes are what we see on the news and history books – albeit at times skewed – but these everyday vignettes are really what makes the play a work of ‘art.’
The harmonious interweaving of Somali and English dialogue – an everyday reality for us third culture kids who are so often made to choose a ‘side’ (personally I claim them all) – was another highlight.
I commend the directors’ decision to not translate all of the Somali dialogue. This decision allowed the young Somali men and women in the audience to connect with the piece in a way the rest of us non-Somalis could not.
This connection is something that I’d like to see more of in British theatre. But it can only be achieved by having diverse audiences, which is a direct result of having a diverse cast. Had there been only a single Somali person in the audience I doubt they would’ve felt as comfortable giggling at the parts we did not understand.
The icing on the cake, as it were, was the visuals that were dropped in during the performance. The images of Barack Obama’s speech after the death of Bin Laden, and the echoes of the words “no Americans were harmed” created chills and unsuspected tension thanks to the brilliance of film-maker Adam Radolinski. Visual artist Rachel Gadsden’s stunning portraits further added to the themes of war and displacement underpinning the play.
History told, and retold through digital art and the spoken word – is this the future of British Theatre? I hope so.
North West End
The Crows Plucked Your Sinews – Contact Theatre, Manchester
This is a brave, visceral and honest proclamation of modern integration in the face of bloody history, hostility and clashes of faith. It is an important piece of theatre that needs to be seen by a wider audience; that will leave you moved and searching for difficult answers. It’s a unique piece of art that does not come around very often.
The play is an ambitious monologue of a second or third-generation Somali who is looking after her Alzheimer-stricken grandmother. Her grandmother is stuck in the era of the First World War, when a violent war raged in Somalia between the natives and the UK and Italy. The dissonance between a streetwise south-London girl and her parents’ and grandparents’ justified hatred of foreign invaders is expanded as we hear details of her family’s modern-day problems and the ghosts that haunt them. It is difficult viewing at times, but it is something that all can benefit from.
The true strength of the writing is its honesty, as we feel that we are getting a true glimpse into the thinking of people from a radically different background and culture to our own. At times it is uncomfortable: the girl describing her sadness at Osama bin Laden’s death and his body being, “in the custody” of the Americans. A video display of Barack Obama saying, “no Americans were harmed,” on repeat. The murder of a British mercenary in Somalia during the war that leads her grandmother to discover personal letters from the victim’s mother, which are delivered in a mocking RP accent. But this writing is brave, there is no direct judgement here or summing-up of arguments, there is only the portrayal of how a people feel and how a people are dealing with unwanted exile in a foreign land.
The play explores integration and the dark side of it: a brother dealing crack cocaine, subjected to abuse by a police force trying to stitch him up for terrorist offences, is probably a greater example of integration than we’d care to consider. Our sympathy for the narrator is tested over as grim truths are explained, and yet we stay with the narrator, we believe in her, and we know that she is good. This is transformational theatre, and important writing. A novel needs to written from this, or a film.
The performance by Yusra Warsama is arresting in its skill and intensity. She greets us with, “Do they see me in black or white, or in colour?” before taking us through a heartfelt characterisation of a whole family, through generations, switching between Somali and English, from south London bravado to the pain of previous generations. The play is never boring as she tells a story spanning generations with dexterity and heart, and an unflinching treatment of attitudes we either didn’t understand or fear didn’t exist. “I felt sorry for him,” she explains regarding the death of Osama bin Laden. The mother, father, grandmother and brother all have starring roles, and all are expertly expressed through her.
This is powerful piece of theatre supported by beautiful music, played on the Oud by Abdelkader Saadoun, supported by some slick visuals, and orchestrated by a skilled team of directors. No set is needed here, and the plain black set enhances the phenomenal performance by Warsama. The writer, Hassan Mahamdallie, is a pioneer in his honesty and the intent to portray the beliefs and attitudes of Somalis truthfully and cleverly, and in a way that shows that, as much as she states, “we are not human… we are djinn travelling… nowhere and everywhere,” they are human as much as we all are. This play will stay with me for a long time, and the synergy between the writing and performance is understood in the programme which explains the writer wrote the play for the actress.
The production tours Birmingham and London through February and March; please go and see it. For more information go to www.crowsdrama.com #crowsdrama
Reviewer: Ben Spencer Reviewed: 27th January 2016
The Crows Plucked Your Sinews
Hassan Mahamdallie
Dervish
Contact Theatre, Manchester
27 January 2016 to 29 January 2016
The Crows Plucked Your Sinews, written and directed by Hassan Mahamdallie, is a strikingly original examination of cultural identity and a quest for purpose.
In present day Woolwich a young Somali woman (sole performer Yusra Warsama) drifts through life – father lost to cancer, mother dreaming of past pleasures, and brother a shiftless drug dealer. The discovery that her great-grandmother was a dervish warrior fighting with the ‘Mad Mullah’ against British rule in Somaliland stimulates awareness that her circumstances and family need not limit her life choices.
Hassan Mahamdallie crams a great deal into the play, and determining an overall point of view is not easy – the woman’s options may have widened, but her future direction remains unclear. It may be that the way heroes or villains are perceived is a matter of circumstances and the passage of time. Both Osama Bin Laden and the ‘Mad Mullah’ behaved as terrorists, yet the former died in ignominy whereas the latter escaped his enemies and passed into legend. This raises the disturbing possibility that Bin Laden’s humiliating death might be forgotten and he could again become an inspirational figure for some.
It is a play of strong contrasts. Lyrical passages – the Somali are described as mystical Genie, exiled to the four corners of the earth – are delivered by Yusra Warsama in a brash London accent. The erosion of local cultures by British and American colonialism is unflinchingly depicted.
Despite the violence described in the play, Hassan Mahamdallie sets a mood of restraint suitable for reflections on identity. The audience enters to the atmospheric music of Abdelkader Saadoun, played live and so seductive that the entrance of Yusra Warsama almost goes unnoticed. Stark black and white visuals by Rachael Gadsden are used sparingly but to great effect.
Yusra Warsama creates a range of characters physically as much as verbally. The twisted posture of the mother suggests a predatory insect, while the dervish warrior, hair hanging loose and back ramrod straight, has a proud aspect. It is a completely absorbing performance.
The Crows Plucked Your Sinews is not going to appeal to everyone. The dervish warriors gloating over the bodies of the British soldiers may be historically accurate, but it is still hard to take. Yet this is a thought provoking and superbly performed play that deserves to be seen by a wide audience.
Reviewer:David Cunningham
REVIEWS • MANCHESTER • NATIONAL Published 1 February 2016
Review: The Crows Plucked Your Sinews at Contact, Manchester
CONTACT THEATRE ⋄ 27TH – 29TH JANUARY 2016
DIRECTED BY Hassan Mahamdallie
WRITTEN BY Hassan Mahamdallie
CAST INCLUDES Yusra Warsama
Yusra Warsama excels in a show that is “dragging up chains of trauma, soaked in violent pasts and present.”
Maanta iyo London | Soomaalidii xukunka Ingriis hoos joogtay
oi mate, you British? ‘s that even mean though? plenty of things that ‘British’ means that I’d be plenty averse to identifying with. not even sure ‘British’ is something you can identify with. it’s more something that’s forced on you and you have to accept it to survive in some way. or you can ignore if surviving isn’t something you need to think about. seems to me, national identity’s confusing enough even without factoring in colonialism.
I know very little about Somali history but was totally unsurprised to find out that the British Empire put Somalia through a whole lot of shit. The British Empire, after all, has a lot to answer for. The Crows Plucked Your Sinews contrasts modern day London with Somalia under British rule and the immediately obvious associations are drawn in violence. Not just British, mind, statehood in general seems to abhor an absence of violence. Throughout the monologue, written and directed by Hassan Mahamdallie, Somalia and Britain emerge through conflict, struggle and assassination.
These are our history; shadows of them echo through the ways we live. Suuban, a young Somali woman speaks to her dementia-suffering grandmother, who channels the ghost of a woman Dervish warrior, resisting the colonisers in British Somaliland. Yusra Warsama delivers both roles, in a mix of English and Somali, monologue and poetry, dragging up chains of trauma, soaked in violent pasts and present. Dissent, and empathy, is delivered without hesitation; at the announcement of the death of Osama Bin Laden, in 2011, Suuban tells us ‘I feel sorry for him’.
Though violence breeds death and nation, it also breeds pity. We are in a country built on centuries of violence and displacement. Today, you can’t walk past a newsagent’s without seeing a headline about the refugee crisis in North Africa – our Prime Minister talks of ‘migrants’ who come in ‘bunches’ and it’s the same old disdain and rejection of empathy that the British Empire exhibited in Somaliland in 1914. Suuban’s drug dealer brother is attacked by a knife-wielding addict and while in custody, the police pressure him into fabricating a terrorism accusation against a rival dealer. British Somalis are displaced, becoming political pawns, living in a country that seems reluctant to have them. The Crows Plucked gives that displacement a voice, airs a few old ghosts.
Suuban cannot control her Grandmother’s storytelling, or her brother’s fractured masculinity as much as anyone cannot control the past. Britishness, the slippery nature of identity, histories carved of violence conspire to steer us where they will. By the end of the play, Suuban tells us she has accepted her Somali name, which she used to dislike. She can’t alter the past, but she can affect it. The Crows Plucked is as dangerous a play as any to rip a moral out of, but it has a sense of fluidity; behind the hardness of its themes lies a spectral core. Formally, this is let down a little by projections and music which feel closer to add-ons than organic parts of a whole, but everything solid melts into air. They can’t take your ghosts.
The Crows Plucked doesn’t ask us to sit back and reflect and have a good think about how awful things can be for other people. It forces the mirror onto us. And makes us see the gap between us and it.
JAMES VARNEY Blog Post
The Crows Plucked Your Sinews/
by Hassan Mahamdallie/
dir Hassan Mahamdallie/
prod Dervish/
performed by Yusra Warsama/
Contact/
27-29/1/16//
.reviewers could be likened to Crows, couldn’t they? poring over a corpse, swallowing the parts they like, working in a loose anarchic team to make sure all the morsels are snatched up. and often viewed as harbingers of one form of misery or another. grief is the thing with a blog.
.maybe it’s a laboured analogy to a food chain, the circle of life, reviewers are the front line in cultural digestion of a piece of art. then come the public, who reallyclean the bones and come in greater numbers.
.of course that all enforces the idea there’s some sort of old hierarchy in place. and takes a sort of nineties-mind assumption that everyone and their dog won’t start a theatre blog. ‘cultural digestion’ – what sort of a phrase is that? they’ll let anyone have a website these days.
The Crows Plucked Your Sinews is acutely aware of hierarchies. Providing a condensed spectral record of contemporary British-Somali identity, it demonstrates a sort of ‘state of the spirit/diaspora’ through tales of lives lived in violence, from 1914 to the present. There’s an inescapability to all the violence – it’s an unavoidable aspect of everyone’s lives, whether modern British Somali or 1910s Dervish warrior. All of which signposted for me that our Britain is forged on divisions, which run deep, affect whose voices we hear and whose faces we see and in which context.
Something I realised post- seeing (and reviewing) The Crows Plucked is that acknowledging there were BAME people in the audience legitimised the performance for me. I’m pretty sure I’d have had a different impression, would have felt less at ease (more of a voyeur?) if the audience were entirely white. It’s alarming that the idea I am outside of a white echo chamber is so worthy of note but I think it’s important to acknowledge that Contact seem to be really good at diversity. Their 2014-15 Annual Report states over 70% of audiences being under 35, and over 30% coming from BAME backgrounds.
If I’m thinking of theatre as a conversation (which I’m wont to) then the conversation ought to have fair representation of the peoples it’s about, which extends to the audiences, not just artists. In a similar context it’s worth noting that there was also a BSL interpreted performance of this piece that I wish I’d booked to see. I’ve been working with BSL theatre and interpretation recently and besides being useful for research purposes, I’ll bet the BSL for this piece would have been gorgeous. And I’d be intrigued to know how the Somali in the text was handled. Bilingual theatre’s ace enough; I’m sure trilingual theatre would have proper blown my mind.
There’s a strong throughline of disenfranchisement in The Crows Plucked; Yusra Warsama’s Suuban is nothing but alienated by the USA’s televised glorying in the execution of Osama bin Laden – all just an echo of an empire which did Somalia no favours. Disenfranchisement is a real, massive problem in contemporary Britain and Cameron’s Tories seem intent on tackling it in the most prescriptivist, alienating way possible. So it’s very gratifying to see a piece with English and Somali, performed in an atmosphere, a theatre, which is accessible, and not just superficially.
A good crop of the reviews I’ve written for Exeunt about shows at Contact (particularly their Young Company shows) have been gushing about the level of engagement with new voices, marginalised voice, young voices etc. Surely theatre’s a far better mechanism for social inclusion through accessibility than doling out English tests and threatening exportation. Hopefully the stuff Contact and companies like Common Wealth are doing can set some kind of precedent and five, ten years from now it’ll be unthinkable that theatre used to be about sitting in rooms with lots of white people. We’ll all be doing installations on council estates and working with young people and everyone will be thoroughly enfranchised with each other.
.so that’s me eking out the last scraps. i’ll flap off now, until next time theres a carcass needs starting on. drop me a line if theres any battles or owt im not fussy.
03/02/2016
THE STAGE
The Crows Plucked Your Sinews review at the Albany, London – ‘lyrical’
Yursa Warsama in The Crows Plucked Your Sinews at The Albany, London
It’s a neat piece too, carried by a tremendous performance by Yursa Warsama – for whom it was written – who portrays both the young British-Somali woman, caring for her dying grandmother in Woolwich, and her fearsome great-grandmother, a proud Dervish warrior who fought the British. The sense of place – whether the deserts of Somalia, or a London living room filled with khat-chewing ex-pats – is always nicely evoked, thanks to Mahamdallie’s subtly lyrical script, in which English and Somali freely slip and slide over each other.
There’s a real and understandable anger at the heart of the piece – particularly when you take in the parlous state of modern Somalia – but one, you feel, that needs channelling a little. The juxtaposition, for instance, of how the Americans (boo, hiss) treated the body of Osama bin Laden with how the girl’s ancestors allowed the British army to reclaim an English soldier they had killed, feels a little crude. It still remains a thought-provoking examination of identity, heritage and blood.
VERDICT
The Crows Plucked Your Sinews
Submitted by Katie Jackson on 10 February, 2016 – 13:18
Yusra Warsama gave a versatile and captivating performance in Hassan Mahamdalie’s poetic exploration of Somali culture today and in 1913.
The Crows Plucked Your Sinews follows the life of Suban, a young Somali living in contemporary Britain looking after her grandma with dementia. Her grandma acts as a vessel to tell the story of a female fighter on horseback whose photograph she owns. This fighter is Suban’s great grandmother who was in Mohammed Abdulle Hassan’s army, who led a guerrilla war to oust British colonisers in 1913.
The highlight of the piece was Warsama’s performance. Switching fluidly between the bent, haggard Ayeeyo (grandmother); her swaggering, drug dealing brother and her strong, guerrilla great grandmother, Warsama trod the stage with control and intent. When the piece began, she stood before the audience in black abaya and white head scarf and asked, ‘Do they see me in Black and white or in colour?’ before revealing combat trousers and trainers and producing a cigarette. Here Mahamdallie tackled head-on attitudes towards British Muslims, and later on described an incident where police interrogate her brother, as they believe he has terrorist connections. The script was powerful and relevant, representing the bilingual, multicultural households that many people living in Britain today experience. The integration of the Somali alongside the English also gave the script a wonderful poeticism as Mahamdallie vividly painted a dynamic Somali home.
Despite the success of the script to conjure imagery, there was a lack of deep emotional connection. Suban mainly channeled frustration and anger, at times directed at America, or the police, or her brother; and this felt like it was never fully explained. The familial connections were also fragile. Characters swam briefly in and out of focus – characterised by a posture or a gesture and then were gone again. Ayeeyo was the only reoccurring character, and whilst Suban obviously cared deeply for her, the bond between the two characters felt superficial. The grandma’s dementia meant the majority of their communication was transported into other another world where Suban was not present. This felt like a dramatic device to tell the historical story rather than a true relationship between the two.
The general stone washed aesthetic of the piece was beautiful. Whilst the majority was Warsama spotlighted on a dark stage with an oud player stage right, video clips and artwork were intermittently projected on to the back wall. Some of these images were incredibly effective, others beautiful, whilst some slightly distracting from the performance onstage – particularly when words were projected alongside speech. At times the atmospheric lighting on stage was too dim – not fully highlighting Warsama’s performance. The music of the oud was atmospheric. However, the piece closed with a rendition of ‘A Change is Gonna Come’ which felt slightly jarring. As the script had been about the discovery of authentic Somali culture for a woman disconnected from her heritage, the choice of a song with strong connections to the black civil rights movement in America felt like an unusual, if not slightly inappropriate artistic choice.
It is ultimately a coming of age story following Suban from a place where she is disconnected from both her family and her history, to an understanding and appreciation of her Somali heritage. An important story to tell, The Crows Plucked Your Sinews is a refreshing insight into a culture absent from the teachings of British history. I hope this piece empowers young East African Muslims in Britain to discover their heritage and embrace it if, like Suban, they have felt previously disconnected from it.
Author’s review: 3
Thoughts of a Leicester Socialist
From Somalia to Ireland
For just three nights last month, The Curve hosted to a one-woman play that sought to critically interrogate the history of Somalis in Britain and Britain in Somalia. The beautifully performed monologue, The Crows Plucked Your Sinews, juxtaposed two time frames: the first urban London in 2011, and the second British Somaliland in 1913.
The play’s title was taken from a line in a poem written in August 1913 by the “legendary Somali leader, national poet and military genius Mohammed ‘Abdille Hassan, who fought a religiously inspired guerrilla war against the British colonial army for two decades at the start of the twentieth century.”
Grappling with questions of war, injustice and human frailty, the play, as the Director, Hassan Mahamdallie observed, is also a reflection on “what happens when a whole nation is expelled from within the borders of its own country and is then distributed across the world.”
Countries are “pieces on a chessboard upon which is being played out a great game for the domination of the world”, wrote Lord Curzon, the viceroy of India, in 1898. And as popular historian John Pilger has sadly pointed out: “Nothing has changed”; which leads him to argue that if “any country is an imperial metaphor, it is Somalia.” Pilger goes on to note how:
“Sharing a language and religion, Somalis have been divided between the British, French, Italians and Ethiopians. Tens of thousands of people have been handed from one power to another. ‘When they are made to hate each other,’ wrote a British colonial official, ‘good governance is assured.’”
Watching the forceful play at The Curve, I was struck by the related nature of the violence unleashed upon the indigenous population of British Somaliland and the vile attacks of the British ruling-class upon the people of Ireland that were occurring during exactly the same time period. In both instances, British ruling elites sought to suppress the collective and democratic aspirations of normal working-class people.
We should remember that the infamous 1913 Dublin Lockout, the repression of workers which was so brutally organised by arrogant bosses and imperial elites…
“…represented a key moment in the history of the Irish workers movement and marked its coming of age. The fact that thousands of impoverished working men and women withstood months of hunger and repression in order to defend the principle of the right to join a trade union is truly inspiring.”
One of the key leaders of the Irish movement of socialist resistance was Jim Larkin, whose rallying cry, “LET US RISE,” struck fear into the heart of British capitalists. This is because both the Lockout and other colonial wars took place against the backdrop of intense class struggle in Britain (between 1911 and 1914) that were dubbed the “Great Unrest.”
But such unrest is nowhere near dissipated and never will be, as demonstrated by the inspiring election results of the People Before Profit/Anti-Austerity Alliance in Ireland just the other week.
As noted in the excellent book Let Us Rise! The Dublin Lockout – its impact and legacy(2013), the time of the “Great Unrest”…
“…was a period when bosses tried to drive down wages and conditions to preserve their profits and when British workers fought resolutely for a better future for themselves and their families.
“At the same time, with the opening up of Africa and Asia to imperialist exploitation, the old capitalist powers of Europe, France and Britain were increasingly in competition and conflict with the new emerging powers of Germany, Japan and the U.S. in their drive for profit and new markets.” (pp.65-6)
The foreword to this book was written Socialist Party TD Joe Higgins, and includes a contribution from fellow Socialist Party member Ruth Coppinger, who was one of the six members of the People Before Profit/Anti-Austerity Alliance who were elected to the Dáil at the 2016 general election.
Other useful resources
- Amina Mire, “The Struggle for Somali: Warlords, Islamists, US Global Militarism and Women,” Counterpunch, July 31, 2006.
- John Newsinger’s Rebel City: Larkin, Connolly and the Dublin Labour Movement(2003); and Jim Larkin and the Great Dublin Lockout (2013).
- James Plunkett’s historical novel Strumpet City (1969), which is based upon the 1913 Dublin Lockout, and was made into a TV series with the same title.
Michael Barker
the crows plucked your sinews 
The unsettling title of Hassan Mahamdallie’s one-woman play is taken from a famous poem by the Somali national poet, Sayid Maxamed Cabdule Xasan (Mohammed Abdulle Hassan). Known to the British as the “Mad Mullah”, Xasan was also a prominent military leader, fighting many successful campaigns against imperial occupiers. “Koofil”, the poem of the title, describes the defeat and death of Commander Richard Corfield at the Battle of Du Madoba in 1913. What makes the play’s angle on the story so unique, however, is its focus on a female dervish fighter – not unusual in reality, but little talked-of today.
The Crows Plucked Your Sinews follows two stories: one of a young, British-Somali woman in 21st century Woolwich, and the other of her dervish great-grandmother. In 2011, our young protagonist watches reports on the death of Osama Bin Laden, and hears of how her drug-dealing brother has got himself into trouble with both the police and a rival Somali clan. In between, she bonds with her ageing, dementia-suffering grandmother, who opens up the family’s rich history to her.
In 1913, another young woman, recruited to Xasan’s nationalist cause, kills an English boy called Tommy – this is Thomas Lister, who volunteered to fight the “Mad Mullah”, and whose real letters to his family are now preserved in Yorkshire Archaeological Society archives. Later, she is involved in the battle that will see “Koofil” defeated.
Both characters are powerfully performed by Yusra Warsama, a performance poet, actor and writer for whom the play was written. Warsama has tremendous presence, switching effortlessly between the two parts and conveying a real sense of their yearning and frustration, with a storytelling style that draws listeners in close. Abdelkader Saadoun joins her on stage, providing an energetic and evocative live oud soundtrack.
This is a play with a fascinating story to unfold, and one the audience evidently appreciated having revealed to them. As Warsama said herself in a post-show Q&A, there’s an urgent need for more stories of this kind – this play should be one voice amongst many, instead of an exception, and in that, The Crows Plucked Your Sinews feels like the beginning of something important.
Nevertheless, structurally the show could use some polish. The pairing of the two storylines is a strong idea, and both characters are compelling, but the two never quite mesh together fully. In the end, it’s unclear what our modern-day protagonist has really gained from her grandmother’s story beyond a chance to pass it on, and the few parallels drawn between her life and her great-grandmother’s need more development to be really convincing. Ultimately, both plots close a little anti-climactically. If the purpose of presenting a female Dervish fighter from the early 20th century is partly to challenge our perceptions of women’s roles in other times and cultures, then the passivity of her 21st century great-granddaughter in the face of events unfolding around her feels jarring. Early on, there’s the faintest hint of potential radicalisation as she watches television, but this is never really dealt with afterwards. It would have been nice to see more of a journey for the character, where she learns to channel her anger into some kind of positive action.
*** Heather Kincaid