It has been 10 years since the American administration began using Guantanamo Bay, the clandestine naval base in Cuba, to imprison and torture supposed terrorists. Nobody really knows how bad life is in the detention camp – apart from the prisoners themselves. Guantanamo Boy, a play adaptation of Anna Perera’s 2009 exhilarating book, is arguably the most palpable insight into the conditions yet.
The play details the story of an ordinary 15-year-old Muslim boy from Rochdale who gets abducted and thrown into a nightmare world of interrogation and torture when on a family holiday in Pakistan.
The play – directed by Dominic Hingorani and designed by Rachana Jadhav – has been made to appeal to a young audience. Jadhav told Live Magazine: “There isn’t a lot of work that is targeted at a teenage audience and deals with politics, human rights and current affairs.”
The arts have always been used as a means to portray some of the harsh realities of life – and Guantanamo Boy touches upon some of the complexities, sensitivities and horrors of human behaviour and paranoia.
Khalid, played by Hamza Jeetoa, is incarcerated in Guantanamo Bay for two years and ends up, inevitably, becoming delusional and incapacitated. Hingorani said: “If this is a piece of political theatre, it should allow people to interrogate the world in which they live. “ He believes the questions posed in the play should be ones “discussed by any democracy or society”.
While the play is fairly objective, it highlights the reality of what many people believe the ten years of Guantanamo Bay have been: disastrous.
Guantanamo Boy is on until the 11th February. More information and tickets can be found here.
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