Mesopotamia

Mesopotamia is a play set in the British Oriental headquarters on the banks of the Tigris River in Baghdad during the 1920s and dramatizes the creation of Iraq, the violent insurrection of 1920 and the Machiavellian political maneuvering of the celebrated writer, explorer and Arabist Gertrude Bell. The play has had readings at Pegasus Players Theatre, in Chicago; the New York Theatre Workshop; and at Theatre Row, in New York, in 2009, where it was directed by Ian Morgan, and where the renowned actor Kathleen Chalfant read the role of Gertrude Bell. Chalfant reprised this role in 2011, in a staged reading at the Whitney Humanities Center at Yale University, which was directed by Evan Yionoulis, Professor at the Yale School of Drama and Resident Director at Yale Repertory Theatre. The play was co-produced by Yale’s World Performance Project and the American University of Beirut; the cast included stage actor Joe Urla. The role of Gertrude Bell will be read by Kathleen Chalfant; other actors are drawn from the BU and Boston theatre community. The event is free and open to the public.