At These Gates: A new play by Joan Sergay

Or: Without Boarders

Two women meet, on a fence, in Syria. Amira (Cemre Paksoy) is pregnant, trusting in G-d’s will and committed to survival. Samar (Arti Ishak) is western educated, is building a plan of escape from the murderous regime, but cannot find her family. Together they will track across Europe, following the current of the thousand of refugees, each finding a support, a mutual need, in the other.

In this story, which very much “needs to be heard, now, ”Joan Sergay offers us an elegant, finely joined journey. Tailored to rest entirely on it’s own merits (no set, no props, no pantomime, nuth’n) the story slips from scene to scene, day to day, country to country, as we sit crammed next to two remarkable women. Sergay deft hand at showing the whole of Samar and Amira, turning them so we catch the facets of both their very real struggles and dangers, while we all see what makes them laugh, what makes them warm, and where and what the buttons are that each becomes adapt at pushing for the others (Paksoy and Ishak both prove their talents of swinging from the light to the heavy, as well as keeping the filament of comradeship glowing) . She’s at her best in scenes that combine both the seriousness and the levity: looking at a successful (German) refugee camp, Amira exclaims, “They’re smiling! I never thought I’d see so many happy Arabs! Am I smiling? I feel like I’m smiling.” Which is a marvelous flip of an audience member as you could ask, sorrows hiding behind joy.

Director Devon de Mayo gives the otherwise barebones production the gift of a complex and subtle language of closeness and separation; how close or far apart their separate worlds call them from their present situation. It helps define the boundaries Sergay’s play and this dreadful, wonderful adventure; this intimate world of hope.