Arcola Theatre Sets THE NIGHTMARES OF CARLOS FUENTES Post Show Talk, 24 July

Iraq Now And In The Future, an exciting post show talk, has been scheduled to run in conjunction with The Nightmares Of Carlos Fuentes, at the Arcola Theatre, on Thursday 24 July at 9.00pm. The talk is free with any ticket to The Nightmares Of Carlos Fuentes (July offer preview tickets £9).

Guest speakers are:

Rt Hon Alistair Burt MP
Alistair Burt entered Parliament for the first time in 1983 for Bury North, and since 2001 has been the Member of Parliament for North East Bedfordshire. Following a lengthy and varied front bench career in both Government and Opposition, Alistair was Parliamentary Under Secretary of State at the Foreign & Commonwealth Office between May 2010 - October 2013 with responsibility for Counter Terrorism, Counter Proliferation, Counter Piracy, North America, Middle East and North Africa, the Maldives and Sri Lanka. Mr Burt was appointed a member of Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council in November 2013.

Houzan Mahmoud
Houzan Mahmoud is a Kurdish women's rights campaigner, and the Spokesperson of the Organisations of Women's Freedom in Iraq. She was born in Iraqi Kurdistan in 1973 and currently residing in London. Her articles have been published in The Independent, The Guardian, The Tribune and The New statesman amongst others. Houzan has led many campaigns internationally, including campaigns against the rape and abduction of women in Iraq, and against the imposition of Islamic sharia law in Kurdistan and the Iraqi constitution. She has also led campaigns around the world against 'honour killings', and against the violation of freedom of expression.

Clare Short
Clare Short is a British politician, and a member of the Labour Party. She was the Member of Parliament for Birmingham Ladywood from 1983 to 2010; for most of this period she was a Labour Party MP, but she resigned the party whip in 2006 and served the remainder of her term as an Independent. She stood down as a member of parliament at the 2010 general election. Short was Secretary of State for International Development in the government of Prime Minister Tony Blair from 3 May 1997 until her resignation from that post on 12 May 2003. Shortly before her retirement from Parliament in 2010, she was strongly rebuked by her own party when she announced her support for a hung parliament, a situation which subsequently occurred at the 2010 General Election. On 9 March 2003 Short repeatedly called Tony Blair "reckless" in a BBC radio interview and threatened to resign from the Cabinet in the event of the British government going to war with Iraq without a clear mandate from the United Nations. This looked set to be a reprise of her previous resignation as party spokesperson during the Gulf War of 1991 as a protest against the Labour Party's stance, although in 1999 she had publicly supported the NATO attack on Serbia. However, on 18 March she announced that she would remain in the Cabinet and support the government's resolution in the House of Commons. Short remained in the Cabinet for two months after her decision to back the 2003 Iraq War. She resigned on 12 May. On 1 March 2011 she was elected as Chairwoman of the EITI (the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative) at the EITI Global Conference in Paris.

Richard Norton-Taylor (Chair) Ex-Guardian Security Editor
Richard Norton-Taylor was European Community and Brussels, Belgium, correspondent for both The Washington Post and Newsweek between 1967 and 1975, while also contributing to The Economist and the Financial Times. Norton-Taylor joined The Guardian in 1975, concentrating on Whitehall, official secrecy and behind-the-scenes decision-making. He has written several plays based on transcripts of public inquiries including The Colour of Justice (1999) based on the hearing of the MacPherson Inquiry into the police conduct of the investigation into the murder of Stephen Lawrence and Justifying War: Scenes from the Hutton Inquiry (2003). Norton-Taylor is a Member of Council of the Royal United Services Institute. He is a trustee of the Civil Liberties Trust and the London Action Trust.

Jonathan Steele
Jonathan Steele is a British journalist and an author of several books on international affairs. Steele was educated at King's College, Cambridge (BA) and Yale University (MA). He has reported on Afghanistan, Russia, Iraq, and other countries. He was Washington Bureau Chief, Moscow Bureau Chief, and Chief Foreign Correspondent for The Guardian. He is currently a columnist for that newspaper on international affairs. In January 2008 his book Defeat: Why America and Britain Lost Iraq was published by I.B. Tauris in the UK and Counterpoint in the US. In 2006, Steele won a Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism Special Award in honor of his career contributions.

The Nightmares of Carlos Fuentes, Rashid Razaq's new play, is based on an award-winning short story by Hassan Blasim. It is directed by Nicolas Kent, who was Artistic Director of the Tricycle Theatre from 1984-2012. Design is by Ellan Parry, lighting by Matt Eagland and sound by Andy Graham. Executive producers are PW Productions & The Heritage Arts Company.

The full cast for The Nightmares of Carlos Fuentes are Caroline Langrishe (Lydia King), Sara Bahadori (Case Worker/Sahar Husain) and Selva Rasalingam (Kevin/Khaled Al Hamrani) who join the previously announced Nabil Elouahabi (Carlos Fuentes).

Salim, an Iraqi refugee, takes on a new identity (Carlos Fuentes) in London after fleeing persecution in Baghdad. He is picked up, and marries a wealthy older woman, who enthusiastically coaches him in the bedroom for his forthcoming citizenship test. But Carlos Fuentes finds that knowing the names of all six of Henry VIII's wives can neither satisfy his new wife nor turn him into a "Britishman". The nightmare of the violence of his past catches up with him, and suddenly he is at the airport, accompanied by a G4 security guard, waiting for a plane to take him back to Baghdad.

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