Tom Coash's VEILS Comes to The Theatre Room for the Women and War Festival

The So & So Art Club presents Tom Coash's VEILS at The Theatre Room, directed by Pamela Schermann and starring Isaura Barbé-Brown and Zelina Rebeiro. The staging is part of the Women and War Festival, a month-long, multi-discipline festival which documents, explores and gives voice to the experiences of women from across the world before, during and after war. The festival features 16 theatre presentations as well as talks, exhibitions and screenings.

Intisar, a veiled, African-American Muslim student, thought she might finally fit in when she enrolled for a year abroad at the American Egyptian University in Cairo. However, the Arab Spring soon explodes across the Middle East, threatening to overwhelm the young American woman and her liberal Egyptian roommate, Samar. In the struggle to find their footing in this political storm, the young women instead find themselves on opposite sides of a bitter and dangerous cultural divide.

It is a topical and relevant, yet very human story of two young students who are caught between modernity and tradition. Tom Coash's celebrated play tackles current issues, such as whether or not wearing burkas in public should be banned. "The play allows a very personal insight by examining these and other questions around cultural identity through the eyes of two young women", says director Pamela Schermann, "It asks the questions without providing all the answers, and I believe that is what theatre should do."

Tom Coash's play was awarded the 2015 American Theatre Critics Association's "M. Elizabeth Osborn Award" for Best New Play by an Emerging Playwright. It also won the Clauder Competition for New England Playwrights, was the recipient of an Edgertin Foundation New American Play Award, and one of six finalists for the prestigious Steinberg/ATCA award.

Veils is at The Theatre Room (6 Frederick's Place, London EC2R 8AB) on 6th July (1pm), 10th July (3pm), 12th July (9pm), 15th July (1pm & 7pm), 16th July (9pm), 17th July (5pm), 18th July (7pm), 23rd July (3pm), 24th July (5pm), 25th July (9pm), 26th July (7pm), 28th July (1pm), 30th July (9pm). Tickets are £10-15. Book online via www.womenandwar.co.uk