{"id":23594,"date":"2019-04-08T11:43:45","date_gmt":"2019-04-08T16:43:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/?p=23594"},"modified":"2019-04-08T11:43:45","modified_gmt":"2019-04-08T16:43:45","slug":"syrian-refugees-practice-therapeutic-drama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/world\/2019\/04\/08\/syrian-refugees-practice-therapeutic-drama\/","title":{"rendered":"Syrian Refugees Practice Therapeutic Drama"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0The Syrian Civil War has been raging on for eight years, tearing apart the innocent lives of civilians who have no affiliation with the regime or the opposition. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0According to the UN Envoy for Syria, in the first five years of the war, about 400,000 Syrians were killed. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Eight years later, Syrian refugees across the globe are now processing the events that were experienced in their home country. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0In Glasgow, Scotland, a small group of Syrian refugees are trying to manage their trauma through theater. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0A therapeutic drama program is staging the ancient Greek play \u201cThe Trojan Women,\u201d however, the play has been adapted to include the cast\u2019s personal stories about the war. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0None of the cast have acted before.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cAlthough \u2018The Trojan Women\u2019 is a play that is two-and-a-half thousand years old, it\u2019s an eternal play. It speaks about eternal truths of war,\u201d says producer Charlotte Eager, who began running the therapeutic drama projects six years ago in a Jordanian refugee camp.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Most of the refugees involved in the program were of 2,000 Syrians who, under the U.N.\u2019s refugee resettlement program, had migrated to Scotland. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Though there were conflicting opinions about the war, the cast members learned to respect one another\u2019s opinions, now that they don\u2019t have their lives in serious danger. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0One of the cast members, Mohammed, was once a tailor in Syria and spent two years hiding in a cellar, only to be arrested and tortured after he emerged. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0He escaped to Egypt and explained that innocent people are dying, people who have nothing to do with the war.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cPeople get wasted in war. And their main concern is just to feed their kids, and take care of their household,\u201d he explained. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0For Psychotherapist Sanaa Al Froukh, supporting the children is the most important aspect to focus on after experiencing the war. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cThis generation should have a good future. No one can take this right from us, although we lose our country,\u201d said Froukh.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Froukh was a teacher in Syria when she witnessed students being killed after an attack on her school \u00a0by Assad\u2019s troops. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0She helped translate the Greek play she and her fellow refugees performed after only knowing English for a year.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0Heba Alwadi was only thirteen when her school was bombarded with an attack from President Bashar al-Assad\u2019s forces. She remembers glass surrounding the classroom and the difficulty of seeing her teacher\u2019s terror.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cThe army\u2019s response was supposed to protect us. They were killing us instead. I wanted to scream: I am a child. You should protect me,\u201d Alwadi said.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0During the plays, when the cast is able to identify with the characters they are playing, they progressively weave their own stories into the material. <\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0\u201cSo, what I\u2019m hoping\u2026is that the audience will watch this play and they will see themselves reflected in the mirror of humanity, essentially,\u201d Eager stated.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u00a0 \u00a0During the two day production, the full houses showcased the achievement made by the producers and the cast.<\/span><\/p>\n

Yasel Rosado<\/strong>
\nReporter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 \u00a0The Syrian Civil War has been raging on for eight years, tearing apart the innocent lives of civilians who have no affiliation with the regime or the opposition. \u00a0 \u00a0According to the UN Envoy for Syria, in the first five years of the war, about 400,000 Syrians were killed. \u00a0 \u00a0Eight years later, Syrian […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10416,"featured_media":23611,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[2150],"tags":[2800,1831,1917,3182,17,2480,3030],"class_list":["post-23594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world","tag-recovery","tag-refugees","tag-syria","tag-the-trojan-women","tag-theater","tag-world-news","tag-yasel-rosado"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-68y","jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/US_NEWS_SYRIAN-REFUGEES_1_TB.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10416"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23594"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23594\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23615,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23594\/revisions\/23615"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23611"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}