British actress takes household tragedy to Spanish stage in gorgeous train of catharsis – Olive Press Information Spain – The Olive Press

In 2018, British anarchist and activist Anna Campbell was killed in Syria by a Turkish missile strike. The 26-year-old had travelled to Rojava to struggle towards ISIS with the Kurdish YPJ militia. 4 years later, her sister, actress Sara Campbell, stepped onto a Madrid stage to painting a model of herself within the play Inanna, which tells the story of Anna’s life, her loss of life, and its penalties. 

“Anna believed in change,” explains Sara, chatting with The Olive Press from her house in Madrid. “She joined the feminine militia as a result of she aligned with their beliefs, that are feminism, ecology and socialism. They imagine that revolution is feasible.”

After her loss of life, Anna’s household started a marketing campaign to get her physique repatriated – a battle that has thus far been unsuccessful. “We held an enormous demonstration within the centre of London, chanting, ‘UK authorities, convey Anna house!’” Sara explains. 

The concept for the play Inanna got here from one among Sara’s finest buddies, María Caudevilla. Each Sara and María are members of the Baraka theatre firm, which staged the manufacturing. 

The ensuing play is a rare exploration of grief and catharsis, made much more poignant by the viewers’s information that Sara is portraying a model of herself. We see sometimes-surreal scenes of the pair throughout their childhood, combined with imagery of Little Pink Driving Hood, wolves and a decimated forest full with a mattress of leaves.

The script was written by Caudevilla primarily based on information articles, letters and a e book put collectively by Anna’s buddies within the wake of her loss of life. So how did Sara really feel when she first laid eyes on it? 

“It took me a very long time to learn it. I used to be blown away by how a lot of actual life she’d placed on the pages of the script,” Sara explains. “A few months down the road I did say to María, ‘I don’t assume I can do that. Each time I am going into rehearsals I’m digging up  the ache.”

However chatting with her brother Adam helped crystalise issues for the actress. “He mentioned, ‘I’m so happy with you for doing this play and I’m so comfortable that you just get to attach with Anna every day,’ as a result of he didn’t really feel he was doing that,” she says. 

The play, which is in Spanish, was first staged in March within the Madrid area, and shall be carried out once more in October (see under for data).

As if the emotional cost of the manufacturing was not already nice sufficient, the premiere got here at a troublesome time for the younger actress portraying Anna: Kateryna Humenyuk, who’s from Ukraine. 

“Her world fell aside within the rehearsal course of,” explains Sara, in reference to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “All of us simply realised, that is actual for her, that is her life and household. She sat down and mentioned, ‘Right now I really feel like a Kurd’. She felt the injustice of what they had been combating for.”

An injustice that Anna Campbell would little doubt have been combating towards not directly had her life not been so tragically minimize brief.

‘Inanna’ shall be carried out on October 8 on the XXII Festival Iberoamericano de Teatro Contemporáneo de Almagro, at the Teatro Municipal de Almagro (Ciudad Real), and on October 15 on the Teatro Municipal de Tres Cantos (Madrid).