Ignorance/Jahiliyyah

An absorbing study of attitudes towards outsiders, spanning two continents and sixty years.

1949. Small town Colorado. A group of regular American students struggle to accept a foreigner in their midst; their unthinking behaviour will have terrible consequences that are to change world history. In London, sixty years later, a university professor's work analysing those consequences takes on a frightening personal dimension when Layla Ahmad walks into his office...

Steve Waters' play Ignorance/Jahiliyyah was first performed at Hampstead Theatre, London, in 2012.

Blog entry: Steve Waters on the story of Ignorance/Jahiliyyah: 'Contemporary political reality can fill you with despair. Israeli rockets slaughtering children in Gaza, the ongoing bloody impasse in Syria, the intractable agonies of the Eurozone, our own ignorant little coalition/junta dismantling the things that make life in this country tolerable...' Read more >>