Sinners – The English Professor is directed by the Award-winning actor Brian Cox. The production opened on 26 Feb – 14 March at The Playground Theatre.
Sinners is a passionate love story about Layla, a University professor in an unnamed Muslim country who is denounced for an affair with her former student, Nur, and is awaiting to be stoned to death for adultery.
The play examines both Layla’s and Nur’s choices for love and survival and the striving for freedom in a patriarchal culture. Nur can save his own life by throwing the first stone. What choice will he make?
The Artiscape spoke to producer Lawryn LaCroix:
What inspired you to produce Sinners – The English Professor?
LaCroix: My career spans both acting and producing in the United States and now in the UK. I am attracted to projects both in live theatre and film/TV that are controversial and touch issues like women’s rights, intersectionality, sexual identity and preference, social justice, race; deep human stories that reflect the complicated times we live in.
Sinners brought me to tears the first time I read the script as it hit so many touch points as a young black woman in the creative arts and a member of a world where many perceive me as part of a segmented disenfranchised population because of my own race and gender.
Sinners taps all of these issues and more because it asks the fundamental question of responsibility for oppression and arbitrary judging of women in cultural communities while serving as a mirror for all of us.
What themes does the play explore?
LaCroix: The play explores themes of expression of love with an overlay of sexual and gender oppression.
The play also explores how men contribute to this oppression by choosing their own survival in societies that oppress women rather than opt to sacrifice themselves for social justice and necessary change.
I was equally fascinated by the male character Nur because in fact he faced such complexities, that men every day face namely should I be righteous or should I simply survive by folding into cultural oppression. Such a good question, don’t you think?
Can you tell us about your favourite character?
LaCroix: My favourite character is Layla (played by Nicole Ansari) because she is utterly unapologetic. She is a straight shooter and tells it like it is.
She knows what her fate is and though she knows it is wrong she does not complain, she is brave and strong and empowered even while most of the play she is buried in the ground up to her waist.
She sets a stoic example to force us to examine this metaphor in our own culture and our own lives.
What do you perceive will be the greatest challenges in producing this play?
LaCroix: The greatest challenge in producing this play is the cultural depiction of the practice of stoning women as a punishment.
The challenge is to enable western people to suspend their belief since this might not feel relatable in that most people can’t relate to public stoning in our western culture but can relate to more subtle ways women are figuratively “stoned” in public.
What are you most looking forward about the production?
LaCroix: I am so loving working with Brian Cox our amazing director and Nicole Ansari as Layla as well as Adam Sina who plays Nur.
Plus beyond the scenes the production crew are stellar and dedicated professionals all truly on a mission to make this production deeply moving and make us all really think, as by the end, I promise you, this play will hit you so hard in the gut, it will take you a few minutes before you can get up to leave the theatre.
Why do you feel this play will appeal to an audience today?
LaCroix: This play appeals to current audiences because it is a reflection of what we are dealing with in western culture today. Women are still oppressed, as are other disenfranchised groups.
Though public stoning is not legal in the UK, many other acts of oppression are societal norms just like stoning is in certain Islamic cultures.
This play forces us all to look within ourselves in a hard emotional way and address the many issues that impact us – even issues seemingly unrelated like global warming, police brutality, racial injustice, female professional glass ceiling issues, the subtle and the not so subtle issues – all of it and really ask ourselves if we are part of the problem maintaining the norm for another day, week, year, and lifetime or are we part of the rising up to effect social change for the better.
Sinners – The English Professor opened on 26 Feb and runs until 14 March at The Playground Theatre.
