I have been given many opportunities to go and see plays and theatre production before. Last week on the 17th April I was given an amazing chance to see ‘Faceless’ in Park Theatre at Finsbury Park. This play is not like any other play I have seen, it focuses on a serious topic and it engages the audience within the first few minutes. This play was written by Selina Fillinger and directed by Prav MJ, in which the production was for 1hour and 15minutes and after there was a 10-minute Q/A with the writer where she revealed that it took at least 30 drafts to get it to where the play is now.

Faceless is about an American teenager who meets someone online who persuades her to convert from her religion, Christianity to Islam. In which the teenager, Susie, who is played by Fiona Gent, is prepared to leave her home for Syria. However, this does not go to plan in which she finds herself in a court case. Her prosecutor is a recent Harvard Law graduate Muslim who is played by Paige Round, where she struggles to understand how Susie can convert and states her as “not a real Muslim” as she is involved with ISIS. This play is inspired by a real court case in the US; in which this topic is very important to today’s society as it showed how normally young vulnerable girls were brainwashed to believe that ISIS is committing acts of terror for self defence and because God is telling them to do so, thus convincing them to come and fight with them. The play consists of six characters: Susie, Claire, Scott, Mark, Allan and the Faceless Man who are all very important in this play and have a big part which at all significant. Each character has a different story, although the main story is about Susie and the court case, the other characters have their own struggles in which could have affected the turn out of the case. The acting was astonishing; also, very intimate. I heard many of the audience members say of “how great it was”. One audience member stated that “this play allowed me to have my own personal truths of what happens after, it is a very mind-opening play.”

This play was amazing and I thoroughly enjoyed looking at both sides of the argument; the way the play was structured gave the audience members the choice to decide whether or not Susie should be put into prison or not for her actions. The setting of the play gave the audience to put themselves in the position of a jury case as the cast where speaking at the audience. I would definitely watch this play again as it was engaging and spreads awareness of serious topics.

By Sevil Osmanogullari - Eltham Hill School