The play, by Guyanese Ronan Blaze, is a “tour de force” for Guyana’s theatre. It confronts head-on the ever present challenge of the doctrinaire teachings of two of Guyana’s major religions, the Hindu and Muslim faiths, as they impact in a real life drama on the lives of a family who have intermarried.

The play delves into the frailty of human beings torn between their commitment to religious tradition and practice and their abiding love for each other, and encourages us to reach beyond the religious and racial barriers which so frequently divide us as a people and a nation.

The play is produced and directed by Gem Madhoo-Nascimento and features the very best of Guyana’s actors, notably Richard Narine, Sonya Yarde, Ajay Baksh, Nazim Hussain, Dimple Mendonca, Rajan Tiwari, Michael Ignatius, Kirk Jardine, Sherry Ann Dyal, Howard Lorrimer, Godfrey Naughton, Derek Gomes and Zaheer Abbass.

Jonathan, played by Ajay Baksh, who is Hindu, is faced with the trauma of his young Muslim wife, Aidana Soraya, played by Dimple Mendonca, who is dying from an incurable cancer and is determined to fulfill her wish to be buried in her family plot in the Islamic cemetery next to the village Mosque. But both the Hindu and Muslim communities have been hostile from the very beginning to the marriage and are opposed to her being buried in either the Muslim or Hindu cemeteries.

Jonathan’s Uncle, Sohrab, played by Richard Narine, an elder of the Muslim community, and himself once married to a Hindu who he forced to become a Muslim, and lived to deeply regret this after she died, passionately embraces Jonathan’s wishes and eloquently takes up his cause.

Doctrine confronts reason. Accusations and threats fly fast and furious and in one of the most telling lines of the play, Elder Sohrab declares, “We are our own instruments of torture”.

The Premiere performance today, takes place in the Recital Hall and will be preceded by a cocktail reception.