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Arcola Digs Dirt on Racism with One-Man Show

The Arcola, renowned in London’s Off-West End for presenting hard-hitting political dramas, is taking on another major issue with Dirt, a one-man show that tells the story of an illegal immigrant from Iraq living on the fringes of Western society (from 27 July to 15 August).

The play, by major German novelist and playwright Robert Schneider, will be enjoying its London premiere in this production, following highly praised runs in Vienna, New York and at last year’s Edinburgh Fringe. German theatre magazine Theatre Heute awarded Schneider best new playwright of the year for Dirt, and Christopher Domig was awarded the Best Actor award at New York International Festival for his performance.

With the recent successes of the BNP in the European elections and Iraq's return to newspaper front pages following the withdrawal of British troops in April, this story of an Iraqi citizen’s experience of xenophobia and latent racism in the supposedly civilized West couldn’t be making its London debut at a more apposite time.

Issues of identity, anti-foreign sentiment and self-worth are brought to life through the character's disturbing psychological self-portrait. Domig says of the production, ‘Dirt is an extremely relevant play about what it means to live on the margins of modern Western society that has found resonance with audiences around the world. I look forward to sharing it with London audiences for the first time’.

In 1993 Dirt premiered at the Thalia Theater in Hamburg. It is the most performed solo show in the German-speaking world of the last decade and is being presented at the Arcola in collaboration with the Austrian Cultural Forum London.

- by Jo Caird - Theatregoer Reporter

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