''Palace of the End'' is a play by Judith Thompson, that consists of three monologues telling tales related to Iraq before and after the

2003 invasion of Iraq The 2003 invasion of Iraq was a United States-led invasion of the Republic of Iraq and the first stage of the Iraq War. The invasion phase began on 19 March 2003 (air) and 20 March 2003 (ground) and lasted just over one month, including 26 ...

. The first two are based on real people Lynndie England and David Kelly and the third is fictional. ''Palace of the End'' was published in 2007 by

Playwrights Canada Press Playwrights Canada Press is a Canadian publishing house founded in 1984 by the Playwrights Guild of Canada. It was incorporated in 2000 as an independent company. Notable books *''The Adventures of a Black Girl in Search of God'', Djanet Sears ( ...

. The play ran in Los Angeles in 2007, at

Canadian Stage Company Canadian Stage is a non-profit contemporary performance arts company based in Toronto, Ontario, ''Canada''. About Canadian Stage Canadian Stage is one of Canada's largest not-for-profit contemporary theatre companies, based in Toronto, Ontari ...

in Toronto in 2008, at Playwrights Horizons in New York in 2008 at the Frank Theatre Studio in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 2009 and at the

Arcola Theatre Arcola Theatre is an Off West End theatre in the London Borough of Hackney. It presents plays, operas and musicals featuring established and emerging artists. The theatre building, in the former Colourworks paint factory on Ashwin Street, Dalst ...

in London in 2010. It won the 2007–08 Susan Smith Blackburn Prize and the

Amnesty International Amnesty International (also referred to as Amnesty or AI) is an international non-governmental organization focused on human rights, with its headquarters in the United Kingdom. The organization says it has more than ten million members and sup ...

Freedom of Expression Awards Index on Censorship is an organization campaigning for freedom of expression, which produces a quarterly magazine of the same name from London. It is directed by the non-profit-making Writers and Scholars International, Ltd (WSI) in association w ...

at the 2009

Edinburgh Festival Fringe The Edinburgh Festival Fringe (also referred to as The Fringe, Edinburgh Fringe, or Edinburgh Fringe Festival) is the world's largest arts and media festival, which in 2019 spanned 25 days and featured more than 59,600 performances of 3,841 dif ...

The monologues

The monologue’s titles are "My Pyramids", "Harrowdown Hill", and "Instruments of Yearning". “My Pyramids” refers to the

Abu Ghraib Abu Ghraib (; ar, أبو غريب, ''Abū Ghurayb'') is a city in the Baghdad Governorate of Iraq, located just west of Baghdad's city center, or northwest of Baghdad International Airport. It has a population of 189,000 (2003). The old road t ...

human pyramids. The speaker is Lynndie England, the United States Army reservist who become the face of the

Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse During the early stages of the Iraq War, members of the United States Army and the CIA committed a series of human rights violations and war crimes against detainees in the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, including Physical abuse, physical and sexu ...

, and who is said to have made prisoners form human pyramids. "Harrowdown Hill" refers to the place where the body of Dr. David Kelly was found a few weeks after he confessed to a journalist that he had lied about the existence of

weapons of mass destruction in Iraq Iraq actively researched and later employed weapons of mass destruction (WMD) from 1962 to 1991, when it destroyed its chemical weapons stockpile and halted its biological and nuclear weapon programs as required by the United Nations Security Coun ...

. Kelly was a British

weapons inspector The United Nations Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission (UNMOVIC) was created through the adoption of United Nations Security Council resolution 1284 of 17 December 1999 and its mission lasted until June 2007. UNMOVIC was meant to ...

in Iraq. "Instruments of Yearning" refers to the Jihaz al-Haneen, the secret police of the

Ba'ath Party The Arab Socialist Baʿath Party ( ar, حزب البعث العربي الاشتراكي ' ) was a political party founded in Syria by Mishel ʿAflaq, Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn al-Bītār, and associates of Zaki al-ʾArsūzī. The party espoused B ...

who detained fictional character Nehrjas Al Saffarh, an Iraqi communist, in 1963. Saffarh survived but was killed during United States bombing in the 1991 Persian Gulf War.

References

Plays by Judith Thompson {{Canada-theat-stub

The monologues

See also

References