Goats

'Has anyone ever told the truth? Has anyone ever demanded it? Does anyone want it? Does anyone even need it?'

In a small town in Syria, soldiers are celebrated as heroes and grieving families are nourished on propaganda.

As coffins pile up, a local party leader decides on a radical compensation scheme: a goat for each son martyred.

Goats is a major new work by Syrian playwright and documentary film-maker Liwaa Yazj, translated by Katharine Halls.

Developed as part of the Royal Court International Department's long-term project with writers from Syria and Lebanon, the play premiered



at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in the Jerwood Theatre Downstairs, on 24 November 2017, in a production directed by Hamish Pirie.



'Disturbing, bitterly funny and caustically angry... a painful and original piece about the terrible price of conflict and oppression'



'Exposes the mixture of grotesquerie and cruelty that are aspects of civil war'



'Compelling... a darkly humorous lens through which to examine the messy, multi-sided, multi-storied conflict that is the Syrian Civil War'