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The actresses

Mays Gumar hopes so. She is one of the best-known character actresses in Baghdad, a city that had its own active theater circuit. The war, however, dropped the curtain on all that. At home in the evening, sitting in a dark, stifling house with her sister, mother, and husband, a national soccer player, Gumar says the show will not go on unless security improves. "We are in living an Eastern society, and here, an artist is viewed in a different way. It's very easy for people to see me in a negative light."

MONA AS-SAFAR is preparing to star in a one-woman play. [ Editor's note: The original version of this story incorrectly spelled the name of Mona as-Safar.] ILENE PRUSHER

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Theater is not so common in this part of the Arab world. The Baath Party's secular ideology gave room for some art forms to flourish, but the fact that the government supported these theaters leads some Iraqis to see actors as loyalists of Hussein's regime.

The last time Gumar went out, she covered her mane of hair, dyed an eye-popping blond, with an Islamic scarf. Still, she was spotted near a protest of decommissioned Iraqi soldiers. "The officers recognized me and they were hitting the car and saying, 'Get out and help us raise our voices, because you are well-known.' I was afraid. People don't know how to express their freedom, because they never had a chance to express it before."

Several well-known actresses have fled the country, and another, Rana Shaker, has reportedly been murdered. Gumar herself thought of leaving. "It is impossible for an artist to work in these circumstances," says Gumar. "Since the war, living standards have changed. Everything has changed," she says. Sitting in the dark past nine in the evening, a night-after-night blackout that jars in comparison to the curtain calls of the past, it is hard for her to say it has changed for the better.

Yet life is stirring inside Baghdad's National Theater of Iraq. There, actors and directors meet, broken glass and looted debris swept aside, to discuss future productions. Mona As-Safar, a colleague of Gumar's, is preparing to star in a new one-woman play in which she portrays five characters struggling to survive the war.

Recently, as As-Safar, also a blond, was walking through the market, a man cornered her and held a knife to her stomach. "He said, 'Didn't you act during the regime?' They think we're Baathists," she says. As-Safar used her acting skills to talk her way out of being stabbed.

As-Safar had to fight with her family to allow her to act, begging an uncle to take her to the theater when they were supposed to go to the zoo. She isn't about to give up. "I like the excitement of the theater. I'm not afraid. I'm Aaarnold," she laughs, feigning a Schwarzenegger accent.

She will not give in to pressures to stay off the stage, or to cover her hair. "Wear hejab?" she shakes her head. "I'll die first. This is our personal freedom, to wear what we want. If that changes, it might be better to leave Iraq."