Joe Martin

Soundwaves Joe Martin

This narrative play, based on historical events, tells the story of Noor Inayat Khan: a woman of Indian extraction born into a Sufi family in the West, an accomplished musician and children's author-who, with the rise of fascism and the Nazi invasion of Europe, becomes a British agent and finally a celebrated heroine of the French Resistance. The last of the British radio "coders" to survive in occupied Paris, she evades the Nazi security forces that are in frantic pursuit of her under her code name "Madeleine." The play is infused with a sense of the music, the art and spirituality of her family environment in first London then France, which gave rise to her artfulness and extraordinary awareness. As she moves forward with determination-to act to preserve her family's adopted countries in a dark time-she encounters absurd misunderstandings among her colleagues, traps and betrayal in Paris, and finally arrest and deportation into "night and fog" with other women of the French resistance. The array of extraordinary figures who instructed and supported Noor-and were in turn profoundly affected by her-are a powerful presence in the world brought to life in Soundwaves.