Love story across the divide launches theatre company

Next week sees the first play from a new theatre company for Yorkshire. Arts Editor Nick Ahad on the launch of WhereYouFrom.
A scene from 'Muslamic Love Story' by Nick AhadA scene from 'Muslamic Love Story' by Nick Ahad
A scene from 'Muslamic Love Story' by Nick Ahad

The world used to feel amuch more simple place to live.

There was a line. At the left extremity were the liberals and at the right, the conservatives. You could see the line and decide at which point along it you would stand.

These days it’s much more complicated. It is as though the line has turned into a grid with all different kinds of permutations. Nowhere has it become more complex, for me, than on the question of prejudice.

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In modern Britain I think you would be hard pressed to find a more oppressed minority than the British Muslim. Which is why it is so hard to take when any member of that community become an oppressor.

Anytime the oppressor become the oppressed we all lose something and, frankly, I find it deeply confusing.

A couple of years ago several Muslim men were committed of perpetrating a hate crime – they were handing out leaflets calling for the beheading of gay people. It was horrific – almost as horrific as the marches the EDL have brought to towns around the UK, trying to convince white Britain that Muslims are the enemy.

As a theatre critic and, well, a theatre obsessive, I believe the stage is a place where we can work out some of the issues we face in society. I decided to write a play about the divisions created by hate, divisions that feel like they are becoming more marked by the day. The play would take someone who has become violently Islamophobic and put him in a room where he had the power to destroy. I thought it would be interesting to see what happened. The play, Muslamic Love Story, had a first showing at Bradford’s Theatre in the Mill last year.

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It was seen there by a highly respected West Yorkshire producer. David Edmunds, the man behind DepArts was intrigued and wanted to work with me to bring Muslamic Love Story back to the stage.

Since then, the ambition has grown. With the guidance of DepArts, we decided that to bring a new version of Muslamic Love Story was necessary, but it should be only a start. So next week the premiere of a new version of Muslamic Love Story will launch a new theatre company for Yorkshire. WhereYouFrom will tell the story of second and third generation Asians in Northern contemporary Britain.

Backed by the Arts Council and supported by generous people and organisations around Yorkshire, I have spent the last year ruminating on the story of Muslamic Love Story and we now have a very different piece of work that explores the issues of prejudice and hate that remain sadly so relevant.

We also, I hope, have a piece of work that will entertain.

While the play explores some important questions, I am not so naive as to imagine it will provide answers – but asking questions, holding up a mirror to society, is what I believe theatre is there for.

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Having worked with the Bradford-based theatre company Freedom Studios, the other thing I have experienced while bringing Muslamic Love Story back to the stage is the generosity that allows Yorkshire theatre companies to exist.

It feels good to know that good people are creating good work – and that those people creating work want to work with each other to make Yorkshire theatre as strong as it can be. That’s what happens when we abandon our ideas of lines and boundaries and come together.

Play that tackles difficult issues

MUSLAMIC Love Story tells of a complex love triangle.

Dan, an English man, has left his boyfriend Tony, a black British man who cannot come out as gay to his Jamaican family.

When Tony sees Dan begin a relationship with Kasim, a British Muslim, the seeds of hatred are sown.

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These three lives cross over and come together and reveal how hate can be so destructive and how no-one is left unscathed when hate is the driving force in someone’s life.

Muslamic Love Story, Theatre in the Mill, Bradford, November 7, 8, 9. Tickets 01274 233200.