Naylah
Ahmed

Bio

Naylah Ahmed, is a writer based in Birmingham, who has written for theatre, radio, and television. Before her playwriting and screenwriting career she was an established radio drama producer with immense experience of the development of writers, ideas and story. Naylah began her career as a development producer and script editor for Silver Street an award winning BBC radio drama, she currently writes for The Archers.

Her 2012 play Mustafa, is about a man jailed for the manslaughter of a teenage boy during an exorcism, it garnered four Offie Award Nominations. Her critically acclaimed 2017 play Ready or Not is a political thriller set in a small suburban house where the middle-aged Englishman, Pat, meets a young Muslim man, Yusuf.

Transcript

Shiroma 0:06

Welcome to The Next Act: British South Asian Playwrights, a new series focusing on the voices shaping the future of British South Asian theatre. Each episode centers on a conversation with a single playwright examining their creative processes and the political, personal and artistic forces that drive and inform their work, bringing about lively, thought provoking dialogs that explore the zeitgeist in this theatre landscape. I'm Shiroma Silva. I'm a film director, a radio producer and broadcast journalist. With me is Rukhsana Ahmad.

Rukhsana 0:38

I'm a writer, playwright and translator. I'm also the founder of Kali Theatre Company and Sadaa.

Shiroma 0:45

And Jaswinder Blackwell Pal.

Jaswinder 0:46

I'm a lecturer in theatre and performance studies at Queen Mary University of London.

Shiroma 0:54

Today, we're joined by Naylah Ahmed, a writer based in Birmingham who has written for theatre, radio and television. Before her playwriting and screenwriting career, Naylah was an established radio drama producer with immense experience in the development of writers, ideas and story. She began her career as a development producer and script editor for Silver Street, an award winning BBC radio drama. She currently writes for The Archers. Her 2012 play, Mustafa, is about a man jailed for the manslaughter of a teenage boy during an exorcism. It garnered four Offie Award nominations. Her critically acclaimed 2017 play, Ready or Not, is a political thriller set in a small suburban house where a middle aged English woman,Pat, meets a young Muslim man, Yousef.

Shiroma 1:51

Welcome to our podcast, and joining us today is Naylah Ahmed, hello. Thank you very, very much for coming in.

Naylah 1:57

It's a pleasure.

Shiroma 1:58

And we are so honored to have you here. Let's get straight into it. Tell us about your route into theatre. Describe that.

Naylah 2:05

My route into theatre was very early, straight out of university a friend of mine, who was a poet who self published an anthology of poems, and I think in his second or third he published a few of my poems. And when I talked to him about an idea that I was writing for the stage, he was just really positive about it, and said yes. But I didn't know anybody in theatre. I, you know, I'm just, I was just a young person thinking, yeah, theatre, that's cool. I love it when I go. So in the end, that play ended up becoming my first radio play, but it did also get me onto the Birmingham Rep's new writers attachment, I think it was called back then, and that was it really. I had two people, Ben Payne and Caroline Jester, at the Birmingham Rep supporting me, sort of with dramaturgy. And also The Rep gave me tickets to see theatre, and at that age, because theatre can be inaccessible because of price, and even something like timings, you know, of an evening depending on your age and what that means in your life at that time, it can be quite a distance from you. It's not, not really achievable to go and see everything. So it was really lovely to get a chance to see a lot of work, especially in The Door. I loved The Door when I was young, the space at the Birmingham Rep, they did amazing stuff in there. I somehow, and I can't remember how, was in touch with Tamasha Theatre Company, and I remember that at the same time, the BBC offered me a development producer job for radio drama, which I took part time, which was four days a week, so not very part time. And on the same day, when I was at work, The Rep and Kali commissioned Mustafa and Tamasha commissioned a play called Butcher Boys. So that was sort of the start.

Shiroma 3:52

So it was a pretty straightforward run, really. And so do you just fall into it? I mean, was there any kind of conscious choice, you know, theatre rather than TV, rather than radio, rather than film rather than novel?

Naylah 4:04

I have to say, I've never, ever been a planned person, and I've never, ever been a... In fact, I think this slightly puts me off things. But theatre has a real, if you see it from a certain angle, theatre in this country especially can have a real clique-iness about it. You've got to know all the big writers. You've got to know your Shakespeares and all the others, all the contemporaries that are going on in London and what's happening on Drury Lane. I don't know any of that, and I think I don't really want to know any of that. I just know that when I sat in those velvet seats and looked at something happening live, I just thought, I'd love to do - I'd love to put something on there. And I think a little bit more than even that, I thought, God, I'd love to be behind there seeing what goes on when they're running and changing costumes and stuff, just the excitement of it. And with anything like that I just have a go. And I always think, if it's terrible, somebody will tell you, and either I will love it enough anyway to do better, or I'll think I didn't really enjoy that. So it's not for me. Hence why, I suppose I do radio and children's and telly and theatre, but theatre is a little bit my heart, I suppose. So I never really thought, what should one do to become a playwright on the landscape? I just always thought, what's accessible for me right here and now, and it was a piece of paper and a pen and whatever was in my head, I didn't have to think about it for too long. I suppose probably actually, that would have put me off a bit because of the cliqueiness. But then I'm, I'm a little bit, uh, rubbish at being embarrassed when I should be, you know, when you don't know what you don't know. I never feel embarrassed by that, but I do feel the world of theatre can sometimes be a place where people think, if you don't know all the classics, if you haven't studied you know the people that Brecht and the acting styles come from and all of that, if you don't know them, should you really be here? And I really don't like that. I think if your work speaks well, you should be there. If you want to be there, you can be there. And if you don't want to read everything that's on the planet before you start writing something. There's nothing wrong with that, because if it's terrible, as I say, it won't get on, or sometimes it does get on. We've all sat through pieces when we think, hmmm.

Jaswinder 6:31

Can you talk to us a little bit about what your influences are? So that might be other writers, but it might be influences from outside the world of theatre, or, I guess, another way of putting it is, what inspires you? Where do your ideas come from? What informs the ideas that then turn into plays or scripts?

Naylah 6:49

I think there's two ways in general. One is an idea comes from everything that percolates in everybody's head from life, and then it just doesn't leave you alone. And instead of leaving you alone, it slightly builds and edits itself and edits itself until it gets to a point where I think, god, that's good. I better put that down somewhere, and I want to start writing it. For me. I think that usually comes from character, but sometimes it comes from situation. The other thing is, when I feel like there's something I really want to see, but it's not there.

Jaswinder 7:26

So is that about a character or, you know, a type of character that you feel hasn't been staged?

Naylah 7:32

Whatever the medium, I engage with work where I care about who the what is happening to, and there's lots of things about these days where I just can't care for who I'm watching, whatever the medium. So I suppose the reason character is so important to me is because a situation matters more when you care about who it's happening to. And that's so basic. I really know that I'm not talking genius lines here, but that's as basic as I get, and that's how it works for me, I think.

Shiroma 8:05

In terms of character then, tell us about how your background has fed into all of this. Your writing.

Naylah 8:11

There were two things really that I remember, and I forget a lot, which doesn't help this situation, but one of them was, there's a fantastic writer from Birmingham. She went to London as well, but she's come back. She knows her place is the best place, the best city in the world. But that aside, her name's Amber Lone, and she did a play called Paradise way back when. It must have been early 90s. But again, as with lots of things, I'm a bit rubbish at timings, but it must have been around the early 90s. Which I saw at The Rep in The Door. And I loved, because I hadn't seen characters that looked like my people, talked like my people. And by that I mean young, brown people in Birmingham, I suppose. And it was staged. This is another thing I love about theatre. It was staged so sparsely, but it really painted the picture. Her play really spoke to me and made me think I could do it too. And the other thing was, when I saw Balti Kings, which was a play, I think, by Christine and Sudha, and they put it on for Tamasha. And, honest to God, I never enjoyed a piece of theatre as much as that. It was funny. It had a big cast. It wasn't two brown people hiding, you know, a dimly lit stage. It was a big, bold play, and I loved it to pieces. And those two things are the things that I remember most about maybe thinking this is achievable, and I can do it if I you know, as an if I'm not rubbish, I'm sure I could do this.

Shiroma 9:50

And similarly, with say, Ready or Not, those characters are very, very strong, aren't they? And then they're set in fairly sparsely, dimly lit places, not very salubrious. But in a way, despite their situation, or maybe because of the situation, we care about them. And it's got bigger themes, hasn't it? You know about different clashes of cultures, ideologies, in the wake of big political events, but ultimately, the characters are there, they speak to us. Is that a - is that really a way of drawing people in to think about the bigger things going on there, the inverted happenings in a way?

Naylah 10:28

First of all, it's so lovely to hear somebody say that they're strong and that they spoke to you, and I really hope they did. I can't write someone that I don't love as a writer, love as a character. You know what I mean, and you want to explore. So I love them all. I really love Pat from the play a lot, and the young man in the play, and Holly, sort of, but Pat, I think the most. But I think the big things that were happening politically in the world made me think of the characters and situation made me think, how, how can I talk about that, but in a really small, contained way, and through human beings, and not politicians, who I believe aren't human. Not through politicians and politics. But also, once you put the situation together, I think it starts having resonance with, it's sort of an interplay that happens at different times during the writing of the play, and even then the rehearsals of the play, post 911 there was so much that I watched happen as a young Muslim in Britain to Muslim people around the world and in Britain that just shocked me every day, and hurt me every day, and some things that were beautiful and made me feel joyous every day, but those were slightly rarer, athough I said every day. That play was sort of my chance to speak to that stuff. Do you know what I mean? To speak to all the - all of those things that had been collecting in my head. I think that might be the one play where it feels as though I tried to do that everything in the kitchen sink, but it's because we don't get a chance to be on stage all the time. We can't, we can't happily go and try and fail on big stages for everybody to see, and some reviewer to write a review about, and people like it anyway, because of my name or whatever. Do you know what I mean? We don't have a chance to do that. So that might have been my last play. It might have been my only chance. So I really tried to do whatever I could through Pat her daughter in law, her deceased son, and this young man who comes to her door to explore all the things I wanted to explore, because, as I say, people don't touch that subject matter. It was, it was brilliant that a company like Kali, could have that play, and not one person said to me, Naylah, that gets a little bit sensitive. Could you change that? You know what I mean? You can actually express yourself that I love more than anything.

Jaswinder 13:07

It sounds like what you're describing is a more kind of collaborative relationship in the rehearsal room with a director. Is that kind of collaborative element of theater making really important to you?

Naylah 13:16

Yeah, I'm really happy to collaborate with anybody, so long as they respect the script. And by that, I don't mean I can collaborate with you, but don't change anything I wrote. I just mean there are some people who will ride on an idea for a day's rehearsal and think that, you know, the ending would be so much better if. And what they don't understand is that someone spent months, possibly even more than a year, really thinking about that ending and that idea might be better, it might be good, it might be exciting. But they need to have understood what, what was trying to be achieved before. You know, just playing with it, whereas within the realms of respect, actors have brought such beautiful things to it that you think, oh my gosh, I was writing that line and I didn't even know that it had that layer in it, but that's what they brought to it. When you can trust that eye, it's wonderful, because imagine that collaboration with someone who doesn't see it the way you see it, or someone who definitely sees it a different way and can't chime with you, and has the control if they want to exercise it, of an artistic director, that's quite hard, creatively, that's kind of unsatisfying.

Shiroma 14:31

Talking about creatively satisfying, hopefully, another example is Mustafa, which you also did with Kali. I personally remember that very, very well. I made a film for Kali about that, and more than a decade ago, but it still rings in my my head. I, you know, I could honestly recite that play now. Well, maybe not word for word, because the strength of the characters. But there's also something very interesting about that. It's about the political goings on within a supernatural setting. Now, what made you tinker with those very, very disparate genres like that?

Naylah 15:07

Well, when I was a kid, we were in Small Heath in Birmingham, and my dad was the eldest son. So when it was Eid, everybody would come to our house, all the relatives would come to our house, all the kids, inevitably, late at night, would end up squashed onto one double bed or two double beds, stuck together. And the eldest of the cousins would tell stories of supernatural events involving Jinn, which we faith wise we believe in 100% from Pakistan. And I, whilst I grew up, I thought, I don't know what, again, I don't know why this thought wouldn't leave me alone. But there came a point near Mustafa where I thought, you know, we thought they were scary stories, and we listened like they were horror stories, but actually they were accounts. You know, there were people that believed that happened to them, so I really wanted to explore that, which was purposefully why I didn't want to go for the easy option of showing an exorcism. Do you know what I mean? It wasn't actually about that. It was about similar to faith actually, it's about what you think about something that you haven't seen, but where there are some facts that just make it... which is such a fun playground to play in. I was very pleased when people enjoyed that play.

Rukhsana 15:07

It's a great play. It's a great play. I loved it. I have to say. There is an unresolved mystery at the end of it, you know, and I wonder if there's a relationship between that and faith.

Naylah 15:47

I think there is, because I come from a place of faith, and it might just be me, but a lot of people I encounter in the industries that I work in don't come from faith, and I find - that's absolutely fine - but I really like to just, to do nothing. That forces anybody to do anything. But that just suggests, you know, the what if.

Jaswinder 17:04

So there's that deliberate ambiguity in the play. You know, it is up to the audience how they want to read.

Naylah 17:10

Yeah, I remember a friend of mine who's an actor and performer and very well known now, back then he wasn't, who was, whose Asian, Birmingham, Muslim background, and he said to me at the end of the play, yeah, Naylah, I was waiting for that moment that you'd you'd plop on one side or the other. I was waiting for you to either escape it or to nail it and force it on us, and you manage not to. And if that was the case for him, I was really excited by that and happy for that, because it's more fun for me that people got to think about and play in that space with me than what they think exactly happened at the end. I mean, Isn't it lovely when you walk away from a piece of work and discuss things, and people think different things about it.

Jaswinder 17:58

It's challenging for an audience, I think, especially if you're, you know, you're saying for an audience who don't come from that background, don't have that faith, for them to have to kind of confront, you know, these characters who you know really do, are really kind of committed to, this is what's happened, and to, yeah, and for an audience to have to sit with that.

Shiroma 18:18

But I think, in a way, though, there's also implication. And that's, to me, very good, because sometimes it's almost like a bit of a cop out, just to leave everything kind of hanging in the air. But that's not the case, actually, Mustafa, I get the impression that you very much knew, but you didn't necessarily want to state outright, so it's just left as implication. And that, I think that's what makes it compelling, really, to all audiences. And I actually came with somebody who is not Asian, not female, not Muslim, and he absolutely was taken with it. But I think, again, that comes down to character.

Naylah 18:53

Yes, I'm totally with you. I mean, I will watch things and if the story doesn't quite go my way, but I love the people that take me there I have a much better time and might not even notice that the story didn't fully serve, than if there's a very hot story that packs a punch but the people that take you there are a bit meh.

Jaswinder 19:16

I wonder what parallels or relationship, or through line you see between Mustafa and Ready or Not, because actually both plays present us with these very divergent perspectives and viewpoints, and they also both, I think, have this quite clear political current, very pronounced in Ready or Not, of course, because you're dealing directly with the ramifications of the war on terror, of Islamophobia, the kind of violent pathway of Islamophobia that Pat has kind of found herself traveling on as well. But maybe there's something actually that connects both of those pieces I think.

Naylah 19:54

I think because of the post 9/11 and then 7/7, which was what happened here. Just along the way of collecting all of the things that you notice, there's, I suppose, that at one and the same time, a desire to shine a light on any corner of those experiences that people might not be open to, and at the same time to explore what it actually feels to be in those situations. The thing I love most about any work, anything that I do, anything that I see, that works for me, is when you have an experience that just helps you see something or someone in a slightly different light, a better light, or, you know, someone that you might take first hand as a oh, I know who that is. And then they you unpack it within a piece of work, and you think, oh, okay, I didn't think about that, and I didn't know that that could happen. Culturally about theatre, and again, I'm not knowledgeable enough to know, so I might be talking rubbish, but from what I do see, I feel as though, if you, if you go for a subject straight on, some people think that's stupid. Do you know what I mean? They think you're...

Jaswinder 19:54

Too on the nose.

Naylah 19:54

Yeah, it's like, who would want to... whereas with this, I think I would rather deal with it.

Naylah 20:03

But I think that's because you are committed to all of your characters. You know, I think the reason maybe why people feel that resistance to something that's on the nose is because a writer is feeding them directly, this is the character you're meant to agree with, or this is the one you're meant to relate to, but you really avoid that in your work. I think you give us all of those characters fully rounded.

Naylah 20:54

And that might be something, and that, again, is such a wonderful thing to hear. I take it humbly and thank you, but that might be about loving every one of them. Do you know what I mean?

Jaswinder 20:55

Because it would have been easy to make Pat a very caricaturish villain, right in Ready or Not, and almost instruct or lead the audience to really hate her. But you, you avoid that actually, and as you say, you love her as a character. And that comes through in the in the text.

Naylah 22:06

Yes, because, I mean, she's just a really, she's a mum who's had a very difficult - do what I mean she wasn't - for many, many reasons that I won't go into. It's been challenging for her, and I think once we understand that, we can find space for her. But what I love is, is that I, as a brown, Muslim female writer, can write the character of Pat and believe and feel that and express her the way I want. And someone's not saying we don't want to make her too bad, we don't want to make her too good. We don't want to make it too easy, because I because I'm allowed to love her. I should be allowed to love her, and Len and, you know, just all the characters really.

Shiroma 22:50

I think another thing I really like about your characters in this is part of them being so rounded, is the fact that they're quite comic actually. You know, I found myself sort of smirking at several points in both Ready or Not and Mustafa, there are just genuinely quite funny moments. So there's a there's a good interplay between sort of comedy, suspense, violence, and so that makes it very wholesome in the best sense of the word. Because everyone's human, everyone's got reasons for thinking what they do do, and everyone's got reasons for doing what they do.

Naylah 23:22

I think humor, and this isn't the first time anyone said or thought this, but humor in those moments that are tough is just a wonderful, wonderful thing. And it's very naughty of me, but humor for an audience, when they're - when something's funny, but they're not sure if it's - they should laugh. I find quite funny. Do you know what I mean. But I find it sort of sociologically funny, because and I tell you, I was watching a film, and it was East is East, and I was in the cinema, and there were so many times in that play when people around me, who happened not to be brown, but people around me, chortled with laughter, and I was almost in tears. Do you know what I mean, just because of the different perspectives and insights that we have, and I think that our audiences of now, hopefully, Inshallah, moved on to the point where maybe if that film came out now, they would still laugh, but then kind of think.

Jaswinder 24:25

When you say our audiences?

Naylah 24:27

I mean British audiences in all and probably the non brown British audiences.

Rukhsana 24:33

This is a real problem for us. The audiences are a real problem. Actually, for the Asian playwrights. I was going to ask you, what do you think about people who have a certain perspective on your work? When people approach your work, what assumptions do you think they have about you?

Naylah 24:49

Well, I think I free myself up because I know that whether I'm going in to see someone who might commission a piece of work, or whether my work is being shown to people who have paid to see, well pay with their time to see, and I take that really seriously, because we all know when we've spent time on something and think, well, I'm not getting that hour and a half back, which you would never want anyone to think about your work. But I can never predict. I can probably assume that some people think they'll know what they're getting if they don't know my work, but they know that my name is represents what it does in identity terms. But I kind of free myself up by thinking I can't really control that, and I don't really want to people. People can think whatever they like, and I suppose it's my job, once they're in, to just see, even in one or two moments, if, if I can flip a bit of what they're thinking, or just poke a hole in it and make them think a bit more. I don't know if that's a little bit of an arrogant thought, but certainly it's something that I would love to do in a very humble way, not in a, I know what they should be thinking, and I will show them, it's not so much that as just to break free of thinking that it's definitely going to be one thing.

Shiroma 26:09

And in a way, again, I mean, in flipping those expectations, it's not a conscious move. But maybe, again, this comes down to the strength of characters you know, who you know, we love and sympathize with, and then they will force us to look at issues differently.

Naylah 26:25

Yes, it's hard, isn't it, when it's a person, even though it's a person that's fictional that you're in, you're not quite engaging with directly, but who's directly in front of you. It's sort of the same as if you're engaging with a person in real life. I mean, just to take a very, very obvious example, we've all met people who are accidentally ignorantly racist, and they're really lovely people, but the fact that they're lovely doesn't change the fact that they're ignorantly racist. And the fact that they're ignorantly racist doesn't mean they can't be lovely. It's so it's sort of, you know, the messiness of that and the reality of that is what you hope that your characters have, which will just poke a hole in anybody, including me, that has a very specific idea about somebody or something or a situation.

Rukhsana 27:14

Is there an issue, or is there, is there an image or symbol that you use in your plays, that emerges from the story in some way. How do you decide this is going to be the main symbol of the play?

Naylah 27:28

To be honest, I don't think I work in that way. I think that might be something, if I looked back at all my plays, that I could think, Oh, I've put that sort of thing in every single one. And then I think, yes, but I think when, when I'm working on a new one, it's just that, and then whatever comes from that, really. But I will go back and have a think about that and see, do I? Because it would be really interesting to know. I know a friend of mine who once said, Oh yeah, it's easy with you, Naylah, you love family and you love the supernatural. And I was like, yeah, you've only seen Mustafa of course you'd say that. But I think family hits a note, the interplay of difficulties within family. So Pat and her son, Shabir and Mustafa, those things sort of come. In my latest play, When the Fire's Gone Out, it's mothers and sons. So there's two mothers, and one is that is Claire, a white mother with a 21 year old son, Craig, who was killed in a Islamist bomb on holiday in Turkey, nothing to do with him, innocent victim. And the other is Khadija, who is a British Pakistani woman whose son secretly went and joined ISIS and then is thought to be the guy that did the bomb that killed Craig, and it's the two women meeting. And so maybe, maybe family and or relationships within families that are, you know, teetering on the brink of something.

Jaswinder 29:00

That allows you to unlock something in your writing.

Shiroma 29:02

So we've talked a lot about family, about character, but the underlying themes as well. So let's change tack and talk about how your own politics, perhaps, are reflected in your works. I mean, you know, Mustafa has other themes like masculinity. What does that mean in different cultural contexts. Ready or Not is turning situations on their head. Tell us about, you know, your own thoughts, which are reflected in in this and were they specific for the time written? I mean, in Ready or Not, you know, is it that actually these themes are very much there? We're just talking about it more?

Naylah 29:38

Yes, I think so. And I think when that stuff is happening in the world, and you see one very easy view perpetuated, bursting that bubble becomes a little bit important to me. So that might be where the flipping round comes in. And it isn't to say, think about this the way I think about it, because that's the right way. It's about saying that, that you see again and again and again every day. That's not the only way. There are other things going on here. And if anybody can take that away from a piece of work, I would be so overjoyed. In fact, for Ready or Not. My sister, another Brummie who moved to London, we won't talk about that, but she has a friend who she has at work, whose husband is a British soldier, but he very, very kindly said to his wife that for her friend's sister, he would talk to me about the experiences, because I didn't want to get Pat's son wrong. I didn't want to make it easy at all. I didn't want him to be a two dimensional character, even though he wasn't physically present on stage in that way. And he saw the play, and he came out of it and just said, I was, I was really, really touched by that Naylah. And his wife came to me and said, you know, he never, he's never spoken to me about his experiences in Afghanistan or his experiences in Iraq, but he spoke to you, and the one thing I didn't do was disrespect him by pretending I'm okay with soldiers, I'm okay with war, you know? Because actually, if I think about it, I think nowadays, though, a soldier, would you just listen to your captain or whatever? I don't know all the ranks that - I used to know when I spoke to him. I don't anymore, but whatever the big ranks are, if they commanded you to do something and you thought it was wrong, I believe you just now, you shouldn't, but there are people who still believe no, loyalty to your rank, loyalty to your group of soldiers, loyalty to your country and what you're doing abroad. And I never, ever once wanted him to think that, just to get the right info from him. I was saying, Oh, love soldiers, yeah. So we used to have very respectful but sometimes quite difficult conversations, and I have to give him full respect. He never, ever, he never, ever put parameters in the way knowing what my view is. And I would always say to him, if at any point this gets difficult, just tell me to shut up and I will go away. But it's so lovely of you to speak to me. And so he was very, very honest. And the fact that he came out of it and said that he was touched by and actually it was quite emotional for him, really meant a lot to me, actually.

Shiroma 32:23

So that suggests you did really capture a three dimensional person who had all the issues and all the emotions of someone having to do a very tough job.

Naylah 32:32

Yes, yes.

Jaswinder 32:34

I was wondering if we could talk a little bit more about your experience as a writer, as a British South Asian writer, and what you think that landscape looks like. I'm interested in your perspective, particularly as somebody who's not based in London and who's working in theatres, and you're a very proud Brummie, which is really important for us to acknowledge, but that's quite a different experience. So from where you are, from, where you're based, and from you know that perspective, what is the landscape of British South Asian theatre like today? What do those opportunities look like, and what challenges do writers still face?

Naylah 33:10

Speaking very specifically from my perspective as a nearly 50 year old and someone who benefited from diverse initiatives, which has been really useful, I wouldn't be able to write without them. I think the problem is that companies like Kali, companies like theTamasha, companies like Tara and Rifco and all of those wonderful companies, they respect and give greener writers a chance to be on, to actually know what it is to write, you know, to not do a little workshop and an initiative, but to do a play that then gets produced, that then tours, which is wonderful. But what should happen then is that writers who have had a few plays on that have done well, should be moving on to other places so that these companies can get newer and greener writers. But that doesn't happen, particularly not for someone outside of Birmingham (means London). And when it comes to - London, Birmingham was the center of my universe. You must understand. Particularly outside of London. And the other thing, I think, is that, first of all, I feel unfair trying to go back to the companies I love, because you can say and do whatever you want, like my relationship would be with Kali, specifically, because that, because that's taking something away from a newer writer, and they're sensible. They wouldn't do it anyway. They do all that work, and then you're just a blank new for other places. You're starting all over again, yeah. And you're also a little bit stuck, because one thing that people really, really like, and I think, across all of the industry, the creative industry, is finding a new person, and usually new also means young. So either that or you're the equivalent of that woman on The X Factor was from Scotland, or the Outer Hebrides then sang away, Susan Boyle, either you're just a someone who's been under a rock forever and then they found you at 50, or you're someone who's 20 and yeah.

Jaswinder 35:28

But it sounds like what you're saying is that the kind of system of progression is completely broken, but also that there's a broken relationship between the theatre companies are developing South Asian talent, and then the other arts institutions that have the responsibility and the ability to then give a platform to those writers who've been found, as it were, who've been supported in the early stages of their development. That's that jump isn't happening.

Naylah 35:55

That jump isn't happening. It certainly is that isn't happening for me and people that I know, and I feel glad for the fact that I'm not in London, because I think there's a because everybody's so aware of the latest thing that's at the Soho and the Bush, the, you know, all these theatres, there's a an awareness of specifically what's not happening that I don't have because I'm out of it, and because I write in other medium as well. So I think I'm glad for that, but I do know that it's broken.

Shiroma 36:27

But could that also be applicable to other groups of people, say, people who are not from London, for instance, working class, people who also don't get a voice, don't really get a proper look in and there's no proper progression?

Naylah 36:42

I think yes, because definitely, definitely, when it comes to working class, they are in exactly the same boat of being found and new or not.

Rukhsana 36:54

Can you think of a line or a moment in one of your plays that you like to talk about?

Naylah 37:00

One thing I have to say, I whenever my plays have toured, I like a sad-o. I drive to every location to see it at least once. In every stage setting, it's just magic, and I know that I'm not the kind of writer where it'll be on again and again and again, so I want to see it. And the one moment that I really loved seeing, just for feeling the audience around me, and I don't mean physically feeling in a slightly odd way, but I just mean that feeling, what they're feeling, I suppose, is at the end of Ready or Not, we hear that there's police outside. We see a red light on the young man, and then the lights go out, we hear a gunshot, and then, after a moment's silence, there's a radio news report of the fact that the two women were bound by a, you know, an extremist young man who forced his way into Pat's house, and that he was shot by police and later died in hospital. And I've - the reactions I saw to people when the lights went up, of what they just heard was really amazing, because it breaks my heart whenever I hear that, because of the character of him, and the fact that it felt like, it felt the same to so many people that are different to me in age stage, not from Birmingham, that's a wonderful, wonderful moment. And I really felt privileged to see that have an effect on someone you know, then you know that they're leaving a theatre with that in mind and just going, there are people going, Oh God, he didn't, oh God, he died in hospital. And it's that, yeah, that when you know that somebody, somebody took those characters on and it affected them that he died, even though he's not real.

Shiroma 38:55

Naylah Ahmed, thank you so much. He's been very, very insightful. Thank you for coming in and good luck to you and to Birmingham.

Jaswinder 39:03

Thanks for reminding everyone that Birmingham is, in fact, the center of the universe.

Naylah 39:08

Thank you.

Shiroma 39:11

The Next Act is executive produced by Jaswinder Blackwell-Pal, Shiroma Silva and Rukhsana Ahmad. It is edited and assistant produced by Kavita Kukar and Malia Haider. Our research assistant is Carrie Luce and the technical producer is Matthew Kowalczuk. Our designer is Arjun Mahadevan. It is funded and supported by the Center for Public Engagement and the Department of drama at Queen Mary University of London. You can follow up online at www.thenextact.co.uk.