Showcase for new female South Asian playwrights

New female playwrights from South Asian backgrounds are struggling to get their work commissioned due to a lack of funding, according to one director.

For five years Sameena Hussain was an associate director at Leeds Playhouse and she is now a freelance director.

She is involved with the Kali DISCOVERY Programme in Bradford, which is working with four new writers from across the region.

Their work will be performed at the University of Bradford's Theatre in the Mill on 27 and 28 February.

She said: "There's a real deficit in South Asian stories, I'd say more specifically South Asian female playwrights.

"So it's really important that this programme gives this support and pastoral care but also a structure which allows them to develop an idea, working with experts from the industry."

Hussain, 40, previously worked with the Hull Truck Theatre, Opera North, Kiln Theatre, the Lawrence Batley Theatre, the RSC and Soho Theatre.

She highlighted a lack of funding, not "a lack of will", as a major obstacle in giving writers from minority backgrounds the chance to develop.

Hussain said: "There are brilliant writers out there, exceptional writers out there.

"But how many of those writers are being developed and supported and their productions being performed? Very few.

"I'd say it's getting worse and worse in a way.

"And actually we're in danger, if by not supporting new writing and not supporting those voices, that by the next generation we'll just lose those stories."

London-based Kali Theatre runs its free writing programme for aspiring playwrights in collaboration with leading UK theatres.

The writers on the Bradford scheme are Shazia Bibi, Samara Daniels, Nabeela Ahmed and Lois Vohra.

Each has written a 20-minute play to be performed on Friday evening and Saturday afternoon.

Bibi, 30, was born in Kashmir in Pakistan but came to live with her family in Bradford when she was a child.

She said: "I've pretty much been brought up in Bradford.

"It's the home of all these different cultures and foods and clothes and fashion and experiences.

"But have I seen myself represented as a young child and growing up in theatre, I'd say no."

Her play The Almost is about a couple's relationship, but with a time-shift element also looking at the outcome if they had never met.

She said: "I'm really shifting the dialogue of what South Asian writing can be.

"I'm really into sci-fi and how time can manipulate the way we make decisions.

"My play's about how one decision can change the course of people's lives."

Aizah Khan, 31, is from Coventry and has been acting for 12 years.

She said: "It's really exciting working with female writers, especially female Asian writers because I am female, I am Asian and I do think there is a lack of representation in that sense.

"I will say, though, that I've noticed in that last few years, due to this type of programme, you are starting to see more Asian writers, which is nice.

"It's quite exciting, with them being new writers there is all that potential."

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