I have a little boy, who is five. As a parent, you often worry about the challenges our children may face – challenges which we ourselves faced when we were kids. One of those challenges, which I only fully understood as an adult, was the effects of never seeing myself represented. Growing up noticing that all the ‘cool’ people on television, in sport, in music, in films, in stories, in plays, never included anyone who looked like me. This led me to believe that being ‘brown’ was not cool, and being a ‘Muslim’ was not cool either. I felt a little embarrassed and ashamed about my background and desperately wanted to fit in. This is something I never want my little boy to feel. And so because there is a lack of stories for children involving British Muslim characters, I thought ‘why not write some myself ?!’
Kala Sangam, Stratford Circus and The Amal Foundation sent out an invite for a new piece of children’s theatre, involving British Muslim themes. I pitched the idea for Jabala And the Jinn and we were offered some money to explore it further with actors and a director. The inspiring few days of conversations and improvising, led to me walking away feeling I had the whole story worked out in my head.
Unfortunately, just as we were preparing for a tour of the play, we were hit by the Covid-19 pandemic forcing theatres to close. Our only option was to do a live-streamed performance of the play and the Belgrade Theatre (Coventry) were instrumental in providing us with this fantastic opportunity.
Now in 2022, we have been given another opportunity to tour and I am incredibly excited to finally see this play performed to live audiences.
