Playwright Asif Khan: ‘When people think about theatre, they think white people and Shakespeare’

Asif Khan first heard about Lena, Maysa and Ameya – the 3 Muslim skateboarding sisters from Hull who changed into social media stars in 2022 with their abilities – from his spouse’s mother. “She does this a lot. She’ll send me an article and say: ‘You could write a play about this,’” laughs Khan. But there used to be one thing about this actual tale that piqued his passion. “They all wore the hijab, lived with their mum and had an Instagram account where they did their own raps and filmed skateboarding tricks … I immediately thought: Oh OK, this is a good premise for a play.”

So, he set about adapting it for the level. He contacted the ladies’ folks and had a “good, long hour’s chat”. “They were excited that someone was interested in doing a play about them,” says Khan, 44, who additionally works as an actor. The results of the ones chats is Sisters 360, a play about two Bradford-based hijab-wearing, skateboarding stepsisters, Fatima and Salima, aimed at audiences between the ages of 8 and 12.

This isn’t the primary time Khan has written for kids. His 2021 play Jabala and the Jinn tells the tale of a girl coming to phrases with the lack of her mom, whilst his first play for adults, Combustion, earned him an Asian Media award for highest level manufacturing. Sisters 360 is quite other from Lena, Maysa and Ameya’s truth. “It is inspired by them, but the story is completely made up,” says Khan. To “represent a diversity of Muslims”, Khan reimagined the ladies as stepsisters from other cultural backgrounds; Fatima is British Somali, whilst Salima is British Pakistani. But, in spite of no longer being blood family, they indisputably see themselves as highest family and friends. “They absolutely feel like real sisters,” says Khan.

Together, Fatima and Salima play with their favorite toys, Batgirl and Batman; obsess over their favorite Olympic medallist, Hope Black – impressed through the real-life Olympian Sky Brown – and, most significantly, skateboard. When Sisters 360 starts, they’re getting ready for the massive festival, Tiny Is Mighty. But as tensions upward thrust between their folks over Fatima’s mum relocating from Bradford to London for paintings, their close-knit international begins to get to the bottom of.

The script offers with large subject matters and feelings; there are separations, converting friendships and cultural identities. How does he make his paintings appropriate for an target market complete of youngsters? “I think we underestimate kids sometimes,” he says. “They can watch things that are engaging and entertaining but also have a certain level of meaning about our lives and what we go through as humans.”

Khan’s play is under no circumstances all gloom, even though. On level, Fatima and Salima – performed on this manufacturing through Sara Abanur and Farah Ashraf – percentage their other languages and cultural traditions. Dressed in vibrant patterns, hats and knee pads, the ladies come alive in every different’s corporate. Skateboarding is on the core in their friendship. They spend hours on the skate park, training and perfecting tips. “It’s not what people associate in their minds with Muslim girls,” Khan says.

“Skateboarding is generally seen as more of a boys’ thing,” he continues. “It breaks down those stereotypes of girls taking part in the sport.” Khan likes to consider the skateboard as “another limb” that you just hand agree with over to. “You have to be really brave, it is not something I could do,” he admits. “It’s a sport but there’s also an artistic element to it. It gives people the space to express their individuality and represent themselves.”

Certainly, that is true of Fatima and Salima in Sisters 360. When I see it right through its run at Wimbledon’s Polka theatre, I’m struck through how other it feels to different performs for kids I’ve noticed; I don’t suppose I’ve noticed every other the place younger Muslim women and their on a regular basis reports are so central. Khan is of the same opinion that it’s nonetheless uncommon to seek out Muslim tales on the British level. “I’ve had people comment that this is a very ‘unusual’ play and I think that’s a strange way to frame it,” he says. “It’s true we don’t often see Muslim girls on the stage, but there’s nothing unusual about it.”

Khan may be prepared that folks see the play is set a lot more than a Muslim tale: “This play is just about two 10-year-old British girls who have a dream and want to achieve it; the Muslim part is not really the important bit,” he says. Particularly these days, when Islamophobia is at a document prime within the UK, Khan thinks it’s extra necessary than ever for his group to be represented correctly. “I think the whole Muslim community feels very isolated … I feel like we’re always the villains.

“It is tiresome and very, very hard to be a Muslim person in the UK right now,” he continues. But writing Sisters 360 introduced him “a bit of joy”. Theatre, he believes, has a singular energy to inform tales; “it is a really powerful medium”. Khan fell in love with drama right through his youth in Bradford. He used to be 15 when he knocked at the door of Theatre within the Mill at the University of Bradford’s campus and met its then inventive director, Andrew Loretto, for the primary time. “Everything I know is from there,” Khan explains. “Once I got involved I learned more and more doors opened.” He later went directly to get a spot at Rada.

Now, Khan loves to pay homage to Bradford in his paintings. “It’s my home town, I lived there until I was 25. People normally have a misconception about it but it is a beautiful, friendly place.” Every time he starts writing a new script, Khan imagines his characters as being from Bradford, or a minimum of having some connection to town. “It’s the place I know best, I know the people really well.”

Bradford is UK City of Culture in 2025, however Khan nonetheless thinks that his group aren’t historically a theatre-going target market. “It’s one of the things I want to change,” he says. “When people think about theatre, they think white, middle-class people watching Shakespeare … once they see two 10-year-olds from Bradford, wearing hijabs, that might change.”

Young persons are the beginning of forming this new trend. “If they enjoy coming, they’ll come back,” says Khan. “They should have the question in their head: shall we go to the cinema or should we go to the theatre?” Things are beginning to trade, however slowly, and Khan nonetheless thinks theatres are fearful of taking dangers with regards to programming paintings about Islam. “[They’d rather] find safer stories which no one will find controversial in any way.”

As a creator, he infrequently feels the burden of looking to constitute everybody, he admits. But, in the end, Khan needs Muslims to be mirrored in all their complexity and diversity. “I want to be able to write about my community honestly and truthfully, the good and the bad sides,” he says. “I want to challenge them as well.” And Sisters 360 is most effective the start: “My head is bursting with ideas, I just want to put them on the stage.”

Sisters 360 is at Leeds Playhouse, 7 to 10 May.