Blue Mist E-Book

Mohamed-Zain Dada

• Herausgeber: Nick Hern Books
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Serie: NHB Modern Plays
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 76

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

'Shisha lounges are an essential part of the Muslim experience, bruv, like the Fillet-O-Fish.' Chunkyz Shisha Lounge is a home away from home for Jihad, Rashid and Asif, a space where community whispers are heard, jokes are told, and new hustles are born. But its future is under threat, having become a target for local politicians. Aspiring journalist Jihad wants to fight back. After winning a competition to produce his own documentary, he sets out to create something that gives a voice to his community and challenges the usual stereotypes that fill the airwaves. Will he be able to create something that makes his boys proud? Or will his dreams of becoming a journalist come at a cost too high to bear? Mohamed-Zain Dada's debut play, Blue Mist is a story about South Asian Muslim men navigating a system that isn't built for them. It premiered at the Royal Court Theatre, London, in October 2023, directed by Milli Bhatia, in a co-production with SISTER. It was revived on tour in 2026. Blue Mist won Best Stage Production at the 2024 Asian Media Awards.

Leseprobe

Mohamed-Zain Dada

BLUE MIST

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

www.nickhernbooks.co.uk

Contents

Original Production Details

Acknowledgements

Epigraph

Characters

Blue Mist

About the Author

Copyright and Performing Rights Information

Blue Mist was first performed at the Royal Court Jerwood Theatre Upstairs, London, on 5 October 2023, with the following cast:

ASIF

Salman Akhtar

JIHAD

Omar Bynon

RASHID

Arian Nik

Director

Milli Bhatia

Designer

Tomás Palmer

Lighting Designer

Elliot Griggs

Sound Designer

Elena Peña

Movement Director

Theophilus O. Bailey

Production Manager

Tabitha Piggott

Stage Managers

Catriona McHugh & Charlotte Padgham

Lighting Programmer

Jodie Underwood

Costume Supervisor

Isabelle Cook

Hair Stylist

Jess Radice

Outreach Coordinator

Hannah Ali

Artist Wellbeing Practitioner

Lou Platt

From the Royal Court, on this production:

Casting Directors

Amy Ball & Arthur Carrington

Stage Supervisors

TJ Chappell-Meade & Steve Evans

Lead Producer

Jasmyn Fisher-Ryner

Sound Supervisor

David McSeveney

Costume Supervisors

Katie Price & Lucy Walshaw

Company Manager

Mica Taylor

Lighting Supervisor

Deanna Towli

Blue Mist is a co-production with SISTER.

Acknowledgements

Thank you to Vicky Featherstone, Chris White, Sabrina Mahfouz, Ellie Fulcher and Rachel Taylor for believing in the play from the very beginning. To Jamal Mehmood for honouring me with your poem. To Milli Bhatia, for your vision, brilliance and unwavering trust. To Gurnesha Bola and Jane Fallowfield for reading every draft with a level of care that I will never forget.

To the incredible company: Tomás Palmer, Catt Padgham, Jasmyn Fisher-Ryner, Elliot Griggs, Elena Peña, Hannah Ali, Aneesha Srinivasan, Isabelle Cook, Theophilus O. Bailey and Catriona McHugh. And to everyone at the Royal Court Theatre and Nick Hern Books for all their support.

To the actors, Arian Nik, Salman Akhtar and Omar Bynon, whose generosity of spirit lit up the rehearsal room.

Special thanks to my parents, Fehmida and Ashraf Dada, my aunt, Zahida Sidik, for encouraging me to write stories as a child, Arji Manuelpillai, Benedict Lombe, Clare Callan, Zainab Hasan, Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan, Shaykh Umar (Van Mack) and to Madani Younis for being the beacon of light in the mist.

And to Hadi Abbas, I love you, yara.

M-Z.D.

The poem ‘White Applause in the North of England’ by Jamal Mehmood was published in The Leaf of the Neem Tree (Hajar Press, 2021), available in paperback and ebook at hajarpress.com. It has been reproduced in this play by kind permission of Hajar Press.

‘I would act as a Trojan horse that would spew forth hallucinating figures with the power to surprise, to disturb the dreams of the exploiters.’

Wilfredo Lam, 1976

Characters

JIHAD , South Asian, twenty-five years old RASHID , South Asian, twenty-four years old ASIF , South Asian, twenty-four years old

Note

The introduction of ‘mist’ indicates a fleeting, dreamlike state for Jihad, where the world bends to his imagination and, sometimes, doesn’t.

When the mist dissipates, ‘normality’ returns.

This ebook was created before the end of rehearsals and so maydiffer slightly from the play as performed.

ACT ONE

Scene One

Chunkyz Shisha Lounge. A lime-green sofa booth with a table. There are LED lights at the bottom of the sofa that periodicallychange from fuchsia to purple.

JIHAD enters, both RASHID and ASIF embrace him warmly.

RASHID Bruv. He set him up with the feint and BAM.

ASIF Solid punch, brother.

RASHID Out cold.

ASIF imitates the knockout punch from thenight before.

Careful, Sif, you’ll injure your back, cuz.

JIHAD and RASHID laugh. They huddlearound the shisha pipe in the middle of thebooth.

JIHAD The big fight yeah?

RASHID Yeah, J. Adam Azim, remember the name.

ASIF Proper packed out last night.

JIHAD Chunky screens the boxing now?

ASIF Yeah, bruv. Pretty soon after you went uni.

JIHAD Mad.

RASHID Come through next time, bro.

JIHAD Flavour’s banging, what is that?

JIHAD hands ASIF the shisha pipe.

ASIF Super Nova mixed with Fallen Star and White Cake.

JIHAD Bro, what?

ASIF Chunky got Savacco now.

ASIF hands the pipe back to JIHAD.

JIHAD He’s making big-boy moves.

JIHAD offers the pipe to RASHID whorefuses.

You lot not ordering food?

RASHID No one’s ordered munch here since 2018.

ASIF His head chef got poached by Chicken Cottage innit.

JIHAD Cold world. Yo, do you lot know why Chunkyz closes on Thursday night?

RASHID No idea, bro. Maybe he’s sourcing new flavours.

ASIF I do. But I can’t say.

RASHID What? You gas everything out, my g.

JIHAD Did Chunky make you sign an NDA?

ASIF It’s his story innit.

RASHID Oi, don’t long this out, Sif.

JIHAD I swear I won’t tell a soul.

ASIF Basically… Chunky is on Sufi tings innit.

JIHAD Since when?

ASIF Since he went Ayia Napa last year.

RASHID HOLD ON, what? Napa? Nah, nah, you’re gonna have to explain that one. ’Cause last time I checked he was posting pics of bare random buff tings on Insta.

ASIF Yeah, I clocked that. That famous Insta model Sumz doing a lil pout with a shisha pipe.

ASIF imitates the pout. RASHID laughs.

JIHAD laughs.

JIHAD Truly a confused akhi.

RASHID Aren’t we all in this dunya.

JIHAD I’m sorry, what connects Ayia Napa and Chunky becoming a Sufi?

JIHAD takes the shisha pipe.

ASIF Alright so, you know Chunky does his annual pilgrimage to Cyprus yeah? Last time he went, he was hitting all the raves, having the time of his life yeah. But there was one party. Rooftop ting. This mysterious-looking guy with long hair comes up to him and was like, ‘You want to go to the best shubz in Ayia Napa?’ Says to him, ‘This is gonna be vibe central.’

RASHID Anyone says ‘vibe central’ to me, and I’m running.

ASIF At first, Chunky palmed them off. There are loads of people like that innit. Random crackheads, bare people hustling. But this guy was insisting, kept saying he’d find the best music, weed and girls at this party.

RASHID The magic trio.

ASIF Chunky said he had this look in his eye, a look that told him it was legit. He weren’t your bog-standard Cypriot hustler.

JIHAD Did he go?

ASIF Chunky convinced his boys. They left the rave they were at and this mystery dude with a silver helmet told them to follow him on his moped.

JIHAD Lemme get this straight. Chunky is trusting random Daft Punk-looking Cypriot breh?

And they end up following this guy on his moped? Sounds dubious at best, Sif.

ASIF Apparently. ’Cause they were following him for ages until this guy needed to stop to use the loo. But they ended up at a maqam.

RASHID What’s that?

ASIF Like where a saint is buried innit.

RASHID Did they follow moped guy inside?

ASIF Yeah, Chunky was curious.

JIHAD Fair enough.

ASIF Anyways, they go inside, and Chunky said most his boys left after that. They thought that this moped guy was taking them on some wild gooseberry chase.

JIHAD Wild goose chase, Sif.

ASIF After that moped guy said, ‘This ain’t where the party is.’

JIHAD Did Chunky go with him?

ASIF He said he was just transfixed by the guy so he decided to follow and go, yeah.

RASHID Kashmiri Braveheart.

JIHAD My guy has no brains.

ASIF Now they are back on the road. They’d been driving for about two, three hours yeah, further and further away from Napa.

JIHAD Wasn’t Chunky scared? Or suspicious?

ASIF I don’t know. But at this point, it was like proper late. Imagine though yeah, a full moon, felt like a big night. And finally they got to this random village. Chunky said, he’s never seen so many cats.

RASHID Cats? Like people?

ASIF Nah, as in pussycats innit.

RASHID I gotta find this place.

JIHAD (To RASHID.) Bruv, he means actual cats.

RASHID I still wanna go, not gonna lie.

ASIF So Chunky got out his car, no sign of any shubz. Or weed. Still, he follows moped dude into the centre. And then.

JIHAD And then?

ASIF They got to there, and Chunky says it was like some Assassin’s Creed shit.

JIHAD What do you mean?

ASIF Like it was like Ottoman times innit. Old-looking houses and then this huge castle-like mosque in the middle…

…It was like the Muslim Hogwarts.

RASHID Abu Hamza and the Prisoner of Azka-Belmarsh.

They laugh.

ASIF All Chunky could hear is rhythmic chanting. So moped guy and him went into this castle and when he got to the main hall… hundreds of people were doing Dhikr.

JIHAD Sounds like a cult.

RASHID Jeez.

ASIF This is where it gets a bit… magical innit. I shouldn’t.

JIHAD