Honour-Bound E-Book

Zahra Jassi

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

Seitenzahl: 44

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

A powerful solo show about family, anti-Blackness, and what we're willing to sacrifice for love. After Simran loses her friend to honour-based violence, she has to answer some life-changing questions: will she and her boyfriend be able to live safely ever after? Zahra Jassi's play Honour-Bound was premiered at VAULT Festival, London, 2023.

Leseprobe

Zahra Jassi

HONOUR-BOUND

NICK HERN BOOKS

London

Contents

Welcome to VAULT

Dedication

Original Production

Acknowledgements

Epigraph

Characters

Honour-Bound

About the Author

Performing Rights

Welcome to VAULT Festival

Hoo boy! What does one even begin to write here? I don’t know. Better writers than I have articulated the myriad emotions and effects of the last three years. Words seem inadequate. But this is a volume celebrating words and writing and writers so I’m going to give it a red hot go.

It’s been rough, hey team? It’s been rough for the arts. Even more so for theatre and live performance. Even even more so for fringe and independent theatre. And even even even more so for emerging artists. If anything has been made clear these last few years, it is that there is a dearth of quality and financially sustainable opportunities for early career artists to make work and spaces to make that work in. When those few opportunities are taken away, everyone loses. Artists lose the opportunity to experiment and take risks. Audiences lose the opportunity to engage with exciting and radical work from a multiplicity of voices. And our industry loses the opportunity to grow, progress, be challenged and changed by these voices. It’s a long road to recovery with lots of listening and learning required. I really hope we’re up for it.

VAULT Festival has not been immune to the decimation of these last years. From the early cancellation in 2020, to deciding not to mount a 2021 Festival, and then the devastating decision to cancel a completely programmed Festival for 2022, this has been a truly difficult time for our artists and our team. Throughout this time it has been made clear to me over and over what a vital part of the live performance ecology VAULT Festival is. How important it is that we are here, providing quality opportunities in the most sustainable way possible for artists and audiences. That we are listening and growing and provoking. Providing space for artists to challenge and disrupt, to ask of an industry on its knees… ‘What if?’

The writers included in this, our sixth Plays from VAULT anthology, have all used their work to ask ‘What if?’ These are plays of importance, of playfulness, of risk, of freneticism and pathos and joy and anger and hope. Plays from artists across backgrounds, and styles and forms. I am so very proud of all of them.

These plays represent a mere fraction of the scope of work at VAULT Festival 2023. From stand-up comedy to late-night cabaret, from improvisation to live art and experimental installation, from linear narrative drama to absurdist immersive work, and genres I couldn’t even have imagined, VAULT Festival will tear back into the world with a scream. A scream of rage and catharsis. Of fear and hope. A scream of defiance. Our artists, both in this volume and beyond, are here. They are ready. They are fearless. They are disrupting. Because what we did yesterday is not sufficient for tomorrow. And we are up for the challenge.

WE’RE BACK, BABY!!!!

Bec Martin (she/her)Head of Programming VAULT Festival 2023

This is taken from Plays from VAULT 6, the collection in which this play first appeared.

For young Brown actors fed up with one-dimensional roles

Honour-Bound was first performed at VAULT Festival, London, on 7 March 2023, with the following cast:

SIMRAN

Zahra Jassi

MUSICIAN

Ahana Hundal

Dramaturg

Karla Crome

Lighting and Sound

Steven J. Poland

Illustrator

Mariam Abdurahman

Acknowledgements

Nick Hern Books for the opportunity. Bec Martin and the amazing people at VAULT Festival for the opportunity.

Karla Crome for her guidance. Steven J. Poland for stepping in at the eleventh hour and buying me emotional-support pints of cider. Ahana Hundal (you just have to listen to understand why). Mariam Abdurahman for her patience and vision.

Professor Aisha K. Gill for her expertise.

The staff at The Eaglet for facilitating the emotional-support pints of cider.

My family and friends. Lola.

Z.J.

‘It should be called the Devil’s work. Honour has nothing to do with it at all. It’s dishonour. Disloyalty’

Bekhal Mahmod

Characters

SIMRAN, twenty years old. British-Indian woman. English accent

MUSICIAN

A DLR-train carriage. Daytime.

SIMRAN, wearing Jordans and a comfortable airport outfit, is stood next to a chair, looking around at audience members. She stays on some longer than others.

She examines their eyes, their clothing, what they’re doing.

She thinks of reasons they’re on the train, what’s going on in their lives.

She acknowledges their consciousness.

Next to the chair is a suitcase. Inside the suitcase are clothes, a loofah, and other props detailed throughout the script. A VK Blue bottle and a bottle opener are downstage-right on the floor. A plate with four slices of bread, some sandwich meat and some lettuce, a knife, a plate with two pakore on, a mug, and a slice of toast with a bite taken out of it are on a small table on the other side of the chair. A handful of red petals and two small candles are downstage-centre on the floor. There’s a bin downstage-left.

(Fades back to reality