‘Blue Mist’ – Selling out or community authenticity? Writer Mohamed-Zain Dada reflects
Staying true to yourself and remain on the margins or sell your soul and enjoy the life you have always wanted? ACV poses the question to one of the most talked about emerging playwrights with ‘Blue Mist’ – which is near the end of a UK tour currently…
A DEBUT play – the Oliver nominated ‘Blue Mist’ packs a punch and is about three friends who hang out at Chunkyz, their local shisha lounge, smoking and shooting the breeze; and the play has struck a chord up and down the country. The Blue Mist refers to a brand favoured by the establishment’s owner.
The play primarily celebrates joy, friendship and masculinity.
Characters: Jihad, Rashid and Asif spend their days bantering, joking, doing push ups, discussing dating tips and generally opining on how they fit in society as young Muslim men.
One day, Asif suggests that as Jihad is an aspiring journalist – who has been to university – he should enter a competition to give a much needed voice to their community.
Jihad sets out to do this and is soon faced with a dilemma of what his ‘white’ masters at Ajami media want (the stereotypes) as opposed to his own personal perspective and relationships with his friends and community.
‘Blue Mist’ explores, “how the media wilfully misrepresents us, distorts our humanity and makes us out to be monsters. The play questions how we might confront these narratives and the people in power who perpetuate them.”
The show premiered at the Royal Court Upstairs in 2023 (October 5-November 18 2023) and sold out. It was nominated for the Outstanding Achievement in Affiliate Theatre award at the 2024 Olivier Awards and won the Asian Media Award for Best Stage Production. The current tour is produced by Boundless Theatre with support from Tamasha.
In this remount, actor, Omar Bynon reprises his role as Jihad, while Rashid is played by Azan Ahmed and Kashif Ghole is Asif. There is also actor Sanjeev Bhaskar who voices the role of Chunkyz but it is quite sparse.
As before, Milli Bhatia directs the show along with the same creative team of designer, Tomás Palmer, Sound Design by Elena Peňa and Lighting by Elliot Griggs.
Despite such obvious production success, Dada told www.asianculturevulture.com that getting a tour together was not easy. This seems to be a perennial problem across the sector.
“We recognised because it’s a play set in a shisha lounge, it has the potential to attract audiences that don’t even go to the theatre – it felt like it was something that could be really good to take on tour.
“In terms of the process itself, it was very long and difficult. Touring theatre is really difficult in today’s climate because of the costs associated with it,” he told acv.
Dada explained that theatres across the country are under a lot of financial pressure and some theatres believe new writing is a risk.
“And to try and sell tickets for a new writing show – even if it’s Olivier-nominated and sold out in London – they view that as a risk.”
‘Blue Mist’ got a National Tour which began on June 17 and runs to July 30 in this run. The show has played in Leeds, Peterborough and London Stratford East; for forthcoming dates see below.
Dada and Bhatia have a strong collaboration history behind them. They worked on ‘Speed’ (2024) together and she has also directed a short film he has written called ‘Aunty Ji‘ (which is about to be launched on the film festival circuit).
“What Milli and I are really interested in, is how you could show a character’s psyche theatrically and that comes through organically when we work together.”
‘Blue Mist’ was the debut play for Dada who graduated from SOAS, University of London in 2015. He tells acv that it was inspired by him spending some of his 20s hanging out in shisha bars in Edgware Road or Park Royal.
He also spent time as an intern at the Bush Theatre (2018) when Madani Younis was artistic director and he recommended that Dada should read Parv Bancil’s play, ‘Made in England’.
“It’s a play about a music journalist who has to compromise his values. I’d been really interested in the psyche and the journey of what that looks like, to have a position where you’re speaking about your community.”
I just wanted to understand the people who do that in the sphere of journalism or politics, he continued.
So, that became the driving force of the play?
“I just wanted to understand what motivates someone to do it. And the question I always came back to was – do people sincerely believe some of their own views when they’re speaking and what are they influenced by?”
And a lot of that came back to me, when I wrote the play.
It was about the power and the excitement — there’s a real sense that Jihad is excited by that sense of power.
“That doesn’t mean it’s a bad thing. He is just like, well, what I can do with a platform – is to speak truth to it and wield it in a good way.
“Also, how does he navigate this terrain of a voice of the community telling stories about representation, as well as trying to have a career as a writer?”
It is a question that South Asian creatives constantly keep asking – how to remain authentic and what are the compromises that you might be asked to make or are pressurised into making and how do you navigate that space?
“I think you have to keep coming back to what is being true to yourself and what you feel like.
“I think when those decisions come, you’ve got to know the story you want to tell.
“So, not necessarily pandering to a kind of temporary fad – if that is what the industry wants, because things take ages anyway, and most things don’t get made, to be frank,” he opined.
“I think in that mindset, you write from the heart. I don’t think I have had to compromise my values in that way so far in the industry, which I feel lucky about.”
All pictures: ©AliWright
Listing
Blue Mist by Mohamed-Zain Dada until July 25 at
Birmingham Rep, Broad Street, Birmingham B1 2EP
https://www.birmingham-rep.co.uk/whats-on/blue-mist
From July 29-30
At The Curve Theatre, Leicester – Rutland Street, Leicester LE1 1SB
