‘It’s a part of our history that needs to be heard’
The Silence gives a human voice to the Partitian of India, reports
THE compelling play Silence, which uses real life memories to re-tell the story of the Partition of the Indian subcontinent, comes to Birmingham Rep next week in a new adaptation.
Directed by Rep associate director Iqbal Khan, the production looks not just at how the creation of modern India and Pakistan ripped apart a land and lives, but also at its impact on the following generations.
Adapted from journalist Kavita Puri’s highly acclaimed book and Radio Four series, Partition Voices: Untold British Stories, the play was originally created by Tara Theatre under its artistic director, Abdul Shayek, and premiered in London in 2022 to mark the 75th anniversary of Partition.
After a successful run at the Donmar Warehouse and Tara Theatre, the company intended to adapt and tour Silence under the directorship of Shayek but, following his sudden death last August, the theatre asked Iqbal to take the production forward.
“I knew Abdul very well both professionally and as a friend,” says Iqbal. “Tara approached me and asked if I would I be interested in doing this work and continuing the legacy of it and I felt honoured to do that, and excited about the idea of finding a new way to do this show.” Abdul and the team had already developed the script and Iqbal, whose recent Rep productions include East is East and Tartuffe, has built on that still further.
“The version that we are doing now is the new text but also it’s a also a new production,” he says. “There’s a whole new creative team with the designer, lighting, projection and music all different. Most of the actors are also new, so it feels like we are really repackaging it.” The Partition in 1947 displaced more than ten million people, rupturing communities and sparking horrific violence between people who had formerly been friends and neighbours. Its scars are still felt today.
“We’ve had a lot of historians and politicians debating these issues but to actually hear the voices of people that went through it is so important,” explains Iqbal. “These aren’t people who have a Hindu or Muslim agenda, it’s a human agenda.
“Silence is not just a series of traumatic experiences, it’s a lot more complicated, generous and humane than that. It represents people who have heroic stories, funny stories, ultimately very moving stories and always surprising stories.
“I think it will resonate with audiences who recognise it or have experience of it but also there will be generations of British Asians who I think will look at this history and not know all the stuff that went on. And for the broader audience, it’s a part of British history that absolutely needs to be told in this way.”
Silence also explores the impact of Partition in the years that followed.
“In the show there are stories from the time but we also have younger generation voices so it’s both the experiences of those who went through it and the legacies of Partition,” explains Iqbal.
And there can be lessons learnt for people everywhere in our current political and social climate. “Partition was an experience where an existing country was divided along religious lines and divisions were imposed upon communities who up to that time, for centuries, had lived in relative harmony with each other.
“I feel like particularly now there is the constant pressure to identify with a flag or a specific set of values and not embrace the fact that we are all a collection of many identities.”
The Rep is an ideal venue for the show, says Iqbal, who was born in Birmingham.
“In Birmingham there’s a massive community of people from that part of the world who settled here and are a massive part of what Birmingham is now. It’s important for them to understand their history and the legacies of it but also for wider Birmingham to understand the extraordinary journeys of these people and how that has influenced British history.”
The show’s title reflects the fact that so many of these experiences remained unspoken for decades. “A lot of that generation chose to be silent and it wasn’t always to do with trauma,” Iqbal explains. “They drew their lines to ensure their children weren’t saddled with the trauma they had experienced. It feels like an extraordinary thing to do to absorb that, not to pass the trauma on and to concentrate on making lives for themselves and their children here.”
And in doing so, the production also pays testimony to people’s incredible ability to move forwards. “This isn’t necessarily the story of victims, this is the story of survivors and that is why it’s an aspirational story,” says Iqbal.
“I hope audiences will have an admiration for these extraordinary people who survived and then went on to thrive in this country. I hope they will have a more generous sense of what this history was, what actually happened at the time, and I hope they will also take away a richer sense of who we are now and the possibilities for multicultural Britain.”
It represents people who have heroic stories, funny stories, ultimately very moving stories and always surprising stories.
Iqbal Khan