SPOTLIGHT ON DIVERSITY
Curtain rises on Urdu-language play
Ayesha Mohsin dealt with some growing pains in starting her new theatre company, Lexeme Theatre.
“Actually I had to train everyone, the stage manager as well as the assistant director, because most of them are not from theatre backgrounds. They’re all engineering and psychology students,” said Mohsin, Lexeme’s artistic director and founder.
But, six months in the making, the company is set to present its first production on Saturday, to a sellout audience.
The play, Bu, is in Urdu — the official language of Pakistan and one of 22 official languages of India.
Originally from Pakistan, Mohsin was inspired to present plays in “immigrant languages.”
“I felt that there’s no theatre companies that are doing shows in immigrant languages and also in English. And there are absolutely none in Regina,” said Mohsin, a fourth-year theatre student at the University of Regina.
She sees students coming from all over the world — including India, Pakistan and Bangladesh — and wanted to reflect their cultures and stories.
“Right now, I’m one of the only Urdu-speaking — I don’t know if I should use the word, ‘brown’ — person in the department who’s coming from that part of the world and doing (a) major in theatre,” Mohsin said.
“So I felt I should start a company which would work with different languages too. … I don’t want it to be such a rare thing. I want it to be something that people can see and enjoy.”
While the goal was to keep this production simple, she said next season she plans to present three shows, each with a seven-day run. One will be in English, and the other two will be in either Urdu, Hindi or Punjabi.
Next up are three one-act plays by the “very famous” Saadat Hasan Manto. But first, there’s Bu, which Mohsin wrote. She is also one of three actors in the performance; the other two are Hassan Siddiqui and Gill (who doesn’t use his last name).
“Bu” means “smell” in Urdu, and it refers to the smell of leather, as the three characters work in a shoe warehouse. It shows oppression and how people are trapped in certain situations, difficult for them to get out. They don’t know how to engage with other people outside that warehouse,” said Mohsin.
Two of the characters are a brother and sister.
The third character, an owner of the shoe warehouse, “takes one of them outside into the real world and then things even become harder for that person and then it’s a tragic ending. They end up not surviving, any of them.”
Mohsin got the idea while watching the news one day.
“I saw that there was this tragic thing that had happened somewhere in the world, and there were these shoes all around the space where people have unfortunately died. So the idea came from there, like, what are these shoes doing here and where are the bodies?”
Bu will be presented at the Shu-box Theatre, in the U of R Riddell Centre, on Saturday, Jan. 12, at 6 p.m. Tickets sold out earlier this week.
Mishal Saifullah is the stage manager. Ahmed Cheema is assistant director. Christopher Carswell worked on the set.
Fatima Mohsin is the costume designer.
Rakhshan Shahzad will sing, as the siblings “have constant background music playing in their conscience.”