Tickbox a captivating night at Tayvallich
A crowd of more than 80 heralded the return of live entertainment to Tayvallich Community Hall on Saturday January 21, writes Ewan Halley.
Around three years since lockdown restrictions around the pandemic interrupted the hall’s programme of events, a welcoming serving of tasty Asian treats set the scene for Lubna Kerr’s one-woman play called Tickbox.
The child of immigrants from Pakistan, Lubna’s thought-provoking piece criss-crossed the 50 years or so since her parents arrived in Glasgow to a land of opportunities but also casual everyday racism. For example, her father, Ihsan Khand, a pioneering chemist who co-discovered the eponymous Pauson-Khand reaction, was often assumed to be a shopkeeper.
Lubna wove the story of her own life with that of her family, particularly her inspirational mother, showing how as the daughter of immigrants, she felt the need to prove herself the equal if not the better of anyone else, whether on the sports field, in the Brownies, where she discovered her love of acting, at school and university or in the workplace.
Her story is one of survival and self-improvement, of rising above your circumstances and fulfilling your potential and of confounding preconceptions - not ticking the boxes of the play’s title.
Using her considerable theatrical talent, Lubna populated the stage with the members of her own family and a supporting cast of walk-on characters, each convincingly portrayed by gesture and voice, from a garrulous Glaswegian housewife to a bigoted Brown Owl.
Although much of the message was hard-hitting in terms of what she and her family had had to endure, it was also told with empathy and laugh-out-loud humour, testament to Lubna’s parallel career as a stand-up comedian.
A brief interval was followed by a question-and-answer session.
With warmth and wit, Lubna fielded questions from her appreciative audience, shedding more light on some of the topics in her play: her connection with Pakistan, the importance of passing languages down the generations, the changes in attitude to race, and making the most of the opportunities that come your way.