Dye laughing (From The Northern Echo)

Dye laughing

10:59am Saturday 27th February 2010 in

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A play on tour in the region reminds us of the humour of Muslim women, says Viv Hardwick.

CREATING a play about Muslim women, currently one of the most sensitive subjects in European society, was quite a task for theatre artistic director Rani Moorthy.

Her one-woman show, Curry Tales, was the starting point when she met director Karen Simpson who invited the Malaysian-born playwright, actress and head of Rasa Productions to talk to a group of Sheffield women with interesting stories to tell.

The result was a community project called Handful Of Henna, which Moorthy is bringing to Darlington, Middlesbrough and Hexham.

“Two things struck me about talking to these women: the idea that they’d left something behind and that they didn’t think anybody would be interested in what they had to say,” she says. “Their community was very self-contained with religion that’s self-contained. So it is difficult for them to think anybody else wants to know.”

Moorthy is a sympathetic figure for the immigrant community, having made her own journey to the UK, from Singapore, in 1996. She is aware that children born here often feel that loss because “there is something about mum and dad that they don’t know about, until they view the world that their parents left behind”.

Out of these discussions she extracted a universal truth about parents and children and Handful Of Henna tells the story of British-born 13-year-old Nasreen (Bharti Patel) who is taken back to the family village from the UK when her mother Saheeda (Rochi Ramphal) decides to flee her marriage.

“I was trying to honour the voices I was hearing. There wasn’t a fear I was going to touch upon anything that was too controversial or too difficult or dangerous. It was always going to be about warmth, family and community,” she says.

“The portrayal of Muslim women in the West has been so skewed by our lack of understanding of how generous and humorous they can be – and a lot of people talk about Handful Of Henna’s comedy. But it’s not a story unless you have an oppressed Muslim woman hiding behind a veil.”

Moorthy, who admits she had to skirt around a lot of controversial areas to find a family-friendly plot, adds: “The community sometimes stands by the man rather than the woman, so I don’t avoid this but concentrate on the mother-daughter experience.

When you have a brown face on the poster and a magical title like a Handful Of Henna, I think audiences expect a theatre of difference to confirm or challenge negative beliefs. I hope this play opens a little window and allows you in and allows your heart to be opened.”

She enlisted two more actresses, Sohm Kapila and Nimmi Harasgama, to play the other community members reacting to the arrival of Nasreen and Saheeda.

As a Hindu, Moorthy was aware of the mystical power of henna having had her skin decorated when she got married. “It was part of the wedding ritual and it’s also used in Indian dance and theatre,”

she says.

One of her study group, from Yemen, told her that henna was part of all the Muslim wedding rituals. “The woman said that the only time she sat still was when they put henna on her hands in order to give her away to this strange man in marriage. She was so angry that women who used to scold her were now treating her as some kind of princess that she turned her hand into a fist. Henna has ancient uses as an antiseptic, used in childbirth to heal, as an antiperspirant and for medicinal properties and it had a kind of mystical property.

“It was thought if you adorned a couple with henna, if some ill-luck befell them they would still go to heaven as bride and groom. It has this property to transport you to a supernatural realm. I thought it was a useful metaphor to combine all these stories,” says the playwright, who uses that magical aspect of the henna legend to create a song-anddance section in the production.

“In more contemporary times we still use the decoration but we’ve lost that spiritual connection. Originally it looked like magic was happening on your hands.” Moorthy admits she doesn’t have a daughter on which to base her 13-year-old, but says: “I was a daughter once myself… and there are no shortage of stroppy teenagers in Cheshire where I live.”

■ Tour Dates: Tuesday, Darlington Arts Centre. £10.50. Box Office: 01325-486-555 darlingtonarts.co.uk; Wednesday, Middlesbrough Theatre, £12. 01642-815-181, middlesbrough.gov.uk