Hunia Chawla writes and directs this fascinating new play, Permission, which looks at the conflicts around being a young, modern, respectable Pakistani woman.
I was sent a rehearsal recording to review, so no audience reactions to observe, but I was charmed by the performances of Anisa Butt and Rea Malhotra Mukhtyar in this two-hander.
Permission explores how the journey from Karachi to London, in this case as a scholarship student on a sponsored visa, might impact cultural norms.
Sex, activism, and freedom all are issues Hanna has to face as she moves from community and family to liberation and freedom.
Even when queuing at immigration there are nagging voices, which attack the Commonwealth and hint at issues of occupation and Imperialism.
Permission casts a wide net from honour through to student politics, and Chawla manages to make coherent points throughout a tight one-act running time.
Locations including a Karachi roof-top and a university protest lock-in are ably indicated by a clever use of props and lighting.
As Hanna finds her world collapsing around her, her space gets smaller, and the production makes effective use of voiceover when additional character input is needed.
Permission succeeds best when it cuts to the chase on issues that fracture or frighten South Asian families. It ends with a question – hard to answer, but definitely hard-hitting.
As a white woman looking in, I found this play a fresh spin on immigration into a Western country and its associated, supposed, freedoms. It displays a lot of interesting ideas throughout.
Notably, Hanna does not wear the hijab or burqa, instead adopting the clothes any young woman in London might wear. Religion is not directly referenced but modesty and assimilation is.
You can watch Permission on-demand via The Space until 17 Jun – tickets here.
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Images – screenshots from Permission recording.