Earlier this month, Peanut Butter and Blueberries, the sell-out debut play from poet and playwright Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan opened at the Kiln Theatre. The Asian Writer picked up the phone for an exclusive chat with its writer to find out more about the experience of writing for stage, writing for Muslim audiences, and how theatre can be truly inclusive.
Peanut Butter and Blueberries explores love and life as a twentysomething Muslim. It tells the story of postgrad students at SOAS, Hafsah and Bilal navigating university life, a world away from their hometowns of Bradford and Birmingham. The idea for the play came about following initial discussions with the theatre’s artistic team who were keen to bring something new to the stage. They asked Manzoor-Khan about a story she hadn’t seen – either on stage or screen. She says, two points jumped at her: “The first one was that I felt I’ve never seen two Muslim characters, or even maybe one that likes being Muslim.” Oftentimes, she tells me, faith is seen as a hindrance in the pursuit of dreams and joy, a barrier to living a fulfilled life. “I wanted to see Muslim characters for whom Islam is a really important part of who they are… a big part of their lives, and is something they appreciate and love, and maybe even the thing that gets them through the hardships of life.”
Her second concern was to reflect the reality of young practicing Muslims navigating love and life, and keeping it halal, in the absence of familiar tropes and patterns which have become mainstream and commonplace. Manzoor Khan explains: “I feel like I’ve always seen love stories where the Muslim character falls in love with a non- Muslim, escaping their religion, or if they do fall in love with someone, it’s always thought about, like an honor killing or terrorist attack or something really sensational and racialized.”
We move on to discuss the process of writing itself. I’m keen to explore how Manzoor-Khan, known for her spoken word poetry found switching from writing verses to scenes. “Obviously, it’s different,” she says, before clarifying that she had previously written short monologues. “I think what’s different with a full-length play is that other people are performing your work.” It’s this collaborative effort that she’s relished – seeing the play come to life under the vision of her director and through the eyes of the actors shaping her characters. “It’s a lot less isolating than being a writer in your own in a little room somewhere.”
Manzoor-Khan’s passion for bringing the authentic Muslim experience to the stage shines through in our short chat. She wants to create space for such audiences to feel seen and recognize themselves but asserts that this needs to go beyond storytelling. “One thing that I was really keen for with this play was that Muslims are not just in the story and on the stage, but actually that we are able to come to the show… We made sure that this wouldn’t clash with, like a prayer time, or that there’s a prayer space, or if people wanted to come at a night where there’s no alcohol being sold. And I think those kinds of things, they felt like we had to go out of our way to kind of make sure those things happen.”
“The story I’m trying to tell is a story of British society today, and what it means for two young people to try to care for one another in context that are really quite grueling, quite brutalizing.” Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan
We discuss the importance of belonging, of knowing we can exist in a space, in the arts, as Muslim artists but also how the theatre can act as driver for change. “There’s something about the liveness of theatre and the kind of the audience being right there,” Manzoor-Khan begins, before reflecting on the violence that has erupted on to the streets in recent days, and how this will give new meaning to some of what she’s written. “It’s very evident that it’s not easy to love one another and to build communities and to protect one another.” Despite the ugliness of what’s unfolded outside, she remains hopeful but pragmatic. “There’s a lot of Muslim artists entering the theatre space more and more, you know, whether that’s writers, directors, actors, sound design, whatever, in every part of the creative team, which is really nice to see. And I think it does, it does influence and shape how we tell stories.” That said, she recognises that the industry needs to be more accessible.
We return to talk about writing. Manzoor-Khan is keen to finish with what she’s learnt from this experience; her advice to would-be writers, “Don’t write the thing that you think people will relate to this, or this is going to be popular, or whatever. Because I think the more personal, the more intimate, and the more specific our stories are… in those specificities we also find a common humanity… I’m hopeful, and I encourage people to just write the stories that really matter to them. And be willing to be complicated. Don’t feel you have to kind of make it easy or consumable to an audience that don’t understand your experiences. Lean into the complexity.”
Suhaiymah Manzoor-Khan is a writer, poet and educator. Her latest book, Seeing for Ourselves: And even stranger possibilities was published by Hajar Press in September 2023. Prior to this she authored Tangled in Terror: Uprooting Islamophobia (Pluto Press, 2022). In 2019 her debut poetry collection Postcolonial Banter was published, featuring eight years’ worth of poetry including her viral poem This is Not a Humanising Poem which placed her as runner-up of the National Roundhouse Poetry Slam in 2017 and has over two million views online. Postcolonial Banter critiques and troubles narratives about racism, systemic Islamophobia, the function of the nation-state and secularist visions of identity. She was resident writer at the Leeds Playhouse (2021-22), a Visiting Research Fellow in the School of Geography at Queen Mary University of London (2020-22), and was selected for the Royal Court 2021 Writers Group.
Peanut Butter and Blueberries runs until August 31st at Kiln.
