'Black-i' looks at the interaction of races in contemporary London and the stresses and pressures on kids today, but first and foremost it is at heart a weird love story between an Asian boy and white girl with characters we care about, set on a Mayfair roof at night. With knives. The play takes two very different worlds from within London and makes them collide on a roof high over the city. It’s a clash between the working class Bangladeshi community of East London and the moneyed elite white class of Mayfair.

"There is also a clash between kids and adults. The play deals the pressures and powerlessness of kids who may feel they must carry a knife, and how the weaknesses of adults can cripple their children. Although Naz brings the knife on the roof, the person wielding it at the end is not who you expect. The play looks at the extremes people will go to in order to protect their patch and their way of life from what they see as threat, particularly the imagined Muslim ‘threat’ in London today."

"The play explores the the Muslim hijab and its covering up of the body. By reversing the notion of the hijab and applying the idea of covering up to a privileged white girl I’m hoping to show that the restrictions that we stereotypically associate with Islam can equally apply to upper middle class white girls. They may be under equal pressure to conform to their family’s ideas of how they should behave and whom they should be with. Everyone, from every culture, has ‘acceptable’ codes of behaviour and it is easier for all of us if we stay within our limits. But there are great possibilities if we don’t. " - Sharon Raizada.

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