The acclaimed play "Brown Boys Swim," a winner of the prestigious Popcorn Award and The Scotsman's Fringe First Award at the Edinburgh Fringe, is set to tour the UK this Autumn. Written by Karim Khan, a member of the 2023/2024 Soho Six and recipient of Riz Ahmed's Left Handed Films and Pillars Fund inaugural fellowship, the play delves into the challenges faced by young Muslim men in today's world. This lyrical and poignant coming-of-age story is produced by The North Wall.
In an interview with Asian Voice, Karim Khan gives a special insight into the play and what all contributed to its completion.
Behind the characters and the story
In the words of Karim, Kash and Mohsen are best friends who have a seemingly unshakeable bond even if on the surface they seem worlds apart. Kash is boisterous, and loud, willing to dance at the drop of the hat, but beneath that veneer, he’s insecure about himself and his place in the world. In this story, we will see him navigate these tricky dilemmas. Mohsen is quiet, reserved and contemplative. He doesn’t have the confidence that Kash does, but we see glimmers of this rise to the surface. Mohsen makes himself more aware of the ways he is seen by people, and in this story we see him reckon with this.
When it comes to the inspiration behind showcasing a play that explores the unique pressures facing young Muslim men in contemporary society, Karim wanted to tell a story I would’ve loved to see growing up – capturing the experience of coming age as a British South Asian Muslim, and the uniqueness of that specific experience. He said, “We often see coming-of-age stories told through other perspectives, and I was yearning to see the complexities and joys of growing up with my specific identity. The Bollywood tunes, the desi in-jokes, and the favourite dishes sit side by side with the ordinary experiences of being a hormonal teenager – and so this show is both universal and deeply specific.”
The addition of swimming in the narrative
Karim began writing the play with a keen realisation of how very few of his friends and family members had learned to swim or had learned a lot later. This made him reflect on how he learned swimming as a teenager, whilst surrounded by peers who had learned as toddlers. He explains his stance, stating, “I wanted to interrogate some of the questions about why we weren’t learning to swim. I think inherently this is connected to how far pool spaces are accessible to people of colour and how far that cultural capital is available to working-class communities. And then as a metaphor, swimming and drowning for me, captures so much about what it’s like to navigate society when systems make it difficult to thrive. When I talk about this, I’m talking about education, both schools and universities, careers, police surveillance amongst other things. “
Interesting or challenging aspects of crafting the story
In writing the play, one of the challenges Karim faced was considering how to bring the swimming pool to life. He says that “it felt like a challenging thing to stage, especially as we were taking it to Edinburgh where the set and props had to be as simple as possible. But John, our director and James, our designer came up with an ingenious way of bringing this stage to life.
“Their original set evokes the pool and swimming in such a theatrical way. The play is almost film-like, intercutting from scene to scene. Again this plays against the “rules” of theatre, but I felt as though John and the team brought this to life so brilliantly.
Hopeful emotional impact, conversations and broader significance
Karim primarily hopes that this play is one more version of us telling our stories on our own terms and telling nuanced authentic stories about South Asians and Muslims.
According to him- “This is more radical than it may sound, but it feels like our stories are so far and few between – for so long they’ve been told by other voices. They still are. It’s important for me that we continue to create more work where we are emboldened to tell the stories we want to. I hope this story makes people consider the experience of these young men – the challenges and joys they experience. I hope it gives us a different insight into masculinity – how men and boys can be emotionally intimate and vulnerable with one another. I hope it encourages us more to go into the water and learn to swim.”
Speaking about the impact, Karim wants the play to have on the audience, he says, “ Already it’s clear how much the show has had left an impact on audiences. Several South Asian audience members have said how much they’ve felt seen watching this show, which has made me super happy – I’m so glad that the piece has resonated with audiences and made them feel represented, as I can imagine how that would’ve made me feel growing up.
“It has made me more determined to write for and about my community. It has also provoked interesting discussions about swimming – the importance of learning to swim in spaces where our communities can feel comfortable, and accepted and made non-South Asian and non-Muslim audiences consider and come to terms with their own unconscious biases and latent perspectives.”
The play will be performing, next from 25-28 October at Contact Theatre and between 31 October to 4 November at Birmingham Rep.
