Mustafa
by Naylah Ahmed
March - April 2012
London | UK Tour
Mustafa is in prison for the death of a teenage boy during an exorcism. Racked with guilt at the loss of an innocent life and isolated in a world where his beliefs are constantly challenged, he tries to avoid trouble. But when prisoners who taunt him suffer mysterious injuries and prison officers start behaving strangely, Mustafa starts to think the evil djinn he tried to banish from the young victim’s body is still with him and he must face it once more…
This production asked, is Mustafa the brutal killer or a brave innocent man who risked his life to deliver the teenager from a dangerous being?
Mustafa was nominated for 4 Offies in 2012’s Off West End Theatre Awards.
Writer Naylah Ahmed
Naylah is an established writer for theatre, radio and TV. Prior to her playwriting and screenwriting career she was a radio drama producer with extensive experience of developing writers, ideas and story. She was the first Development Producer for BBC Radio Drama Birmingham and founding Script Editor on the award winning soap SILVER STREET (BBC […]
About the writer
Throughout the eighties, we spent many Eid nights during family get together huddled in a room listening to djinn stories that kept us deliciously scared but that we heard, essentially, as stories, fiction. As I got older I started thinking about where these stories began and realised when they were first recounted, miles away in Pakistan, they were told as accounts of something that had really happened. So why didn’t we see them that way, what had changed? There are so many ways of exploring this rich subject matter, but the transition of account to a story is what first sparked the idea for what finally came to be Mustafa.
Naylah Ahmed
London
Soho Theatre
21 Dean Street London W1D 3NE
7 – 24 March 2012 – 7.15pm
Matinees Sat 17 & 24 3.30pm
Tour
Plymouth, Bradford, Birmingham, and Manchester