Ahmad - The Dishonoured

Kali Theatre presents The Dishonoured by Aamina Ahmad Robert Mountford as Colonel Tariq and Goldy Notay as Farah. First public performance 10 March 2016
Curve Theatre, Leicester Foreword The celebrated Pakistani Punjabi poet, Ustad Daman, who died in 1984, once wrote this tongue in cheek critique of Pakistans military: Pakistan is joy and more joy, wherever you look there are sepoys and more sepoys. More than 30 years after his death, the armys influence is evident everywhere in Pakistan. This is partly as a result of the war on terror. Whilst the phrase the war on terror is all around us here, it has been lived as a real, live war over there for the last fifteen years and its impact can not be underestimated - it has left tens of thousands dead, both civilians and ordinary rank and file soldiers. A by product of a war like this is that it has also led to the increased reach of the state and the army with all that that entails. Alongside the steady drip of violence generated by the war, Pakistan has also been mired in an ongoing, complicated alliance with the US, which has its own strategic regional and global aims.

In the play I imagine this relationship as one that is sometimes managed through negotiation and sometimes decided through the USs unilateral action. All of this is the fraught backdrop for Tariqs fictional story which hopes to explore what this war has done to ordinary Pakistanis, and what it has done to those fighting it. Of course there are many characters in the fight who are driven by ideals of honour, who want to do the right thing. But what is honourable about war, anyway? And without legal and transparent due process, how long is it before the characters in the story start to look like the people they claim to be fighting? There are few options for the characters in the story but there are some; the question becomes whether or not they will choose to believe they are victims of a bigger narrative of nations, subsuming themselves to the interests of the institutions they serve, or whether they will choose to change the narrative altogether. Aamina Ahmad Photo by Omar Naseer Kali TheatreThe Dishonoured by Aamina Ahmad

CAST
Farah	Goldy Notay
Colonel Tariq	Robert Mountford
Shaida & Gulzar	Maya Saroya
Brigadier Chaudhry	Neil D'Souza
Lowe	David Michaels
Captain Badhshah Gul
& Nadeem	Zaqi Ismail
CREATIVE TEAM
Director	Janet Steel
Assistant Director	Leila Bertrand
Movement	Shona Morris
Designer	Anthony Lamble
Lighting	Prema Mehta
Music/Sound	Jai Channa
Production Manager	Bob Holmes
Costume Supervisor	Kat Smith
Company Stage Manager	Jessica Thanki
Stage Manager	Chris Grogan

Aamina Ahmad Writer Aamina grew up in London. Her work has been selected for various drama development schemes and workshops including Arista Scribes, the UK Film Councils Blank Slate scheme, The Royal Courts Critical Mass Course, and the National Theatre Studio.

She is a graduate of the Iowa Writers Workshop and her fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Normal School, The Missouri Review, Ecotone and the anthology, And the World Changed. She is currently a 2015-2017 Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. The Dishonoured is her first produced play. Robert Mountford Colonel Tariq Trained at RADA. His professional debut was as Hussein Ali a pupil barrister in Channel Fours award-winning drama North Square. Subsequent TV appearances include One Night, Eastenders, Casualty, Michael Woods Story of India, Reverse Psychology, According to Bex, Doctors (All BBC); Londons Burning, Always and Everyone, Torn (ITV).

Most recently aired have been episodes of Silent Witness and Holby City for the BBC. Last year he co-wrote and performed VagabondsMy Phil Lynott Odyssey, a one man show at the Edinburgh Festival with his company Leviathans Goat and played Macbeth for Tara Arts where he is an Associate Artist. Other theatre credits include Much Ado About Nothing (RSC/West End); Merchant of Venice (RSC, World Tour); The Black Album (NT/ Tara Arts); The Winters Tale (Guildford Shakespeare Company); As You Like It, Merlin, Much Ado About Nothing, Hercules (Grosvenor Park Open Air, Chester); The Tempest (Tara Arts and West End); Enemy of the People, Merchant of Venice, Baron Von Munchausen, The Penal Colony, Medea (Tara Arts); Gandhi and Coconuts, Tagores Women (Kali) and UK tours of Much Ado About Nothing (Byre, St. Andrews); As You Like It (Sphinx) Romeo and Juliet and East is East for Leicester Haymarket. Robert has extensively toured the United States in Shakespeare productions including Hamlet, The Winters Tale and As You like It. Goldy Notay Farah Trained at George Brown Drama School. Goldy Notay Farah Trained at George Brown Drama School.

Theatre credits include Coming Up (Watford Palace Theatre); Happy Birthday Sunita (Rifco); Speed (Kali); My Daughters Trial (Kali); Tagores Women (Kali); Handful of Henna (Sheffield Crucible); Zameen (Kali); The Deranged Marriage (Rifco); Something about Simmy (Rifco); Blood Wedding (Theatre Pass Muraille/Toronto); Romeo and Juliet (Waterspout/Bermuda). Film credits include Lead in Its A Wonderful Afterlife (Dir Gurinder Chadha); Sex and the City 2 (Prod Sarah Jessica Parker); Red River (Dir Emma Lindley/LSFF); London Dreams (Bollywood); Amar, Akbar, & Tony (Dir Atul Malholtra); Death Threat (TIFF); My Own Country (Dir Mira Nair). TV credits include Silent Witness (BBC); Warehouse 13 (US Syfy); The Town (ITV Series); Holby City (BBC); The Bill (Talkback Thames); In a Heartbeat (Disney) Doctors (BBC) and Noddy (BBC). David Michaels Lowe Theatre credits include Ticking (Trafalgar Studios); I and the Village (Theatre 503); Rough Justice (UK No.1 Tour); A Dolls House (Coventry ); Herding Cats (Theatre Royal Bath & Hampstead); The Constant Wife and Death and the Maiden (Salisbury Playhouse); Tactical Questioning, The Hutton Inquiry, Called To Account and The War Next Door (Tricycle); The 39 Steps (UK Tour); Betrayal (Sir Peter Hall Co); Three Sisters (Birmingham Rep); Presence (Plymouth Theatre Royal); Question Time (Arcola); The Changing Room (Duke of Yorks); Holidays (West Yorkshire Playhouse); A Midsummer Nights Dream, The Winters Tale (Regents Park); A Taste of Honey, An Enemy of the People (Nottingham Playhouse);