Seven years ago, when I was working on an earlier version of what has become Summit Stages, I knew that we were going to need Muslim collaborators. But I didn’t know if theatre was even acceptable to Muslims. So I started googling, and I found the Khayaal Theatre of Befordshire, England. I emailed them and artistic director Luqman Ali graciously met with me over Skype and assured me that indeed it was. I learned that his theatre was producing dramatized storytelling, usually with 1-3 actors, and that they were trying to build bridges between Muslims and Christians. He was visionary, determined, and a little discouraged. It was difficult to eke out a living.
Shortly thereafter, I put my dream for this community on a back burner. I knew it needed someone with business sense to bring it about, and I was a creator who had never seen myself as a businesswoman. I thought I was waiting for someone else who would turn my dream into a sustainable business. In reality, I was just waiting for a business course for creatives by Doug Pew and Daniel Bloomberg. I’ve learned that I can and need to learn business, and Summit Stages is where I’m putting their coaching into practice.
So, almost as soon as I launched my weekly newsletter, I reached out to Ali again. His schedule was packed, so we booked to meet in July. That finally happened last week, and I am excited to share with you the remarkable story and vision of this pioneer in using theatre to build belonging, understanding, and peace.
Luqman Ali's Love Affair with Theatre and Humanity
Through the Khayaal Theatre, Ali and his collaborators have been transforming the way Britons see Muslims and the way Muslims see the arts for more than a quarter of a century. Founded with a mission to create brotherhood across divides of faith and culture, Khayaal’s goals seemed nearly impossible when it was launched in 1997. Since then, the world has been getting more polarized instead of less, but Khayaal has managed against all odds to build bridges with music and theatre in unprecedented ways. When doors slammed in their faces, they adapted and found a way to move forward because quitting was not an option. They felt a call to do something for which they saw a desperate need, and they would not be dissuaded.
Ali is a devout Muslim who grew up in Washington DC. His love affair with theatre began in highschool, when he played lead in a highschool play about video game addiction. He was wowed by the power of theatre to tell a healing story and dreamed of bringing that power to his faith community. But Muslim’s and thespians had developed a deep suspicion of each other, and this was not a job that a boy, fresh out of high school, could do alone. Instead, he enrolled in a seminary and deepened his study of the Islamic Sciences, eventually winding up in the UK.
In 1997, he found himself surrounded by friends who shared his vision, including fellow Muslims Eleanor Martin and Mo Sesay, along with four friends of differing or no faith traditions. They determined to launch a theatrical company and named it Khayaal Theatre, after a Persian/Arabic word for “Imagination”.
Their first production was a play about growing toward enlightenment, Conference of the Birds, based on a poem by Sufi poet Attar of Nishapur. They staged it with a very diverse cast of 13 actors from different socioeconomic, cultural, racial, religious and national backgrounds. at the Tabernacle in Notting Hill Gate. “From the very beginning, we wanted to make a statement around the profitability of inclusivity” Ali remembers. With such a large cast, the production was so expensive (on borrowed funds) that they didn’t have a budget for marketing. Yet, audiences streamed in. Towards the end of their run, they were playing to sell-out crowds of about 250 each night. People who heard about it too late to get a ticket were disappointed. Five years later, they were still calling the Tabernacle, asking when that production would be coming back.
Ali assumed that, with such a successful first production, it would be easy to get funding for a second. But even though The Conference of the Birds was steeped in a message of openness and universal brotherhood, and even though the founding group represented a variety of faiths to no-faith, nobody in the arts community wanted to throw financial weight behind a theatre that they associated with all the negative stereotypes that have surrounded Islam since at least Elizabethan days. Nobody in the Muslim community wanted to invest in the arts, which they saw as frivolous.
For Ali, though, the arts are anything but frivolous. And he believes that Muslims who view them as such simply don’t understand their heritage, which includes millenia of deep investment in culture. It has only been in the last couple of centuries that Islam has narrowed its focus to dogma and law, leaving a huge gap that the arts used to fill. While dogma and law offer structure, the arts teach the heart to engage with big questions. They moderate our thinking, combat extremism and help us to connect across our differences. Ali saw both that his community needed theatre, and that mainstream society needed a better understanding of the richness and beauty of Muslim culture.
So Ali and Martin shouldered the company’s debt and spent years paying it off. In the meantime, they changed their format. Since they couldn’t finance stage productions, they pivoted toward dramatic storytelling, with a simple, portable backdrop and a few props. They called this “Theatre Without Walls,” conveying a sense of not being bound to the four walls of a brick and mortar theatre, taking down walls between individuals of diverse backgrounds, and removing financial barriers toward participating in a theatrical experience for lower income individuals.
Ali and his collaborators mined Muslim literature for stories that conveyed fundamental virtues and our common humanity. These were dramatized and carefully rehearsed and then made available on demand to festivals, schools, businesses and other institutions. It was a great business model because it extended their reach, allowing them to take healing stories to audiences that might never have come into a theatre.
For a while, they focussed on stories of friendship and support between Christians and Muslims with Martin voicing the Muslim and Carl Tinnian the Christian. One of Ali’s favourites is of an extraordinary friendship between St. Francis of Assisi and Sultan al-Malik al-Kamil of Egypt. “I’m a huge fan of St. Francis. He has inspired me in many, many ways,” Ali says. He still wants to do something more with this history, which he feels hasn’t received its due from either faith community. “It’s a story that could be a huge facilitator of understanding, engagement, dialogue and solidarity between Muslims and Christians.”
Eventually, Tinnian moved to New Zealand, bringing a close to the Christian Muslim story telling. But Khayaal Theatre has always been about inclusion and overcoming prejudice. So, in addition to Islamic and Christian stories, they turned to the wisdom literature of Hinduism, Daoism, Judaisim, Sikhism, Buddhism and Aboriginal traditions for source material.
Today, the landscape has changed dramatically for Khayaal Theatre. Their calendar is full. They are both nationally and internationally acclaimed and are eagerly sought out by business organizations, schools, and other institutions. When they are invited to perform, they consult with the organization to find out what the needs are and then they tailor their show to meet those needs. They might be called in because of a racial incident, but more often, their clients are seeking to honour diversity and nurture inclusion in a way that meets the needs of their community. There are some areas where Muslim children make up 80% of a school population, so schools recognize a need for Muslim content. Khayaal has started partnering with Sing Up – an organization that uses school singing to teach facts as well as fundamental virtues – writing songs about Ramadan and Eid, with more to come. They’ve even been invited to perform in regional theatres, bringing audiences into those spaces that have never before been there.
Ali says that when they started up, Khayaal was way ahead of the curve on equity and inclusion. I ask him if he thinks their daring to move ahead before they had support has had an impact on where Britain is today. Yes, without a doubt, he says. Not just on Britain but internationally because the work they do is so unique, especially among Muslims, that it has inspired people in Australasia, South Africa, Canada and the US. Their refusing to go away when the gatekeepers wouldn’t give them resources has created opportunities for other Muslim artists. And “we certainly influence Muslim parents across the board to value arts and culture.”
It’s only been in the last five years that Khayaal Theatre has been able to pay its staff, including Ali, wages that are in line with the industry. Financially, there’s been a lot of thin living along the way. So, when the doors were slamming in his face, did he ever think of quitting?
Ali answers without having to think about it. No. never. He started this work with a sense of mission and a conviction that it would some day get traction. Furthermore, it was his civic responsibility. “In a world which is increasingly becoming polarized, I think it’s the responsibility of all heart-centered people, who value a universal, humanitarian dream of virtue, to stand and be counted. What am I here for, if I’m not going to be nourishing bonds of conviviality between people and sowing and nurturing seeds of the dream of virtue which underpins all faith traditions?”
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