Theatre News

Tamasha premieres Emteaz Hussain's Blood

The production forms the centrepiece of the company’s 25th anniversary season

Artwork for Blood
Artwork for Blood

British Asian company Tamasha have announced the "centrepiece" production of their 25th anniversary year – Emteaz Hussain's Blood, directed by Esther Richardson.

A co-production with the Belgrade Theatre, Coventry, it will open there in March before visiting theatres around the UK including Soho Theatre, Birmingham REP and Tron Theatre in Glasgow.

Blood reunites Tamasha with playwright Hussain following their 2008 production of Sweet Cider at the Arcola Theatre. The play is set among a Midlands Pakistani community, and is billed as "funny and heart-wrenchingly honest".

Also newly launched is Tamasha Playwrights – a collective, founded and led by artistic director Fin Kennedy, of eight emerging playwrights from diverse backgrounds, which aims to nurture writers as well as train them to become artist-producers.

Kennedy and co-artistic director Sudha Bhuchar said, "We are hugely proud and excited to announce Emteaz Hussain's lyrical and heart-felt Blood as the centrepiece of our 25th anniversary season.

"Emteaz is a writer with whom Tamasha has maintained a long and rewarding relationship, right through from her early days as a Tamasha developing artist, so it feels absolutely appropriate that our new season should focus around her latest work – a play that also furthers our ambition to give a voice to theatre created by and about the UK's culturally diverse communities."