Waleed Akhtar is writing the stories he wasn't seeing on stage.
The multi-talented actor and writer behind The P Word and Kabul Goes Pop on his journey from performing to playwriting - and new show The Art of Illusion at Hampstead Theatre.
Hello, and welcome to another issue of The Crush Bar, a weekly newsletter about theatre written by me, Fergus Morgan.
This issue features playwright and actor Waleed Akhtar, who wrote and starred in The P Word at the Bush Theatre earlier this year, and whose translation of Alexis Michalik’s The Art Of Illusion is about to open at the Hampstead Theatre this month.
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That’s all for now. More from me at the bottom, but first: Waleed Akhtar!
Actor and writer Waleed Akhtar was inspired to try playwriting in his early thirties, not by the work that he was seeing on stage, but by the work that he was not.
“I felt like I was being written about by people not from the community I am from,” Akhtar explains. “I wanted to see plays written with a Queer, Muslim lens, and I wasn’t seeing any, so I had to start writing them myself. I’ve seen a lot of theatre, but I don’t think I had ever come across a play where two Brown men fall in love or seen a play in which two Brown men kiss until I wrote one.”
The play Akhtar wrote – and starred in alongside Esh Alladi – is The P Word, a two-handed love story about a British Pakistani and a Pakistani asylum seeker, which ran to acclaim at the Bush Theatre in September. Time Out’s Alice Saville called it a “gorgeous, devastating new play” and The Guardian’s Arifa Akbar called it an “irresistible” show that “bewitches with hope, romance and heart.”
“It was an absolute dream,” Akhtar says of The P Word’s reception. “I still don’t think I’ve fully taken it on board. Of course, the good reviews were lovely. It was the conversations I had with audiences that meant the most to me. People would come up to me afterwards and chat about their own experiences, and what it meant to see a show that reflected their own story. That blew me away.”
The P Word was Akhtar’s second play. His debut, Kabul Goes Pop: Music Television Afghanistan, another two-hander about Aghanistan’s answer to MTV, was produced by HighTide and Brixton House in May, and was also well-received. Together, they have put Akhtar’s name on the playwriting map, and opened up exciting opportunities for him – like his next job, translating French writer Alexis Michalik’s play The Art Of Illusion for its UK premiere at the Hampstead Theatre this month.
“I have a C in GCSE French, so I think I was the obvious choice,” Akhtar laughs. “No, I’ve worked with Roxana Silbert [artistic director of the Hampstead Theatre] before as an actor, and she has always been a big supporter of my writing. She came to see The P Word and thought that I was the right person to add some sparkles to the basic English translation of the play.”
“The Art Of Illusion is actually very well known in France,” he continues. “It has been running on their equivalent of the West End since 2014. It’s quite difficult to explain what it is about. It touches on lots of things – magic, illusion, the pioneering filmmaker Georges Méliès, the magician Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin, and the story of this couple in Paris in 1984. It’s tricksy and theatrical and beautiful. It is lovely to work on something like that after The P Word, which was quite heavy.”
“I don’t think I had ever come across a play where two Brown men fall in love or seen a play in which two Brown men kiss until I wrote one...”
Akhtar was born and raised in East London, where he still lives today. He did bits and bobs of drama as a child – he remembers reading debbie tucker green’s dirty butterfly, and seeing her play stoning mary as a teenager – but decided to study Broadcast Journalism at University. “That didn’t happen,” he laughs. “I did an acting class in the evening, though, and everything went from there.”
“I was in my early twenties when I started taking acting seriously,” Akhtar continues. “I couldn’t afford to do an MA at a drama school or anything, but I did a lot of workshops and training at The Actors Centre, and then I just trained on the job, really, and did things my own way. Looking back, it was probably more difficult than going to drama school, but it made me more robust, too.”
Over the next few years, Akhtar did a variety of jobs, on stage and screen. He appeared in the Nottingham Playhouse adaptation of The Kite Runner and Ishy Din’s play Wipers at Leicester Curve, as well as the film Salmon Fishing In The Yemen and the “Holy Trinity of TV medical dramas”, Casualty, Holby City and Doctors. He did a lot of comedy improv, and sketch shows, too, eventually contributing to BBC Three’s Famalam, as well as BBC Radio 4 series Sketchtopia and Newsjack.
“I wasn’t using my brain, though, and that didn’t make me happy,” Akhtar says. “Particularly with my acting, I reached a point where I felt like I was just at other people’s beck and call. I wanted more power and more voice. I made a show with Zoe Lafferty called I Don’t Know What To Do for VAULT Festival in 2020, and that just flipped a switch. I started writing Kabul, and things went from there.”
“There was no grand plan or anything,” he continues. “Everything has just sort of happened. I do a lot of different things, from acting, to playwriting, to comedy improv. I just follow my passion and explore whatever I want to explore. I think ten years ago, people didn’t understand that you could work like that. Nowadays, those lines are getting blurred. I like that.”
What do you want to do?
I’d love to adapt The P Word for the screen in some form. In general, I just want to keep creating things and working with wonderful people on things I am interested in. That’s the dream.
What support do you need to get there?
It’s been phenomenal since The P Word. Lots of doors have been opening to me. For me, coming from the background of being an actor, I am not used to the isolation of writing, so what I really need is collaborators who can help me manage that.
How can people find out more about you?
People can come and see The Art Of Illusion at the Hampstead Theatre. They have commissioned me to write another play, so hopefully that will be produced at some point, too. And I’m currently writing a play for Audible, as well, so people can look out for that. There’s a lot going on!
That’s it for now. Next week’s issue will feature an interview with The Revel Puck Circus’ artistic director Luke Hallgarten. There will be one more issue after that before I break for Christmas. If you ever want to suggest anyone that deserves a shout-out, just get in touch!
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That’s all. Thanks for reading. If you want to get in touch for any reason, just reply to this email or contact me via Twitter - I’m @FergusMorgan. See you in a week!
Fergus