Writer-Performer Nadia Parvez Manzoor, and her show Burq Off!

When Pakistani, Muslim culture arrives in the West
By Deborah Klugman

 

 

 

 

Performer Nadia Parvez Manzoor was raised in a conservative Pakistani Muslim home in cosmopolitan London. Her autobiographical solo show, Burq Off!, illuminates her experience as an independent-minded young woman struggling to become her own person amidst the strictures placed upon her by her culture. Stage Raw talks with her about that struggle and about Burq Off! (performing at Hollywood’s Elephant Stages July 17-19, and then at San Francisco’s Exit Theatre Studio Space, July 24-26) in which she portrays 21 different characters she’s encountered.

 

 

STAGE RAW: How did you come to develop Burq Off!

 

 

NADIA PARVEZ MANZOOR The origins of this show developed out of my own personal reflections. While I was in grad school, I wrote academic papers about cultural assimilation. I drew on myself, my own experience. After that, I started to develop my material into a memoir. I was teaching improv, and working on characters. A natural synthesis developed between my writing and my stage work, and this show was born.

 

 

SR: Is there anyone in particular who has influenced your work?

 

 

NPM: Radhika Vaz. He’s an Indian stand-up comedian and a creative partner. Also I like John Leguizamo. I’m inspired by his ability to not be inhibited through his characters. And [I’m inspired by] anyone who performs for larger social reasons.

 

 

SR: In Burq Off!, you depict 21 characters. Who are some of them?  And do you have favorites?

 

 

NPM: My joyful Pakistani mother is my favorite character. Not only do I get to connect with her soul, which is deeply nourishing and healing, since she passed away 12 years ago, but I also love filling up my body with that much love. I play my first Muslim teachers, and my white best friend, who uses foul language and yells at her mother. I play my irritable twin brother, who joined an extremist Islamic group while at university, and my first Irish boyfriend, whom I had to hide from my family for years.

 

 

 

 

Tell me something about your background.

 

 

I grew up in greater London in a white community and went to a Christian all-girls school. I received my [other] cultural education at home from my Muslim parents. I was constantly told that my white friends were sinners, that the ways of the Western world were steeped in deep debauchery, and that we as Muslims had to do everything to maintain our “pious” Pakistani identity.

 

 

What were some of the constraints that you experienced as a young person?

 

 

While my teenage friends were wearing shorts and dating boys, I was forbidden from showing the contours of my body. I was forbidden from looking boys in the eyes, as it expressed immodesty. I wasn’t encouraged to play sports, as I wasn’t allowed to show my legs. I was forbidden from dancing or acting, or putting myself on stage, as this brought too much attention to myself, and a South Asian woman is meant to be silent, obedient and attractive. Any interests I had were only seen in the light of being of use to my husband. My inevitable destiny was to become somebody’s wife, and that is how I was trained. Having interests of my own were not encouraged or supported.

 

 

I’m curious how you came to be enrolled in an all-girls Christian school rather than a Muslim school, given your parents’ strictness.

 

 

In spite of what my parents thought about the other girls that attended my school, to them a well- educated girl was a sign of social status, and would also mean a better husband when the time was right.

 

 

 

 

 

When did you begin to be critical of the expectations made of you?

 

 

I was a teenager and I wanted to be “normal” and experience life the way my friends did. I fought with my parents for more freedom. When I started to read about how women are meant to be absolutely obedient to their husbands in Islam, I grew resistant to this notion. I resented the notion that all responsibility for sexual modesty fell on the female. I resented the notion that only men were allowed to sit at the table and discuss politics and religion. I was told to leave the table, when all I really wanted was to engage in philosophical discussion and challenge the people who created my rules.

 

 

When and why did you first come to the U.S.?  

 

 

I came to the US when I was 22. My father wanted to send me as far away from the UK as possible so I would stop seeing my Irish boyfriend. I came to Boston to find a new way of living, without the social pressures of my community. I started doing research at Harvard medical school, with the intention of continuing with the program in clinical psychology.

 

 

When did you become interested in being a performer?

 

I always performed. Hidden in my room, I would dance, spending hours creating choreography, acting out short scenes, doing characters, and trying to move myself emotionally by performing for myself. I didn’t identify as a performer though, because I didn’t understand that was what I was doing.

 

 

When did you go public?

 

 

I started to dance actively and professionally while I was living in Boston, mainly bhangra, bollywood and street dance, like popping and hiphop.

 

 

Sorry, what is bhangra?

 

 

Bhangra is a Punjabi folk dance. Bhangra music is very popular in the UK, and is also mixed into a lot of new hiphop beats.

 

 

I understand you have some background in improv and worked with a troupe of players. How did that evolve?

 

 

In 2009, I went to an improv show in NYC, at the school Improvolution, run by Groundlings alum, Holly Mandel. Before that, I didn’t know adults did that [sort of performing] on stages. I was fascinated and fully able to relate as that was how I would spend a lot of my private time, doing voices and characters and making up scenes. I started taking classes and immediately fell in love with the art of improv. [I finished the course in no time] and became a teacher.

 

 

And you began performing as well?

 

 

Yes. A group of women from the school created an all female improv troupe, Thirteen Degrees. It was created with the aim of women supporting other women, in performance – a world where there is typically a lot of female competition and rivalry. As we rehearsed, our mentor and teacher, Holly, questioned our deeper motives as women while we are on stage, and we looked into the cultural conditioning of women through our improv work. It was very powerful stuff, and taught me to trust women in a whole new way.

 

 

 

 

 

 

What are some of your other projects?

 

I am developing a second show, which is a spiritual return following upon the first show. I am also working on the screenplay for Burq Off, and am developing and producing a comedic web series about 2 hijabi women who are living in the West, and fully embracing the culture. It’s called Shugs and Fats, and will be released in September 2014 through Paprika Productions.

 

 

After L.A., you’re taking the show to San Francisco. Then what?

 

 

Burq Off is going international. I am taking the show to the UK in September, and to India and Dubai next year.

 

 

Is it safe for you to take your show to Dubai?  Is it indeed Westernized enough?

 

 

I think it can be safe, if supported by the right organizations. Dubai is diverse in its level of conservatism. There are definitely areas and people in Dubai where this show would be powerful. I do believe they have a script screening process though, so we will see how that goes!

 

 

How would you like people to respond to your show? What is it you aim to tell them?

 

 

I want to encourage people to question the traditional dogma that they may be faced with in their lives, from their communities or from the larger status quo, and to not be afraid to be authentic about who they are and what is important to them.  I want people to leave inspired to tell their own stories and recognize that in truth there is healing, renewal and the possibility for transformation

 

 

Burq Off! runs three performances at Hollywood’s Elephant Stages from July 17 through July 19, and then in San Francisco at the Exit Theater Studio Space, July 24-26.